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Hey gravel fans! 🚵♂️ Welcome to The Gravel Ride Podcast, where we delve into all things gravel. In this special episode, Neil Shirley joins me to discuss Enve's new MOG bike, a game-changer in the gravel scene. 🚴♀️🌄 Enve, based in Utah, has been producing premium carbon wheels for various bike disciplines for 16 years. Their 2023 release, the MOG bike, showcases the company's dedication to meeting evolving expectations within the gravel market. 🛠🔥 Key features of the MOG bike include tire clearance for 50mm, achieved through creative narrow chain stay design, and different fork rakes available for each of the five sizes (49, 52, 54, 56, and 58) to ensure optimal handling. The MOG bike caters to racers and weekend bike-packers alike, offering versatile performance. 🎯🏁 Find out more about the Enve MOG bike, from tire width to custom frame builders, in this exciting episode of The Gravel Ride Podcast. Don't miss out; tune in now! 🎧🌟 Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00]Craig Dalton: Neil, welcome back to the show. [00:00:02]Neil Shirley: Thanks Craig. It's good to be back. [00:00:06]Craig Dalton: I've been waiting a while to invite you back because you didn't have a gravel bike at Envy, and and now you do. So the wait is over. So welcome [00:00:15]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, well, good things come to those who wait as they say. So here we are. [00:00:23]Craig Dalton: Exactly as I mentioned to you offline, like I was preparing to heap you a bunch of crap for not having a gravel bike until this moment. And then as like a step back and I thought about my. Um, understanding of the envy brand and how deep you are in all the other sectors of the sport. And I see from your marketing materials, like you're sponsoring pro tour teams in the tour of France and the Jro. You guys are all over the world. And then I'm remembering back to my mountain bike days, we're having an envy wheel set was exactly what every rider wanted, so I need to step back and say I should have been more patient. Neil, you guys have a lot on your plate. But I'm glad the envy MOG is in the world at this point. [00:01:03]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Well, uh, I will, I will say, you know, I, I, I felt your pain, um, the, uh, having. Having the MOG for me was kind of a long time coming and, uh, something I, I was anxious for, for quite a while. And so, you know, but the really, the, the iterative process and it's something we've been working on for quite a while. Um, and that, that process to get to where we were and where we are today with this, with this bike, like it took a while to really work on some refining it and getting the exact product we wanted to come to market. [00:01:41]Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. And I know you guys are very thoughtful about the product development process. And just to set the stage a little bit, I'm gonna refer people earlier in my intro to some other episodes we did together where we talked about the custom road bike and, and earlier when you first got there at Envy. But just to set the stage, can you just talk about where Envy's located and what's the core competency of the [00:02:04]Neil Shirley: Yeah, so, um, we're, we're in Ogden, Utah. Um, we've been here, this is our 16th year in business. And we started, uh, initially with producing, you know, we were the first ones to do full carbon mountain bike wheels, um, and really just grew the premium, uh, carbon wheel business for, for road and then gravel, triathlon, you name it. Um, and then, Two and a half years, two years. Just over two years ago, we introduced the custom road, so our first envy road bike, um, and that, that that bike is made, uh, completely here in Ogden as well. [00:02:46]Craig Dalton: And am I correct in recalling that prior to that you had been working on supplying some tubes or some technology to some other frame builders along the way to kind of earn some of your chops in the in the frame world? [00:02:56]Neil Shirley: Uh, from the very early years we were, uh, we were rolling carbon tubes and selling them to, um, cal quite a few of the custom builders. Um, then we also worked on projects. Uh, we did, uh, You know, I don't know if you recall the Cervelo P five x, uh, triathlon, um, triathlon bike. We did, uh, we, we did the fork, uh, and front end, uh, design for Cervelo. Um, we did, uh, a carbon rear end for Santa Cruz on one of their mountain bikes. So kind of the frame world. Um, We're we're not necess even though we hadn't produced a bike with the NV aim on it until two years ago. Like we were, we were not new in, in, in kind of the, the frame business. [00:03:42]Craig Dalton: Yeah. And then on the buildup of the product, uh, products that envy produces, starting from the wheel set, then you then obviously built a name for yourself in carbon forks, later stems, handle bars, seat posts, kind of everything around the cockpit. [00:04:00]Neil Shirley: exactly. The, the component world. And I, I mean, we learned, we learned so much with, with wheels, um, especially when it came to the roadside with, you know, just aerodynamics. How, how, um, You know, how to make the fastest wheels in the world and, you know, uh, support world tour, uh, race teams. And so we took a lot of those learnings and that's, that's what we really started applying to our frames. How, uh, aerodynamically, how, how a frame and the wheels can work together. [00:04:32]Craig Dalton: And if you could talk a little bit about carbon and carbon layups. I think one of the things I found interesting in going to your facility there was the multitude of ways in which you can kind of produce the base material and then think about how it goes into any one of these products from a wheel [00:04:48]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Um, there's, you know, there's always, in the industry, there's, there's a lot of marketing spin on a particular type of material or the modus of, of that material. And the reality is, um, pretty much everyone in the bike industry has access to the same, to the same materials. Um, You know, a, a certain bike brand doesn't have access to anything that, that we don't have and vice versa. So it's really not, it, it's not about the, the material itself that differentiates product. It's, it's what you put into the mold and basically the recipe and how, how that layup is designed. And that's really where it's where the engineering team comes in and you know, we have. 12, you know, a dozen engineers here, um, full-time at Envy. Um, and that's really what most of 'em are, are looking at is, is what the, what the laminate is. And, and that's where, you know, Because we're, because we're making those rims right here in Ogden, um, we can really manipulate and change the ride quality through, through these, the development process. And again, it's a very iter iterative process where we can change, change the, the layup just slightly, um, go, you know, do a 45 degree angle, uh, for, for some of the material and. Basically bake that rim and be riding it a couple days later and take that feedback and make another iteration if necessary. So, um, that happens. That happens a lot in the process, and I think that's really one of the things that has allowed us to get to where we are, you know, in the premium wheel category. [00:06:33]Craig Dalton: So in 2021, as you mentioned, you guys introduced the custom road. Set up and that provided people the opportunity to order a, a custom bicycle for you. Kinda interesting, I'm curious to get the perspective is why go custom right away versus a a, a standard product line? [00:06:49]Neil Shirley: Uh, I think it's because we. We could, um, it simply, it's because within the building we had everything we needed to be able to do that. Um, we felt that, we felt that there was a hole in the market in having a, you know, there's, there's a lot of amazing custom builders out there. Um, and there are a lot of really high tech, uh, integrated aero carbon frames out there, but there were not. There wasn't really anyone combining those two. So we came up with, with a process where we could do custom geometry with, um, kind of a modern carbon road frame with aero shaping integration. Um, so we felt that the custom road, you know, kind of filled that void that was, that was out there on the market and, and really the process of how we build that bike, it makes no difference if you know it. Every, basically all the tubes are cut, cut to length, so there, there really is nothing stock where each, each frame is so, um, uniquely made that to be able to offer custom geometry didn't, didn't make it any more challenging for us. [00:08:07]Craig Dalton: Yeah, it in some ways it's a brilliant marketing strategy just to kind of set the, the, um, riders, just look at those bikes out on the, on the, on the, on the roads with their custom paint jobs, the, the custom geometry with a great deal of lust, and then to later introduce the melee, which was a, a sta a standard frame sized road bike. I think that was 2022. It just sort of made it more accessible. For riders who might have been lusting after the custom road [00:08:37]Neil Shirley: Yeah, exactly. We, we really took, um, the learnings from the custom road, applied that, uh, to the melee. And when you look at the two side by side, I mean, you, you can obviously see how much, uh, d design cues they, they share. Um, but the, the melee, the stock geometry bike is really with the custom road. We, on a good week, we produce four. Four of those, um, you know, just the, the custom nature, the, the paint job, everything takes a long time. Um, so, uh, that doesn't, the custom road doesn't really allow us to scale and be the bike brand that, that we. We envision being, and we, you know, our, our, our goal of, of being. Um, and it, it was really the stock geometry bikes that, you know, that allows us to do that. They're, they're not made here in-house. Um, they're, you know, made by, uh, one of our overseas vendors. But we are the ones that, you know, controlled that process from, from design to layup through, you know, all the way throughout. [00:09:44]Craig Dalton: Yeah, so even with that, that partnership, you guys are able to take your engineering, your, your desires as to how the layups are put into the mold, et cetera, and have them executed by a trusted [00:09:55]Neil Shirley: Exactly. Yeah. And now, you know, the, the melee, um, and now the mog, uh, It allows us to, you know, have a, have a bike in our retail partners across, you know, not just across the country, but across the globe. Um, so you can go in, you know, to your local envy dealer and, you know, have a bike on the, you know, rated a ride right off the floor. [00:10:19]Craig Dalton: And with, with the melee, was it introduced as a complete bike or was it sold as a, as a chassis? [00:10:24]Neil Shirley: it, it was a, it was a chassis only. Um, and actually just this week, um, we're now introducing complete builds. Obviously for the end consumer that's dealing with their, their local retailer. You know, that for the most part they're, they're buying a. They're working with their dealer to buy a complete bike. We're now offering, uh, a few different build options for the dealers. So get, it just allows us to be a little more competitive with our pricing. [00:10:53]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Got you. So for just a little clarity for the uninitiated, a chassis would include the frame fork, stem bar seat post. Am I getting 'em? All right. Yeah. Yeah. And then as you mentioned, like chances are your local shop is gonna be filling in the details and getting you your dream bike, but as you mentioned, you've now added on the ability for dealers to purchase a, a completely built up bike to put on the showroom floor rather than them taking that step of getting the components, et cetera. [00:11:25]Neil Shirley: Yep. So, so yeah, we're just kind of starting to slowly chip away and grow growing into a real bike brand. [00:11:34]Craig Dalton: So the MOG has been on your mind for a while, but it took till 2023 for that to come out. You know, why? Why wait, why, why sequence it in this way? And what were some of the advantages of [00:11:45]Neil Shirley: Um, I think with gravel or I know with gravel, it's, it's progressing and changing so quickly. Um, not just how, not just how people are riding the bikes, but I think what the expectations are in, in the bike that you get, um, and. It's capabilities, it's versatility. Um, so we, we really did our homework on the mog and you know, we had a few, you know, there were a couple of us in the building that had like some very firm, uh, things that we wa features of the bike. And so we kind of laid those out and took it over to the engineering team and said, okay. You guys are the smart ones. You figure out how to, how to do this. But these, these are the key elements we want on the bike. And they were able to, to achieve that. Um, I get, you know, tire clearance, tire clearance for 50 millimeters. It was, was a, was a big one. We don't, you know, the trend is bigger, bigger, bigger. I don't see that slowing down anytime soon. I think you will get to a point where, You know, you might as well be on a mountain bike, but, um, I felt like 50. Being able to run a 50 millimeter tire right now is, is pretty sweet. Most of the time you don't ever need that, but it's nice to know that you can. So, [00:13:08]Craig Dalton: Absolutely. I'm actually curious to get a little bit of your opinion on this, cause I know your, your experience in Gravel goes way back and riding Franken bikes at Crusher and the Tusher and just riding what you got. And I know you're a very capable rider and you probably have ridden your. Custom road on gravel roads at this point without much issue, kinda where do you stand personally on that? Like as someone who like made do, let's call it that, like it was, we made do with the tire clearance we had. Now that you have that massive clearance, where do you find yourself most excited to ride from a tire width [00:13:42]Neil Shirley: I, I'm typically, you know, between a 42 and a 44 for most of the riding I'm doing, um, here in, you know, here in, in Northern Utah. And, you know, you've ridden the groo course, our, our gravel event that we put on here. And so, you know how rocky and kind of gnarly, even just like the, the forestry roads are, you know, A mountain bike is probably better suited to it. Um, so for some of that stuff, you know, 44 is, is really nice. Um, you know, I could, I have ridden with a 50, but you know, I still, I feel like kind of that sweet spot of performance and capability is kind of in that 42 to 44 range. [00:14:27]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, I know, and I, I think you said you guys have like a lunch road ride over at Envy, and I'm sure it gets quite spirited and you've got a background riding on the road. So I, I was just curious to get your perspective on that, whether, you know, when you have the fifties on there, it, it feels as spunky as you want it to feel. [00:14:45]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Um, I think for Forio this year, I think I'm gonna run, I'll plan to run 48, um, because. When you're in a group and they're, uh, they're fast guys that you, you want to try and keep up with through, through technical sections, you take, you know, you take bigger risks and, uh, you know, with gravel bikes for so many years, we, we've been underbid most of the time when we're, when we're descen…
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