Building great bikes is one thing; running a sustainable business is another thing altogether. Framebuilder Stephen Wood (formerly of Swood Cycles) teamed up with his friend and bike industry veteran Wilson Hale in 2019 to open Haute Bicycles in Richmond, Virginia. It’s an ideal commercial marriage as Wood handles the artistic side of things, and Hale keeps the business running on a sound economic footing. The “Haute” brand name (French for “high”) has revealed itself to be both playful and ironic.
The key to understanding Haute Bicycles’ approach to framebuilding artistry is to channel Andy Warhol’s philosophy of “manufactured art”. In the 1960s with a team of assistants, Warhol produced screen printed copies of his original paintings in a New York City studio named, only slightly ironically, The Factory.
Warhol wanted not only to challenge the notion of what art is, but also wanted to democratize it and bring it to the people. And similarly lowering the bar to entry for handbuilt bicycles is what prompted Wood and Hale to start Haute.
That’s about as far as a Warhol reference goes though. Haute’s offerings are far from one-size-fits-all, and the frame geometry is the result of many years’ experience wrenching in bike shops, working for larger bike brands, and making custom frames. The range of add-on features you’ll find on their website makes welcome reading that speaks to a solid background in excellent customer understanding and service.
Stephen Wood is not one to mince his words. “Most handmade bikes are too expensive,” he states in a blunt reference to the many who would love to own a handbuilt bike but lack the means. Rather like the Porsche mechanic who can only afford to drive an old Volkswagen Bug, many of Wood’s friends only had a tenuous connection to the bikes they worked on as shop mechanics. “I looked around at all my friends in the bike industry, and no one could afford a truly handbuilt bicycle,” he says.
Wood and Hale looked at the most cost-effective ways to produce frames at a price more people could afford, and set about developing and refining a process to increase efficiency and thus reduce costs. This does not mean cutting corners, however, as Haute’s website notes: “We’re doing this to make bikes for everyone with our own hands. We care deeply about every cut, weld, tube choice, and pedal stroke.”
Handbuilt does not mean fully custom, and that is a model award-winning brands have pursued for several years. Haute takes features commonly found on high end custom bikes and includes these in their stock frames. This creates a ride experience that will feel great to a novice, while the experienced cyclist with a broader knowledge of market offerings will note and appreciate these carefully considered subtleties.
The Haute Sauce is a gravel/all-road bike that according to Wood “blurs the line between a drop-bar mountain bike and a full-on gravel bike.” It has a slack 69-degree head tube angle and longer front center for increased stability and maneuverability in loose terrain.
Haute’s website outlines a range of add-on options for the Sauce frame, including the brilliant Ritchey Break-Away system, which reduces a bike to standard suitcase size in a matter of minutes. We in the PBE News team have used this extensively ourselves and would like to see fitted to more bikes. We love it on our bikes and everybody we know who has it loves it. It is invisible, simple, and works great.
Stock steel frames with tried and tested geometries come in eight sizes from Haute, and can be out the door in as little as four to six weeks as fully-built bikes. The Sauce comes standard with a derailleur and features adjustable dropouts, which a cyclist will truly adore in those rare but consequential times after smashing the rear mech on a rock and needing to convert the bike to a single speed for the limping home part. Slide them $200 more when ordering a bike, and Haute can make custom stack, reach, and head tube lengths.
The Haute Dog, launched at the PBE24, is the most recent addition to the company’s offerings. An MTB hardtail with a long top tube and slack angles – perfect for Wood’s favorite off-road adventures in the urban singletrack around Richmond, and longer journeys in the Blue Ridge Mountains west of the city.
Thus far the biggest selling product from Haute is the Twisted T, an accessory that furnishes a bracket for a wide range of handlebar bags to mount securely under the bars and eliminate bag-throws on bumpy trails.
Look out for additional versions of this versatile bag mount system, with light brackets, and a version made for quill stems.
More information at www.haute.bike
Photos: Dave Lamay, Firespire Photography, Miles Arbour