Warning! Home mechanics may not want to read this article. And why not? Because if you’re like the PBE News Team, doing so may create a yearning satisfied only by the outlay of a pretty penny for something you can get for less money in other forms, but which won’t work nearly as well. If you take your workshop tools with you to events, you’re going to want to check out this tool case.
By now, everybody who knows the names Noah Rosen, Suzanne Carlsen, or VéloColour, already associates these with the very best in quality products. They started out with fabulous one-off custom frame painting, and then in 2014 brought Suzanne’s elegant head badges under the Vélocolour brand. Suzanne also had skills in textile design, so they added tool roll and tubular bags to the product line, and in 2016 brought in fulltime needle workers (aka ‘sewers’) to make bags under the VéloColour name. The bag work all happens in VéloColour’s Toronto workshop, in case you’re wondering, and they pay the staff and contract workers at a rate that keeps them in the company.
Over the years the bags and accessories part of the business has grown to comprise around 40 percent of their revenue. Noah and Suzanne have refined the function, style, and materials of these bags. “We’re really picky about what we put onto the market,” says Noah. “Usually we will run through 20-30 iterations of a prototype,” before it reaches minimum viable product status.
Recently VéloColour launched the Pro Bicycle Tool Case, which looks destined to become a classic. PBE24 was the first public outing for this functional beauty.
VéloColour has been constantly improving tool bag design since they started in this field about eight years ago. Initially they were responding to requests for snug-fitting tool bags that matched the quality of the bikes they were painting. They soon started looking beyond existing designs and in 2017 came out with the Dynamite Roll design which is more efficient than the three-pocket under-saddle tool roll that preceded it. “Rolling multiple pockets over the top of each other got very bulky, so in trying to eliminate inefficiencies, we came up with this different approach.”
The Rocket Pocket saddle bag was next up, in 2018, and mid-2019 they went big and started work on the Pro Tool Case. Some of the design input for came from in-house, but an ongoing collaboration with racing team mechanics played a significant part in the functionality. Initially they were approached by the mechanic of the Canadian national team, who presented a laundry list of features and asked if they could make this. “The part we added was the removable interior panels to appeal to a wider mechanic community. That’s where we redirected the design,” said Noah.
The target was to make a small, yet comprehensive tool management device for the pit area, something that would keep tools well organized and available when needed in a hurry. This meant allowing rapid access to the most important tools, being tough and durable for muddy field work, and capable of fitting in with the pro team mechanic’s crazy schedule where there isn’t much time to be packing and unpacking a tool kit as you move from venue to venue, and from the home workshop to being on the road.
“It took a while, but we have created a tool organization system that excels everywhere you want to use it, from World Championship races to your bike room,” explained Noah.
With its fully removable interior and adjustable pocket configurations, the VéloColour Pro Tool Case is designed for versatility on the road, enabling optimum tool selections for every type of cycling. The interchangeable tool palettes and three additional pockets mount easily within the case which allows users to set it up how they like, with options for future add-ons.
What’s good for the pros is often good for the amateurs too, and the majority of sales have been to home mechanics, often existing VéloColour customers. The company has a loyal consumer base and gets a lot of repeat business. Having the instant tool wall feature makes it accessible and easy, and since not only team mechanics operate on tight schedules, a tool kit that’s easily packed up in 30 seconds is a great help.
North America has been the largest market so far, but demand for the case is expanding. “We’ve sent a bunch to Europe as well. Home mechanics, and in some cases UCI world cup race mechanics. We’re starting to get word-of-mouth referrals from the team mechanic community,” says Noah.
With the word out now among the mechanics, VéloColour is already getting calls from a variety of big name teams “Getting tools through the unzipped top is proving very popular. A mechanic for the FDJ team in Australia, working from the back of a car following the peloton, said he unzipped the bag and accessed it from the top, he said it was the best system he’d used when working from the tight confines of a car.”
“They work well in tech zones and pits compared to the traditional Pelican case. It’s very easy to carry. You can put priority tools on the top and don’t have to unroll or open the entire case,” Noah explained.
But for Covid, the VéloColour Pro Mechanic Tool Case would have been launched at the 2020 PBE. “We started working on it just before the pandemic and produced the first handful by early 2020. We had a few mechanics go to races with them, but it went on hold as things shut down in Covid.”
As things started opening up again in 2022 VéloColour resumed production of the cases, and they completed the current iteration in mid-2023. “In terms of promo, the 2024 Philly Bike Expo is what we’d call our launch event. We’ve not really put them out yet in terms of marketing.”
Looking at the materials, repurposing materials is very important to VéloColour’s ‘cradle to cradle’ manufacturing philosophy. “If we can do this without sacrificing durability and aesthetics, and materials are available, we’ll do it. That’s super important” he says.
The outer shell is a durable repurposed waterproof vinyl from a local fabric recycler, so it’s material diverted from landfill. The liner of the outer case comes from the Canadian bike maker Norco, for whom VéloColour does special pro athlete paint jobs. “They brought us a lot of 600D waterproof polyester tent materials that would otherwise have gone to landfill. Old Norco graphics sometimes show up in some of the cases. You might get a red strip or part of an ‘N’. Customers have asked us about those,” explains Noah. The interior is recycled cordura from a standard fabric supplier. It has a velcro backing, which holds the interior securely in the outer case.
The Pro Tool Case costs CAD295, or USD219 at exchange rates current in March 2024