Build, perfect, repeat and pass it on. That could be the company motto of the Serotta Design Studio. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the legendary framebuilder Ben Serotta must surely feel profoundly flattered.
Being imitated is a thing he came to know well as one of the largest and most innovative custom frame builders on the planet. His journey in frame building has taken him far, and now he is back to his roots working in a small-scale custom shop doing what he loves, building bikes that make people happy.
“When others initially started to mimic my designs and principles, I was annoyed, but I see now that it’s part of my legacy to impart my accumulated knowledge and the lessons I’ve learned over the years to new generations of builders,” says Serotta.
Since 1972, Ben Serotta has been crafting custom frames and forks that meet and exceed each individual client’s needs and desires. For Serotta, the quest has been to produce extraordinary work, for as their website puts it, to start with the goal of producing something good leads only to “good+”.
It all started as a small production run, full-custom business for Serotta in his hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York, and as the winds of growth and change have blown through the industry, Serotta’s fortunes have risen and fallen upon these waves.
Serotta’s claim to fame really started in the mid-1980s when his company designed and built Murray-branded bicycles for the 7-Eleven team in their debut Tour de France in 1986. These bikes, with their uniquely swaged and shaped tubesets and curved, flared chainstays, were also used in the 1986 World Championships in Colorado Springs. This design became known henceforth as the Serotta Colorado, and it became a mainstay for both sponsored pro teams and club racers.
The Serotta brand enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. With demand running high during a bike boom in the US and UK during the 1980s and early 90s, Serotta scaled up and up, at one point with a factory with production capacity of 5,000 bikes a year.
The nadir for the Serotta brand came about three decades later, and Ben Serotta walked away from his namesake brand, taking some years off and serving as an industry consultant. But Serotta’s time away from hands-on building and creating his own products made him realize just how much he values the creative process.
“I learned that what makes me really happy is designing and making things,” says Serotta. “I like the intuition I can draw upon to make the nicest bike I ultimately can for my clients.”
So Serotta is now back at his Saratoga Springs workshop where it all started over 50 years ago. He builds exclusively from titanium with full custom designs. For the bike builder who trained as an Environmental Scientist, going back to his roots wasn’t necessarily his intention, but changing the world was, and this is where the road has taken him in pursuit of that latter goal.
“I’d like to think that by building bicycles, I’m changing the world in a positive way, by helping to reduce carbon emissions in some ways perhaps, but also by bringing joy and happiness to people’s lives. A well-built custom bicycle can do that,” says Serotta.
Legions of satisfied Serotta customers and lifelong brand enthusiasts attest to that sentiment.
More information at www.serotta.com