Inside WZRD Bikes: Long Stays, Long Story

The story of up-and-coming builders who took a framebuilding course during the pandemic and started a brand shortly after is surprisingly common, and this is a good thing for the handbuilt bike community. This was particularly true at the inaugural MADE bike show in Portland last summer, where it was inspiring to see the next generation of framebuilders displaying their creations next to bikes from veteran builders. I’m of the mind that there’s plenty of room for everyone, but I also believe that creating a unique brand and telling a story that people connect with is more important than ever. As such, I feel incredibly privileged to be able to help share these stories.

Emma May of WZRD Bikes, which launched in 2019, is a prime example of a framebuilder who entered the scene just ahead of the new wave and has taken the industry by storm with her distinct aesthetic and design philosophy. Not only do WZRD frames stand out in a sea of custom bikes, but Emma stands true to her strong opinions on geometry and other design elements, backed by a decade of working in the bike industry. I stopped by the WZRD shop on a couple of occasions to discover more about the one-woman operation’s backstory, Emma’s passion for all things bike, and the nuances that make a WZRD a WZRD.

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The WZRD Story

Early on in my first visit to WZRD headquarters, I reluctantly admitted to Emma that I thought WZRD had been around for a decade or longer. I had no idea the brand was just five years young. Anyone in tune with the framebuilding scene in the Pacific Northwest has likely heard of WZRD, whether it’s because of the unique paint jobs, conversation-inducing geometry, or head-turning custom rack systems. The fact that Emma built her first frame only half a decade ago and has created such a recognizable brand in the years to follow is downright impressive.

Emma grew up in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada, about 1,500 miles from Vancouver and 250 miles from the Arctic Circle. All through high school, she worked at a bike shop that was also a ski and hockey shop, and she’s worked in the industry ever since. After deciding to relocate as far south from the Arctic as possible, Emma landed in Victoria, British Columbia. She bounced around between shops before landing on Broad Street Cycles—marking a significant milestone for Emma and what would eventually become WZRD Bikes.

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After discovering a basic old framebuilding jig in the basement of the bike shop, Emma bought her first tubeset and started scheming her first build. She took her sweet time to get started, though. As Emma puts it, “I knew exactly what I wanted, but as soon as it was time to cut tubes, I was like, maybe I’ll tweak this or tweak that.” It took an entire year to finally commit to doing it, but in November 2019, the first WZRD frame was born. Around the same time, Emma ran a BMX blog called curbwizard, which focused on the Vancouver and Lower Mainland BMX scene. It eventually became a nickname, first “curb” and sometimes “wizard.” The first few frames Emma built had curbwzrd stickers on them, but folks weren’t quite sure who or how they were being made, so it was eventually shortened to WZRD. (with a period).

It turns out that working in the bike shop was the best thing for Emma as she honed her new obsession. Immediately after her first frame, other employees at the shop were asking for bikes, which she would sell for the cost of materials, as she knew they were still relatively rough. She took the opportunity to learn everything she could and was able to make six frames in the first six months. “I got a bunch of frames out in the world, a bunch of them broke, and I learned a lot really quickly,” Emma explained. Not only were people eager to get a handbuilt frame from their friend and colleague, but being bike industry people meant they had parts to put on a frame and get them rolling, which Emma says helped tremendously with WZRD’s early momentum.

Eventually, Emma branched out and sold a few frames to good customers of Broad Street Cycles, who understood that she was still learning. Until then, she was exclusively building hardtail mountain bikes because they have so much more forgiveness regarding how straight/perfect they must be. Emma eventually branched out to offer gravel bikes, big-tired gravel bikes, and a couple of road bikes. Since that first frame, Emma has built a frame nearly every month for five years.

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Another pivotal milestone for Emma was about a year into running WZRD, when Emma publicly came out as transgender. This was around the same time she was starting to build relationships with parts manufacturers and getting insurance set up, and she said it was pretty scary. During this time, and ever since, any hardships were met by an overwhelming feeling of support from fellow queer cyclists.

I asked Emma what the cycling industry can do better to support transgender people and other under-represented groups, and here’s what she had to say: “Seeing other queer people being supported by brands, represented at shows, posted about on websites, and having a voice is so important. SRAM & PBE are really leading the way in this—their scholarship puts those builders on such a pedestal for other queer people to see. For me, seeing other openly queer people in the industry was what gave me the courage to come out, and I truly hope that I can do the same for other people.”

In 2022, Emma left the “mold dungeon” beneath Broad Street Cycles, where WZRD was based for two years. That summer, she relocated to a stunning property in the Blenkinsop Valley in Greater Victoria, co-inhabited by Twyla’s Flower Farm. As you can imagine, the property is beautiful and teeming with life. Mt. Doug borders them on two sides, with impressive Douglas firs and Arbutus trees around the shop. Next door to WZRD is a small wood shop, which Emma can access as long as she keeps the wood stove going. The WZRD shop isn’t huge, but the space is bright and airy thanks to the large glass French door at the far end. There is a spacious workbench on one side of the room, frames hanging from the wall on the other, and various tools of the trade lingering about, patiently waiting for Emma.

What Makes a WZRD?

WZRD specializes in fully custom frames but has loose models that serve as a starting point. Emma has strong opinions on geometry, so things like head tube angle, seat tube angle, and fork travel are usually loosely set, and everything else builds from there. There are six models in the WZRD lineup. The XCXC is a traditional cross-country hardtail. The BCXC is a trail bike with a 120mm fork and 64-65° head tube angle and is her best-selling platform. The NAAR (not an all-rounder) is an enduro hardtail with a slack 62° head tube angle, longer-than-average 450mm chainstays, and a 140mm travel fork. Her bikepacking bike, or a “shredpacker,” as Emma sometimes calls it, is usually a BCXC with additional mounts and bosses on it, and she also makes drop-bar gravel and road bikes for customers who want them.

Besides a cool name and the opportunity for a funky paint job, there are some design elements that make a WZRD frame unique. For starters, a low bottom bracket and long chainstays aren’t up for discussion; they’re mandatory. The choice for super short 415-425mm chainstays makes bikes playful but “way less stable,” Emma explained. “I usually build my bikes for going fast, so I stretch that out to 440mm at the shortest on mountain bikes. Long chainstays provide lots of traction in corners for a small sacrifice of maneuverability. It’s the one thing I hunker down on when someone wants a WZRD. NO SHORT CHAINSTAYS. Some people are like, yeah, whatever. Sick, you want a WZRD. Some say they want this, this, and this… and that’s not really a WZRD. It’ll look like a WZRD but won’t ride like a WZRD.” Knowing that trail riding in the Pacific Northwest is often steep, loose, and littered with slippery roots, I fully understand Emma’s strong desire for traction.

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However contentious the chainstay length conversation might seem, it’s not the most challenging battle Emma has—fork travel is. Emma is a fan of short-travel hardtails and specs the BCXC with a 120mm travel fork, while comparable bikes are closer to 150-160mm. The result is more stable geometry that changes less as you pivot through the fork’s travel. The head tube stays slacker for longer, and the seat tube angle and handlebar height are less affected by sag, even if you bottom out. Even the NAAR, which Emma calls her “shuttle bike,” is based around a 140mm fork and has comparable geometry to bikes with 170-180mm travel forks. She shuttles Mount Prevost, a winter World Cup downhill training area on Vancouver Island, as a proof of concept and gets by just fine. To be fair, we both agreed that the tunability of modern forks helps make rowdy short-travel riding a reality, and this might not have been an option five years ago.

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Aside from long chainstays and short travel forks, several more features set WZRD apart. The second frame Emma built had seat stay cable routing, and she’s been doing it ever since–dipping into the stay at the tip and emerging close to the dropout. On drop-bar bikes, the routing is kept low through the bottom bracket junction, as it works better with flat-mount brakes. The seat tube is notched to make cable routing easier and smoother, ensuring the cable doesn’t sit inside the bottom bracket shell.

Most WZRDs also have pretty unique paint jobs, too. From the beginning, Emma offered a “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset” program, where she or her partner April would paint the bike as they saw fit, and the customer couldn’t get upset. Emma said this felt better than forking out $1,000 on a paint job for a bike that might break. “We would just fuck around with spray paint, and that’s where it all started with the original brightly colored WZRDs. April did a ‘goop’ paint job on someone’s bike, and it clicked.” April’s hand-painted goop paint job has stuck around and is somewhat of a signature finish for WZRD, although you can also ask for a powder coat if that’s more your style.

Aside from being in charge of all the paint jobs, April is also behind WZRD’s branding, T-shirts, bottles, and jerseys. Everything I’ve seen from April is incredibly unique, fun to look at, and on-brand with the folklore surrounding WZRD. More recently, Emma designed a sword emblem, inspired by a tattoo on her chest, for a small headset spacer bag support she’s been working on, but she thinks all WZRD frames might be crowned with a sword moving forward. Swords, wizards, and goop—sounds like a brand that both 10-year-old-me and present-day me can get behind.

Beyond Framebuilding

Between monthly frame builds, Emma has been filling her limited free time with several other projects. Last year, she released a handmade slingshot called The Whisper of Reckoning, made from 4130 Chromoly steel with a 22.2mm handle compatible with any push-on grip. The arms are finished with their trademark goop design and come in solid colors or a timeless raw cleat coat. Emma said their popularity has been surprising, adding, “I expected them to be popular, but it feels like all I’m doing right now!”

WZRD has also developed a reputation for designing and fabricating unique rack systems. A few years back, they released an integrated bar-stem-rack system called the Ritual Rack. Next up was a handlebar with integrated braze-ons for a rack, which was more popular because it didn’t require committing to a stem length. During my visit, Emma showed off a life-sized custom cargo fork schematic she designed for a customer’s Surly Krampus—something I hope to see in person someday. She offers custom handlebars and stems, with or without integrated rack systems, and when I arrived, she’d just finished up a burly six-bolt stem for a customer.

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WZRD’s latest product is a minimal headset spacer bag support for smaller bags. It’s only 3mm thick, which is perfect for slammed stems or short steerer tubes. Emma has also been experimenting with 3D printing, including rigid bag spacers to replace foam ones. I’ve had the opportunity to use them a few times, and they’ve proven to be more solid and less wiggly than the standard foam ones. Some of the tool organizers in Emma’s shop were also 3D printed. Emma’s shop has poor internet and cell phone service, so the 3D printing and most computer work is done at home. From what I could tell, Emma doesn’t mind the separation, “I can barely post Instagram photos from here.”

We can also expect 3D printing to make an appearance in WZRD frames in the future, as Emma is currently experimenting with 3D-printed upper headset cups and chainstay parts. She was nervous to integrate it into framebuilding at first, as you can only print in stainless steel, and to braze stainless steel, you have to use silver (which is more challenging and expensive to braze), so Emma recently invested in a TIG welder to make the integration easier.

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Laser-cut parts have also been a game changer for WZRD and are just one of the many recognizable features that make WZRD frames stand out. The tiny ovalized washers used on tube ends, the sword logo, and the WZRD logo on top tubes, fork legs, and handlebars are all laser cut and then brazed into place. Using stainless steel emblems instead of stickers is not a popular option among framebuilders as they have to be brazed on, and people that only TIG weld might not have a full brazing setup, plus they’re small and awkward to work with. Slapping a decal onto the frame would be much easier and save Emma lots of time, but it wouldn’t be a WZRD. “It’s a really annoying process, but I love it. I’m obsessed with it,” Emma said. If Emma’s plate doesn’t sound full, she has also taught a local high school student how to build frames. They made the first one together and are getting ready to build the second.

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Another topic that came up during our time together was framebuilders transitioning from full-custom frames to production bikes. Two recent examples include Sklar and Mone, who have transitioned from niche hand-built frames to Taiwan-made production bikes. Chromag, here in Canada, offers something similar but on a larger scale, with the choice between Taiwan-made and Canadian-made frames, but they use super talented legacy builders for the latter. It’s great to see frames that might have previously been out of reach for some people available at a more accessible price—especially when these frames (and their geometry) are based on years of custom framebuilding experience. If there’s anyone with an inside look at the pulse of the cycling industry, it’s custom framebuilders.

Emma explained that she understands the shift and used the BCXC as an example of a bike she’s seen evolve over the years to the point that the geometry is nearly dialed enough to offer a size run. Although she has no plans to sell production bikes, Emma said making a couple and putting them up on the website when custom orders are slow is always an option. In fact, she made a complete tracklocross bike at one point and put it up on the website to sell.

Three WZRDs

On my second visit to Emma’s shop, I got my hands on three of her personal bikes and took them out for some glamor shots. The first is a Super Commuter for daily errands. The second is WZRD’s first XCXC cross-country hardtail setup in bikepacking mode. And the third is the NAAR, an enduro shred-sled with angles that will make you believe in magic.

WZRD Super Commuter

Emma’s WZRD Super Commuter is the last bike built under Broad Street Cycles. At the time, she was commuting around Victoria on a cross-country mountain bike and was dreaming of more efficiency and fenders for soggy coastal winters. The idea was to integrate a rando-style front bag, fenders, and bolt-on lights into the design, and the rest of the bike followed. It has a long front end, a proper 58cm top tube, and a decent saddle-to-bar drop to make it feel fast. It was originally a 650b winter road bike, but after Emma blew up those wheels, she rebuilt the fork to run 700 x 35mm tires with fenders.

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The Super Commuter features several interesting little details that are easy to miss without a closer inspection. The rando bag, made by Rambler Bags in Pennsylvania, has a removable corrugated plastic frame, making it more economical to ship. It has built-in storage for Emma’s coffee and keys and is finished with a large shock cord W for WZRD on the front. Emma is particularly excited about the battery-powered Hope front light, which lasts for months before needing a charge and pumps out 2,300 lumens for early morning commutes and night rides. It uses a GoPro adapter to bolt on directly to the custom front rack, so it can’t be stolen, and the front bag is also hard-mounted for security. You wouldn’t notice it, but the rear Bontrager light is also attached to the frame using a little external braze-on, so it can’t go missing.

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Emma’s Super Commuter is the first and only frame she has built that utilizes a carbon integrated seat post (ISP), which was made by fabricating the whole frame and then cutting out the seat tube to insert the carbon tube. She’s not entirely sold on carbon ISPs having any real advantage over steel, and the fact that a carbon tube costs several hundred dollars doesn’t help. The Aldr Works framebag was initially made for a different bike, but it fits the Super Commuter and matched the aesthetic so well that Emma couldn’t pass it up.

WZRD XCXC (#11 or #12?)

Designed to be fast and light, Emma’s personal XCXC is the result of WZRD getting more serious and her only wanting to ride bikes she made. It took the place of a racy Santa Cruz Blur Emma was riding at the time, and cross-country mountain biking is her favorite flavor of mountain biking, so the XCXC is the amalgamation of a few of her choice production bikes. It features a cyclocross tubeset, so it’s super lightweight and flexible but also surprisingly comfortable. Emma has run a dropper post once or twice ever. It usually has a 100mm suspension fork when it’s not in bikepacking mode, and she made the bag strapped to the rack/fork holding her fly fishing rod—the current non-bike-related obsession in her life. Emma has gone through various fishing phases during her life, including winning a fishing derby in elementary school, but fly fishing is all she thinks about outside of bikes. Emma’s detail-oriented personality clearly translates over to fly fishing, as she now voraciously consumes information on casting techniques (for the fishing nerds, she’s a spey caster), fly patterns, and fish migration and eating habits. “Being out on the water is so relaxing,” explained Emma, “But it also has the same brain tickle I used to get from BMX from doing the same movement over and over until you master it.”

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The fork on Emma’s XCXC is a story in itself. A friend really wanted a WZRD fork, but Emma couldn’t afford a fork jig at the time. Apparently, this person was incredibly persistent and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Eventually, the friend ended up loaning Emma the money to buy a jig, but with one catch: they didn’t want the first fork. The XCXC is equipped with Emma’s first fork. She rode it for several months before making another for her friend. Over the next few months, she paid off the loan by giving a portion of each fork sale back to her friend. About a year ago, Emma added additional mounts to increase its utility.

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Fun fact: the rear light mounts to a little 27.2mm adapter that used to come with old Specialized Epic hardtails without bottle mounts. Emma thought they would come in handy one day and hoarded a bunch for future projects. I’d say that strategy paid off.

WZRD NAAR (Not An All-Rounder)

In 2022, Emma was one of four recipients of SRAM’s Philly Bike Expo Inclusivity Scholarship. Now in its fourth year, the scholarship aims to remove some barriers facing underrepresented groups in the cycling industry. Emma made the NAAR for the expo, which is spray painted and hand-painted by April with WZRD’s goop design. Despite its “dumb geo,” as Emma puts it, it can climb walls thanks to its long wheelbase. “It feels like shit on flat trails but is great on rock rolls and steep trails,” Emma explained, “It has a stupid low bottom bracket, 450mm chainstays, and 61° head tube angle. It was an experiment to see how far I could push the geo while still using a modest 140mm fork.”

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Parting Thoughts

WZRD’s success isn’t a story of privilege, timing, or knowing the right people. Instead, it’s a story fueled by Emma’s ability to remain true to her beliefs. Whether it’s painstakingly brazing tiny swords onto fork legs or convincing customers that long chainstays are here to stay, Emma has proven that the quickest route isn’t what makes a WZRD a WZRD. So many functional little details are worked into each frame Emma produces, from the notched tubes for cleaner cable routing to the unique aesthetic and April’s goop paint jobs—it really is the complete package.

Emma has successfully created a brand that directly reflects her personality. She’s warm, a little goofy, and obsessed with the details. Like other framebuilders, Emma got into this because of an unwavering passion for bikes and the people who ride them. She mentioned that her favorite part of the job is joining a customer for their first ride on a new bike, which speaks volumes about her love for her work.

To learn more about WZRD Bikes, head over to WZRD.Bike and make sure to give Emma a follow on Instagam for a first look at whatver she’s working on.

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Further Reading

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