Frank Yang (楊一帆) didn’t just like cycling as a kid, he also enjoyed taking bikes apart and trying to put them back together in his friend’s parents’ garage.
Eventually he became so enthralled in mountain biking that he got kicked off his architecture course at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (國立台灣科技大學) for skipping classes whenever the weather was nice.
Now, Yang builds custom bikes for style-conscious cyclists at Pinecone Works (松果商號), which he runs with partner Gail Ko (柯玟如), who studied fashion management at Southampton University in the UK.
Photo courtesy of Pinecone Works
“It wasn’t quite that straightforward,” Yang says at their workshop near Taipei’s Hakka Cultural Park. “In fact, this occupation chose me more than I chose it.”
Yang had traded his mountain bike for a fixie (fixed gear bicycle) and began blogging about it. His readers asked him to hook them up with vehicles and gear, commissioning him for connecting them with dealers.
“Then they started bringing me their bikes to repair, and Pinecone was just kind of born,” Yang says.
Photo courtesy of Pinecone Works
This was about seven years ago when fixies were a major trend favored by hipster types. Looking to make their rides more unique, they asked Yang to help them find unusual colors and styles for wheels, spokes, pedals, saddles and handlebars, giving rise to the customizing side of the business.
“Then, as quickly as they had taken off, fixies went out of fashion. The hipsters moved on ... and I needed to move on too,” Yang says.
CHANCE ENCOUNTERS
Photo courtesy of Pinecone Works
First he needed a first-floor workshop since, while “fixie geeks” might be happy to carry their super-light bikes upstairs to his walk-up apartment with no air conditioning, most cyclists, especially well-heeled ones, would not be. Hence the obscure location off Tingzhou Road (汀州路), where rent was cheaper, yet it was conveniently positioned just a couple of hundred meters off Taipei’s riverside bike path.
It still took a couple of “nice coincidences” for Pinecone’s business to really take off. First, Yang inadvertently shared a table with Ko at a mom-and-pop restaurant in their joint hometown of Kaohsiung and, although they didn’t swap contacts, they ran into each other a few days later in Taipei. From then on, Ko has handled the business side.
The second coincidence was when a stranger complimented Yang for his stylish bike. This man turned out to be Jerry Chiu (邱柏奇) of Veloci Cycles, makers of steel bikes, which Yang had long coveted.
Photo courtesy of Pinecone Works
Their mutual admiration gave Pinecone its new direction, one which dovetailed nicely with Yang’s two missions of promoting cycling of any kind and supporting quality Taiwan products. The newly relocated workshop started to deal exclusively in these locally-made lifestyle bikes for commuting and touring.
MIX AND MATCH
Yang says many shops will only fix bikes that they sold, since there’s not much money in the repair business.
“In the early days, I couldn’t afford to be this choosy, even though it meant spending hours downloading and reading manuals, and then tinkering around with a variety of makes and models,” he says.
This benefitted him in the long term, helping him become familiar with a wide range of bikes.
“I learned which bits of one could be swapped with those of another, which is gold in the customizing business. Second, I was used to ordering small numbers of parts from numerous distributors. And third, when customers were ready to upgrade, they trusted me to do a good job,” he says.
This ability fits perfectly with the latest phase in Taiwan’s biking scene.
“At first, everyone wanted a top-end bike, then they wanted a bike no one else had, and now the only way to be different is not to buy a complete bike, but to mix and match,” Yang says.
For customers on a tight budget, Yang can find them a secondhand vehicle, of which there is a growing supply as cyclists upgrade or lose interest in the sport. Then he can help them customize it by first finding out their riding purpose and how it fits in their lifestyle.
“Customers often have a strong idea of what they want, what they’ve seen on other bikes in the street, or in magazines. But sometimes they just want us to show them what’s available,” he says
The most requested component is a Brooks saddle from the UK. Pinecone has around 20 in store, from classic brown leather to modern rubber-and-cotton cambium models. “These are our pension plan,” Ko quips, pointing at the vast array.
“For a completely unique bike, it is possible for a customer to design their own frame, and we’ll take it to the frame maker and see if it works,” says Yang. At over NT$100,000 for the frame alone, this is still a very niche market, however. “Who knows, if the prices come down, this may well be a major trend in the future.”
Pinecone predicts that the next trend will be cargo bikes. Yang and Ko liked the look of people transporting goods and children around town on these vehicles. They came across the Danish Omnium brand at a bike show, and when they discovered that they were made in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里) but not yet sold in Taiwan, Pinecone immediately signed up as a local distributor.
Sales are still meager, Ko admits, “maybe just two or three this year,” but says she always receives attention when Yang transports her and their daily trash to the evening collection.
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