As our call connects, Dan Craven is washing his hands as the Onguza workshop crew finishes for the day. Following a frantic race to refresh the web platform ready for the launch of a new bike, I assume that what I’m seeing is a return to business as usual; prompting Dan to carry his laptop into the adjacent room and point the camera at the floor which is covered with row after row of brightly painted pieces of metal tubing.
“These are all the paint samples that we’re readying for photography,” he explains. “18 different frame colours and 10 wordmark options. Which equates to 179 separate samples we need to prepare.”
All of which is on account of a gravel plus bike called the Bliksem; not only a new addition to the Onguza range but also a new business model that sees a subtle shift from custom to customisable.
“There’s been a pre-production Bliksem riding around Namibia since October last year. And it was a few months before that bike was fabricated when I came to the realisation that so many people had reached out to say they loved our bikes but how they were just a little bit out of their budget. And I was already beginning to suspect that a truly custom geometry bicycle only really matters to a tiny proportion of a bike brand’s customer base. And that’s not because they don’t want it but because they don’t quite understand it.”
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Starting with the premise that 99.9% of bicycles in the world today are small, medium and large, Dan remembers that back when he was racing professionally there were still individuals riding custom geometry frames before arguing that this just isn’t the case anymore. And that applies even in the World Tour, the pinnacle of professional road racing. Which all makes sense but seems at odds with the fact that, until very recently, Onguza only fabricated custom geometry frames. An observation that prompts Dan to smile and continue his discourse in his signature, softly modulated tones.
“It’s a little known fact that when we launched Onguza, the first two frames we sold were actually stock geometry. But very quickly we adopted a fully custom approach, simply because the end product costs more and the timeline from design through to build is longer, which allowed us to do things slowly and grow gradually. But the Bliksem was always a planned part of what we wanted to do once we had the factory team established, our own in-house paint booth, and a series of partner bike shops across our key markets.”
More of these partner bike shops a little later. Because what initially I find fascinating is Dan’s assertion that one of the main factors that has slowed Onguza’s manufacturing capability is the time it takes him to figure out all these custom geometries. A process which can sometimes involve upwards of a hundred emails with a customer. Quite a lot, I suggest, which causes Dan to laugh out loud and refer to a recent conversation with Sacha White from Speedvagen who alluded to three hundred emails with a single customer not being that unusual.
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“But however many emails each build generated,” Dan now qualifies, “it’s safe to say that everyone in the factory was sitting there, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for me to message the customer to confirm their shoe size.”
So there was obviously a manufacturing bottle neck that needed to be addressed; along with an interesting question of semantics.
“Another big breakthrough was the realisation that when we first launched the company, we used the word luxury a lot. We had those super stylised fashion photographs—which was a good thing because it caught peoples’ attention—but that’s not really me and it’s not really Onguza. So we needed to find our voice and you can only do that over time.”
What all this means in terms of the Bliksem, is a simplification of the fabrication process—batch building for want of a better word—but with an array of customisable features. In practice, the workshop team fabricating each frame size as a rolling chassis that can be reached down whenever a customer order comes through and any specced braze-on’s added before it goes to paint in the colour combination selected.
“Not something that all small to medium bike brands can offer because they outsource their paint,” chimes in Dan. “Or they don’t have a factory team big enough to allow for someone being pulled off the production line to braze on an extra set of bottle bosses. And all this thinking raised another question regarding our identity and what we bring to the market. Because ultimately, this doesn’t hinge on our story; that we’re based in the southern tip of Africa in the world’s second most sparsely populated country. That’s a good story, an uplifting story, but what actually defines Onguza is the beautiful bikes that we build.”
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So which came first, I’m wondering? The Bliksem frame and all that it entails, or the new model of fabrication?
“For the longest time, this bicycle was known as the SADC bike which stands for Southern African Development Community. The idea was to build a bicycle that was aimed at local riders and this new variant—the Bliksem—continues this evolution but with the customisable features and a new name because SADC wouldn’t resonate with our international customers.”
So what does Bliksem actually mean?
“It was my wife Collyn who landed on it. An Afrikaans word that literally means lightning or can be used as a mild swear word akin to shouting dammit but with a lot more character and panache. And funnily enough the name of my grandfather’s dog.”
Dan’s grandfather Danie Craven, it turns out, was a very famous rugby player—he was inducted into the Rugby Hall of Fame in 1997—and there’s a statue of him standing with Bliksem in Stellenbosch, South Africa. And now that I’m up to speed on what Bliksem means and what it is—a gravel plus standard sized frame with a vast array of customisable features—I’m curious as to how this all works in terms of the customer interface and ordering process?
“I love nerding out about bicycles and I want to allow my customers to do the same. And how that translates with the Bliksem is that it’s available in stock sizes so they have a degree of confidence in what they’re going to get. From there, every customer is different. If you’re riding from Cairo to Cape Town, then external cables will most likely be your preference so you can fix things on the fly. But anyone living in Northern Europe where you’re never that far from a bike shop might want to spec fully internal cable routing. And with the way our factory operates, that’s entirely possible. Throw in some extra bottle bosses, luggage mounts, or whatever the customer needs to fine tune the bike, and you have a handmade frame at a much lower price point and the only thing it doesn’t have is custom geometry.”
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So is this all indicative of the way we now buy bikes, I suggest?
“Looking back to 2010, I felt there was a big resurgence in steel bikes. People were super excited about the idea of commissioning a handmade bicycle. But back then you could argue—or I would argue—that carbon road bikes were pretty ugly. Fast forward to present day and carbon frames are much prettier and definitely more aero; edging closer to steel frames in looks and overtaking the speed of a steel bike. And who wants to buy a bike that might ever-so-slightly slow them down? Someone who is really, really invested in the versatility, durability and comfort of a handmade steel bike.”
Which, I surmise, is why they come to Onguza?
“That’s the idea but there’s a but.”
There is?
“When you visit a bike shop you can look, touch and feel the bike you’re considering purchasing. The store owner is going to look after you, if you have a few minor teething troubles. And all those practicalities suggest to me that maybe a lot of our customers so far have been the quintessential loner. The person who doesn’t necessarily need a relationship with a bike shop, who’s happy to tinker with their bike and do their own thing. But that’s probably not the majority of the market which is why, moving forward, we are adjusting our margins to allow us to partner with bike shops. We’ve already got Via in London and Acme in Brooklyn, and we’re talking to establishments in Toronto, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Girona, and at least one—maybe more—in South Africa.”
Here Dan stops; reaching behind his head to unfasten his long hair. I can almost see him mentally picturing this worldwide network of Onguza affiliate partners.
“I believe our bicycles are amazing,” he continues, “I believe in our system of customisable builds, and I believe that having our own paint booth allows us to be agile and responsive to what the customer wishes. And if we can do this, what else can we do?”
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After living and breathing the challenges of building a bike brand over the past three and a half years, listening to Dan you really get the feeling that Onguza has reached a point that carries the brand past their Made In Africa story. That with the Bliksem, they have a bike and a model of manufacturing that, as Dan is quick to jest, will give their accountant something to get excited about. But all of this takes an incredible amount of hard work, with not only Dan but also his wife and business partner Collyn sharing the burden.
“We are extremely fortunate in that we very much support each other. And to me, that makes such a huge difference. Because it’s about growth and sometimes, metaphorically burning your fingers. And in business, you have to make those mistakes in order to learn from them. Because you’ve got to remember that I came to this chapter in my life—setting up a handmade bicycle company in Namibia—from the relatively sheltered world of professional bike racing. So it takes a certain length of time and a degree of experience to go from guessing how a company needs to be structured, to actually knowing.”
So do you enjoy what you do, I want to ask?
“The honest answer is that I’m enjoying it more and more. Setting up a company—any company—is rather a rollercoaster ride and if you’d told me, when I was still racing, that I’d be back in my home town of Omaruru in Namibia, getting my hands dirty working in the factory, I would have laughed and said no. But there’s a path that we’re following and as we grow, if I can employ more people to take some of the weight off my shoulders, there are so many other things that Collyn and I want to do.”
Once again, there’s that faraway look in Dan’s eyes.
“There have been a couple of realisations over the past two weeks putting the final touches to our new website. One being that the shift from custom to the customisation of our bicycles is a true superpower. A lightbulb moment of, wait a second, that’s who we are.”
All photography with grateful thanks to FC Smith
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