10 Highlights from Bespoked 2023 in Dresden

With additional photos by Stefan Haehnel

At big bike shows these days, it’s hard not to feel shocked by the sea of e-bikes and over-complicated drivetrains and gadgets. Bespoked 2023 was, for the most part, pleasantly analog and grounded, despite the luxury builds on display. Only the crowd was electric.

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I’m not sure whether it was curated or incidental, but there was a well-balanced spectrum of bikes that ranged from high-performance road racers to urban haulers and off-road rigs. On the bikepacking side, I found exciting new products that fill niches between pavement and dirt, and ultralight racing and heavy world touring. But I’d be remiss to only mention bikes and gear because, below the material surface, there were a number of interesting currents that stood out. Without further ado, let’s get into my personal highlights from Bespoked.

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(More) Regional Manufacturing

First and foremost, Bespoked is about unique handcrafted bicycles and their builders, but they often rely on high-end local manufacturers. In Western economies, those face tough challenges. They need to navigate customer expectations that are often anchored to mass-production prices achieved at large scale in Asia while paying their skilled employees a reasonable wage. They have to continue innovating in their products and processes to keep the company and its employees in the business.

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Take Rotor Bikes from nearby Leipzig, for example, a five-person outfit that’s been plugging away for nearly two decades building one-offs and in small batches for private and business customers. At Bespoked, I spotted a set of sliding dropouts that I couldn’t identify on one of their hardtails. Owner Basti explained that they had to find a more cost-effective solution than the fancier types primarily aimed at custom framebuilding. They also needed a guaranteed supply on the continent for their customers. So, they designed their own. The dropouts use a simple 2D-geometry and stock hardware, so Rotor can work with any machine shop that has a water-jet cutter.

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The Dresden area is a notable hub of cycling manufacturing in the east of Germany. Beast Components is by now well-known for its high-end carbon-fiber rims, cockpit components, and saddles. What sets them apart from most other brands in the carbon game is that all design, testing, manufacturing, and quality control happen in-house. As we’ve previously reported, Sour Bicycles has moved production of their frames back home, cutting and welding their tubes around Dresden. This means they can now offer light customization on things such as bottle cages and rack mounts, not to mention a choice of stunning powder coatings. Veloheld, another bike brand from Dresden, appears to be making similar moves.

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The more industrialized center and south of Germany retain many more component manufacturers, many of which have been in business for several decades. Though not quite the focus of the show, Tune, Schmidt Maschinenbau (of SON fame), and Rohloff all had stands, and many of the show bikes were equipped with their top-end hubs.

Utilitarian bikes

Perhaps my bikepacking blinders filtered out all the bare road bikes, but it seemed like a significant proportion of bikes on display at Bespoked went beyond pure sport and performance. Innovative racks, bags, and carrying platforms turn the bicycle into a utilitarian vehicle for hauling stuff around the city and well beyond. Robert and Konrad of Big Forest Frameworks from Potsdam built a lightweight Omnium-inspired cargo bike that shaves four kilograms off its forerunner. The bike from Kabuff Cycles sported a front rack built to fit two standard 10L paint buckets so the customer could leave the van standing for jobs around the neighborhood. Best in Show went to Konstantin Drust with his impressive Pinion Dogpacker, and people lined to take it for a spin.

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Then there were other bikes inspired by a particular, non-sportive purpose. A Schwalbe product manager commissioned Leaf Cycles to design a bike for building trails that features mounts for carrying a pick and shovel with a unique multi-gear singlespeed. Finally, I can’t go without mentioning the absolutely adorable purple baby ATB Mads Hulsroy built for his three-year-old daughter. Its Wit Slingers framebag has a special transparent “exhibition pocket” for collecting artifacts and flowers in the forest.

Cyber Cycles

Cyber Cycles is headed by technical designer Christian Thomas from Jena, Germany. Finding inspiration in the cycling tech of the 1990s, he’s been building out an impressive portfolio of minimalist cranks, stems, seatposts, and, most recently, forks that he’s updated to modern standards and materials.

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The sleek Cyber Cranks are made from custom-drawn, air-hardened steel and look to be an ideal match for custom metal frames. They’re optimized for a narrow pedaling stance (Q-factor) and feature an MTB-length axle for 73mm bottom brackets. On a technical level, the cranks merge a 24mm axle that’s compatible with Shimano bottom brackets with the SRAM 3-Bolt direct-mount chainring standard. They are fairly light, too, coming in at 470 grams including all bolts. At Bespoked, Christian showed a new EN (enduro) model that’s designed for 52-58mm Boost chainlines and wide chainstays. Square-taper lovers can also look forward to the forthcoming ST version.

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The Cross Blade is a switchblade-style fork that features a modular CNC’d crown. It comes with steel or lighter titanium stanchions and has thru-axle dropouts. The axle-to-crown length can be custom cut and tops out at 430mm, making it a drop-in replacement for most drop-bar bikes with clearance for tires up to 65mm/2.6” wide. While it’s not lighter than a comparable unicrown fork, the transition from tapered or 44mm straight headtubes to the fork crown is far more pleasing to my eye. The Cross Blade fork is slated to go on sale in November.

New SON developments

The SON booth attracted a lot of attention as they showed a snapshot of their in-development SON Edelux USB-FL that brings high-beam and USB charging to the venerable Edelux dynamo light. It has an integrated 1140mAh buffer battery cell to smooth the charging and allow the beam to be triggered while stopped—for example, to light up a street sign at night. Schmidt states up to 7.5W of power will be available for charging. The design isn’t settled yet, but the remote will likely feature two buttons, one each for switching the beam and high beam on and off, respectively. The remote will likely feature a magnetic port that could be compared to Magsafe on MacBooks to connect a proprietary cable that terminates as USB-C. The release is slated for the spring of 2024, and we’ll be sure to provide more updates as they come in.

Also on display was their next-generation SON 16.1 dynamo hub, which has been slimmed down to the minimum from the bulbous status quo. This new model further cuts down on rolling resistance, trims a good deal of weight, and optimizes the power curve for charging (and presumably lights with power-hungry high beams). Whereas the current SON 28 delivers full power starting at around 15km/h (10mph), the 16.1 unleashes it at about 12km/h (8mph). Further details to follow.

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Builder Hahn Rossman developed a custom lighting solution for the Concours de Machines randonneur featured in our earlier post from Bespoked that allows him to remove the fork for Rinko transport without needing to unplug the wires running to the rear light. A special non-conducting headset allows power to be picked up at the top of the headtube using the frame as ground—similar to how cars often work. This attracted the attention of Wilfried Schmidt, and they’re now partnering to bring the system into production to extend the existing SON SL self-contacting dynamo hub system. While it’s quite niche, it shows the value of events such as the Concours the Machines in spurring innovation.

Purple Dog Companion Dynamo Light

There’s a lot of movement in the dynamo lighting space right now. Nikola Banshiki’s Purple Dog lights won the Innovation Prize at this year’s Concours de Machines. “With the Companion light, I set out to develop a better Sinewave Beacon,” he says, which would be no small feat. The Companion aims to be the world’s first dimmable dynamo light that can shine at three distinct brightness levels.

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A built-in replaceable buffer cell with a substantial 2500mAh capacity is supposed to eliminate any flickering and interruptions to charging via the USB-C output. A DC jack input enables the light to be powered from an external battery. The StVZO-compliant optics should keep the low beam out of oncoming traffic’s eyes, and the high beam will be triggered by a remote switch. The Companion is scheduled to go on sale for €395 in November of this year, and we’ll be very curious to test its performance in the wild.

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Additionally, Nikola was presenting his smaller Sarah and Kerrigan dynamo lights, which about match the SON Edelux in size. Like the Companion, they feature a highly efficient reflectorless design that relies on a StVZO-compliant optic to shape the beam. The Kerrigan is one to watch for bikepacking if the high beam can be activated at lower speeds than the more racing-focused Supernova M99 DY PRO.

New mini-panniers

Regular readers of the site know I’ve been beating the mini-pannier drum for some time, as they offer ease of packing and more volume for fun stuff without meaningfully impeding the ride on anything but technical singletrack.

Tailfin Cycling

Imagine my delight when I saw the Tailfin crew showing a gravel bike with their waterproof mini panniers mounted directly to the fork—up until now, they’ve been rack-mounted only. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to spill the beans on how it works just yet, but you can use your imagination. Having a rattle-free and equally waterproof alternative to Ortlieb’s Fork Packs will certainly be welcome. I had a great time nerding out with Chief Engineer and CEO Nick; the whole team is so wholeheartedly stoked about what they’re doing. Stay tuned, as they’ve got some exciting developments in the pipeline.

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Gramm Tourpacking x Allygn Microrider

Our friends at Gramm Tourpacking and Allygn Components in Berlin followed a different approach with their new Microrider system. Conformal angular pockets with Fidlock snap locks on the back mate to a parallelogram mini-rack that’s bolted to the fork’s triple-threaded bosses. With a 3L capacity, these bags hover around a typical fork drybag in volume but allow for much easier access on the go, thanks to the zipper closure. There’s no messing with straps. These seem like a slick—dare I say aero—option to add just a touch more carrying capacity for snacks and light layers. Look for a launch around the winter holiday season.

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Simple bags supports

Some of the impactful developments in bags for bikepacking are happening at the interface of fabric and hardware—lightweight supports unlock soft bags’ full off-road potential, and it was exciting to see new solutions on display at Bespoked.

FO.goods sixtysix bag support

Florian of fO.goods from Stuttgart has come up with what looks like a novel bag support that’s so simple it makes you wonder how it took so long to appear. Similar to Jack the Rack, the fO.goods sixtysix loops around bars and stem and is braced with a velcro strap. Instead of the bag sitting on top of a cradle, it has webbing loops at the back that slide onto the support’s flat hooks. Then it’s just a matter of doing up the two straps that attach the bag to the handlebar, which is much easier as you don’t need three hands like you typically would. The system is light and elegant and seems to work really well on the show floor. The brackets are made from stainless steel and dipped in a rubbery compound to prevent scratches to the stem and bars.

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Florian has three compatible bags available at this time, named by their volume in liters. The Nummer 14 is a seam-welded handlebar roll with an optional front roll. The Nummer 6 is a smaller general-purpose, roll-top bag with a front zipper that can be carried off the bike by a shoulder strap. And the Nummer 9 is a semi-rig, flap-top bag with side pockets and two rows of webbing on the rear to dial in the height on the bars.

Ballern Cycleworks

After a framebuilding stint in London, Bennet Janzen recently brought Ballern Cycleworks back to his former home in Hamburg. At Bespoked, he told me he’s doubling down on fabricating the Sexy Rack bag support for the likes of the Wizard Works (Mini) Shazam and other saddlebags that seem to spend more time up front than out back these days.

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It’s a super simple T-bar design that cradles the bottom of a flap-top bag and keeps it off the headtube and tire, drastically improving stability and all but eliminating any chance of abrasion. I wish I had one of these before I trashed my Zeitgeist from repeated tire contact. The only requirement is having at least 15mm of spacers under the stem. They’re available in two sizes from the Woods Cyclery and Suicyle in Hamburg. Bennet is also building custom racks, so if that’s something you’re after, hit him up.

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Taking over an airport with bicycles

When I heard this year’s edition of Bespoked was happening at the airport in Dresden, I assumed the show would be held in an unused maintenance hangar or something like that. Nope. It was right inside the passenger terminal, up on the second and third floor of the expansive steel and glass hall. There was something quite absurd about folks entering the place in cycling gear and taking show bikes for a spin just above travelers headed to Mallorca for vacation. It was like some kind of sustainable utopia in which air travel had ceased and airports became venues in desperate search of alternative uses.

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Other than being non-obvious to find and a bit cramped for the unexpected deluge of visitors, it was a great location. Natural light flooded through the glass facade, and the autumn sunsets cast the entire show in a golden glow—a photographer’s dream. The large empty spaces meant we could photograph the bikes indoors without having to brave the nasty weather outside, and while the backdrop wouldn’t be my first choice for some bikes, the images from this year may well be iconic.

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Hulsroy handmade bottle cages

Back to earth, here’s something we can all get behind: nice, sturdy stainless steel bottle cages. Once you go there, you never go back. Explicitly inspired by King Cages, Mads Hulsroy went to work in his shop in Denmark to create his own version, and they came out beautifully. The Hulsroy cage is a true side-loader, which shorter folks trying to fit bottles and framebags into small frame triangles will especially appreciate. They are silver-soldered, not welded, and feature the heat marks from Mads’ torch.

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Retention seems very strong, and steel can always be bent a little if necessary. The cage is optimized for the shape of the common Specialized Purist bottle but should work for just about any cycling water bottle. In addition to the left and right side loaders, there’s also a symmetrical version, and they’re now available for pre-order from Hulsroy for €40/piece.

Collaboration

At Bespoked, there was so much to see, countless riveting conversations to be had, and many familiar faces to greet. It would have been a shame to fill the entire weekend with work. My thanks to Stefan Haehnel for teaming up on the weekend and sharing the photography load. That gave me a tiny bit of space to enjoy the show, though it was still an intense couple of days. And working together with an experienced professional and watching them efficiently tackle the task at hand is always a joy and privilege.

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Since we’ve mostly singled out individual builders and their products in our coverage, I think it’s important to highlight the web of collaboration that underpins it all. There’s Hahn Rossman coming together with Schmidt, Sour developing their new model with the help of Acto Five and others, and Tailfin relying on their cadre of test riders. The maker match-ups Hulsroy and Wit Slingers and Allgyn/Fern and Gramm Tourpacking.

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Framebuilders, outwardly a solitary bunch, are always talking. Even the solo inventor Nikola of Purple Dog, with his innovative dynamo lights, is building on the work of the incumbents and freely available knowledge. In the end, it’s collaboration all the way down. Big thanks to the Bespoked crew for bringing together the immensely talented European community in a central and unique location. I’m already looking forward to seeing what everyone brings to next year’s edition!

Further Reading

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