#20 Joe McEwan: Starling Cycles. 10 years of building steel frames. A passion and a mission.

While the podcast will give you an insight to Starling Cycles the company itself is about to change – but not like you might think it will. There won’t be carbon frames anytime soon. Joe and his team will still provide you with the frames made out of Reynolds 853 the steel lover is a fan of. But they will get help. Shortening lead times to serve customers quicker, providing demo rides and teaming up with bikeshops to have the bikes on the floor will mark a huge step forward for the brand. While starting literally in the shed behind the house Joe now teamed up with Fort Frames in the Czech Republic to be able to fulfill demand. A couple of years back Starling started to source the rear triangles of their core models out of ORA in Taiwan. 

Will this change the core values of Starling Cycles? 

Joe assured us in the podcast that they will still do plenty of frames at their Bristol operation. Including pushing forward the refining of their brazed steel frames, prototyping and the models Beady Little Eye, Swoop, and Sturn will remain UK made.

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If you want more behind-the-scenes insights into the MTB industry, make sure to hit that subscribe button. You can find us also on Spotify or Apple as well as all other major podcast plattforms.

I can also highly recommend two other episodes if you speak German: one with Sacki from BikeYoke, who talks about manufacturing in Taiwan, and another with Christian Lengwenath from Gravity Components, who breaks down the fundamentals of metal 3D printing and what the future of this technology looks like for the bike industry. English options would be Matt Wragg from Formula or Dave Weagle with his views on ride dynamics.

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Transcript

Jens Staudt (00:04.317)
Would you consider buying a steel mountain bike frame? Or did carbon become the go-to material for all bikes out there? Joe McEwan is an enthusiast. A person with strong beliefs, strong opinions, and a mission. He owns Starling Cycles and his brand will enter its 10th anniversary next year. 10 years of simplicity and elegance in steel single-pivot frames. 
Join me on the Testpilot podcast in a passionate discussion about bike technology, staying true to your beliefs, the fun we all have on bikes, expanding business, and, of course, the unique ride feel of a steel mountain bike.


Jens Staudt (01:09.984)
I did some stalking on your YouTube. So it seems like pretty straightforward, straight shooter. So there's no big deal, I guess.

Joe Mc (01:40.631)
one.

Joe Mc (01:57.654)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Mc (02:04.982)
I've got nothing. Well, I think part of the brand is no bullshit, so there's nothing. I've got nothing to hide really. Well, I hope so anyway.

Jens Staudt (02:13.41)
Yeah. So, mean, I mean, Joe, you're, you're, you're in the best next year already 10 years. Is that correct?

Joe Mc (02:20.65)
It'll be 10 years in, I think, February. So the company started 10 years ago in February. But initially, I was still working. So I was still doing my aerospace job for maybe a year before I went full time.

Jens Staudt (02:36.136)
So, is it pretty much like this story of the shed company starting welding frames back there?

Joe Mc (02:43.99)
It was a hobby, really, I've told this story lots, but I think as an engineer, you make things. If you're interested in something, you want to make it, and I've always done that.

I've made skateboards, I've made golf clubs, I've made radio controlled cars, and I've always modified them and made them how I wanted. And then when I got into biking, I did that, I used to modify bikes and change them to make them. So I think I moved into a new house.

which had a big shed, so it was more like, not really a shed, it was an office actually for the people who lived there before. And I thought I could make bikes in here, so I went on a frame building course, and then from the frame building course, I made a bike for my daughter first, and then I made a sort of, full suspension bike with a Cannondale swing arm, and then it just became my hobby, making bikes. And then the thing...

that sort kickstarted selling them was I thought it was interesting so I took a frame to say Dirt Magazine, you probably know Jonesy and so they're close to here so I'd sort of been chatting to him about some other things in the past and I decided I'd take and show him my...

my bike I'd made in a shed and he was very excited by it and actually took it and rode it and loved it. And he put something on his social media saying this bike made by some bloke in a shed in Bristol is faster than all these very expensive carbon bikes he had. And that basically kickstarted orders. So overnight I had people wanting to buy the frames. So it then became a sort of balancing act of my day job doing aerospace stuff and then the evenings making bikes

Joe Mc (04:27.32)
to sell and then eventually it just got to the point where there was enough demand for the bikes and the aerospace job, the project I was on was coming to an end and it just seemed like a good time to leave and it was pretty boring the stuff I was doing in aerospace so I just made the jump at that point.

Jens Staudt (04:48.338)
The interesting part is... The office dogs. No big deal. The interesting part is like now you have the anniversary of 10 years upcoming, you stick with steel while some use it just for prototyping or just as a rough idea and then just slowly maybe going into alloy and you could call it being more clean.

look-wise, like all streamlined, all industrial design, and you make the proactive decision just to keep it real. Keep it still.

Joe Mc (05:25.972)
Yeah, well still, you must have ridden steel bikes, you've ridden the Starling, it's got a really nice feel to it. It feels solid, feels, it's got a life to it. And I've ridden aluminium bikes, and I...

Before I was making bikes, I've never actually owned a carbon bike to be honest. But I had aluminium downhill bikes and they were okay. But I always ended up buying like weird niche steel downhill bikes because they just had a lovely feel to them. They feel solid and damped and I don't know what it is about them. And I think yeah, that's just then continued and the, sorry, let me just shut the door here.

Joe Mc (06:11.008)
Sorry, workshop's gonna get noisy now. The keeping the aesthetics is almost driven by the material. To start doing complex shapes in steel is very expensive. You just can't do it. Whereas aluminium can hydroform, can bend the tubes, you can do complex machining. You can't really do that with steel. But I quite like those limitations in manufacturing and therefore you have to think about the design. You have to think about it harder.

And there's so many bikes these days designed by CADs. And manufacturing's getting so good, so they can just design it in CADs and then just build it. And to me, that's a bit shit. It's almost cheating. You haven't had to put the design effort in to work with your limitations and come up with the best solution with your limitations. Different ways of doing it. I personally, I suppose I'm quite old school and I'm getting old now. I don't know.

Jens Staudt (07:08.954)
It also seems like you're somewhat of an ambassador for steel because I saw you, I mean, if people not know it already, they should follow your YouTube because you also give some more insights into materials and you're pretty frank about it. Like you organize yourself a carbon frame and compared it to the flex of your steel frame and you measure this and you all put it out there. so I don't...

Joe Mc (07:36.225)
think there's a lot of misconceptions. There's a lot of bullshit in biking. There's a lot of, stiffer is better, and lighter is better, and if we, like, there's ridiculous things now about handlebar position, and there's so much top discussion. In reality, it doesn't matter. Moving your bars a fraction of a mil is not gonna change how you bike right. You get used to it within seconds. So there's just this continued,

Jens Staudt (07:37.922)
Sorry, I don't know if your quote.

Yeah, exactly.

Joe Mc (08:06.726)
over analysis of stuff almost that I almost think doesn't need to be there. It's a bike. Just ride it.

Jens Staudt (08:13.902)
It's interesting also if you're into biking maybe a couple of decades, you experienced 26 inch wheels and maybe you have a background in BMX. So as you say, you could still make it work. And it's not necessarily that you can totally say these are the golden numbers, right? Or these are the golden numbers in geometry or these are the golden numbers in regards of flex and or suspension travel. It's all...

Joe Mc (08:21.45)
Yes.

Jens Staudt (08:42.67)
It's a complete package, right?

Joe Mc (08:45.066)
Yes, yeah. I think you're an experienced bike tester, aren't you? And you probably find within three runs, you're comfortable on a bike. And you can probably ride it as fast as any other bike. Some might have different things you have to get used to a little bit, but as long as the brakes work and the suspension's set up okay, and the tyres are right, you can ride it very quickly. I think we're...

We're trying to continually searching for these tiny gains.

don't even matter to the pros. The most important thing to the pros is their mental state more than what the bike is just an extension of their mental state. So I may be getting cynical the more time I spend in biking. I just look and I think if the bike is a bike, they all ride well. We've got geometry sorted, wheel size makes a bit of difference, but they all ride well.

as long as you set them up well. So why not focus on things that last a long time? Why not focus on buying something that makes you feel nice because it's been crafted? Why not focus on other things rather than continually chasing technology that doesn't really matter?

Jens Staudt (09:57.35)
As a matter of fact, I think it's also important that like sometimes you can judge a bike not only by its original spec, but also keep, you need to consider your body weight, your riding style. So for instance, I'm a hundred kilos. I might need a little bit of a better casing in a tire because I need to run higher pressure. Otherwise I just wreck the tire.

Joe Mc (10:11.478)
Yep.

Joe Mc (10:18.89)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jens Staudt (10:23.374)
It's not necessarily that an XO plus or XO double down is a bad tire. It's just, it doesn't suit my riding. So sometimes I think out there, there's blaming going on on manufacturers because they think it's hard. This is the golden standard again, right? You need to have this tire. You need to have the super grippy rubber. You have to have that casing or this amount of travel. This is like considered the best and not understanding the

Joe Mc (10:31.648)
Yeah.

Jens Staudt (10:51.702)
very specific character of the bike. And you also like have a couple of bikes in your lineup and you offer versions of it and you can make them yours truly, like having a different shock in there, maybe having a different swing arm and it's pretty transparent as well.

Joe Mc (11:13.61)
Yeah, yeah, I think one key thing you have to get over is the weight thing. Our bikes aren't heavy. Our bikes aren't heavy steel bikes. They're not as light as a race carbon bike, but they're there or thereabouts.

People obsess about weight and because they obsess about weight they think, if I'm riding cross country I need a really light cross country bike. If I'm riding downhill I can get away with a heavy downhill bike.

In the end, how the bike pedals and covers ground is driven more. You talked about it, tyres, they're the most important thing. Lightweight wheels and tyres, your bike will zoom along. Heavy wheels and tyres and it'll be really stable on the downhills. But you, as heavier person, you need the heavy tyres because you're never going to be a cross-country racer, not because of your weight, you could be very fit and fast, but because you would wreck the tyres.

Jens Staudt (12:00.92)
No, no.

Joe Mc (12:08.214)
But once you've got over that fact, you can build...

a frame of a certain weight into a 120mm bike or 160mm bike, as long as it's strong enough for the 160 bit. So therefore, our bikes, just by changing the wheels and suspension, the frame can be built either as a short travel trail bike, fast, you put fast wheels and tyres on it and it zooms along, or you put big heavy enduro or downhill wheels and tyres on it and 170mm travel and then it's an enduro bike. And the same frame can achieve that.

by putting different shocks on and different forks on and wheels. But yeah, the same frame can achieve all those things. And it just makes sense to me to do that. Why wouldn't you do that?

Jens Staudt (12:51.406)
Yeah, I like the fact that you somewhat offer, you could name it or say it's a platform rather than a bike. So people out there maybe think, oh, I want to have a 130 bike. I want to have a 160, 170, whatever. And then they forced to buy a full new frame while your idea of how to ride a bike might change during the years or you're getting bored by the amount of travel you have and you want to spice things up a little bit.

Joe Mc (12:57.802)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Mc (13:10.762)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (13:18.08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jens Staudt (13:21.344)
And so you have the term called mini and mega. And you have, for instance, the murmur or the twist, and then you can just make it a mini or a mega, right? By changing the swing arm or the shock.

Joe Mc (13:24.736)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe Mc (13:31.223)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, you don't even need to, you just change the shock. So you only need to change the swing arm if you're changing the rear wheel size. And that really, the wheel size I think matters less than the chainstay length. So the chainstay length varies for the bigger wheels. And that affects how the bike moves. yeah, you can change, you can run a 210 shock for...

Jens Staudt (13:41.613)
Yes.

Joe Mc (13:56.791)
well, 210 by 50 for 120, 210 by 55 for 135, and then a 230 by 60 for 150, or 230 by 65 for 165, so all on the same frame.

Jens Staudt (14:08.47)
So this pays into my, I mean, you're aiming towards rather the nerds out there, the enthusiasts. A new guy might not find Starling to be the first bike he buys, right? It's just like maybe his third bike.

Joe Mc (14:23.702)
I'd it to be. It'd good to discuss this to understand why you say that. Because to me, I think other than we are relatively expensive. We can't get over the fact we're sort of hand building them in small value.

volume, so they're expensive, but they're good value. So, because they last, because we look after our customers, because it can be built into different bikes and stuff. why would, I see most beginners ride around on Santa Cruises now, because they're discounted. So why, know, I've all, jokingly, I'm sorry to Santa Cruz, but I've started calling Santa Cruz's beginner's bikes, because.

Jens Staudt (14:58.104)
Yes.

Joe Mc (15:06.77)
everyone I see who's just starting to ride thinks, I need a Santa Cruz. So any bike can be a beginner's bike.

Jens Staudt (15:12.078)
Maybe the Santa Cruz is easier to understand because it looks more common. There's no picking on Santa Cruz, but let's say the status quo is like thick tubes, then the stiffness thing is maybe something, and steel is not as common look-wise.

Joe Mc (15:26.26)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (15:33.853)
So I think that's what it is. It's nothing to do with the capability of the bike. I'd argue my bikes are probably the easiest to ride because they're linear, leverage ratio, they don't do anything silly, they've got really neutral anti-rise and anti-squat behaviour. They're really easy to ride. So I'd argue my bikes are the best bikes for beginners, but they are different to the status quo. So you...

It's an interesting point, isn't it? You saying, ours are for nerds because they're different, but really, that's not true. That's a cultural thing almost, isn't it?

Jens Staudt (16:09.638)
You are really open, no BS company, as you put it many times on your Instagram or your YouTube and you show that. And you said there might be a switch now for your company. Be frank here, you've been affected hard by Brexit. Could you say that?

Joe Mc (16:28.298)
Yeah, yes we were, yeah we were, struggled, we sold more into Europe, but the numbers into Europe haven't stopped that much because we're selling to...

enthusiasts and people, they were almost early adopters, people have been willing to take the risk but I think it has impacted our growth, yeah. So we're working hard to solve that at the moment. see it, Brexit was a cock up, I agree, yes. But it's probably affected us less than, the thing that's affected us most at the moment is Trump. We actually sell 50, 60 % to America and he's really, really cocked it up.

Jens Staudt (16:57.518)
Okay, so, but.

Jens Staudt (17:07.966)
Wow.

Okay, so, if I got that right, you are moving now some of your production as well to Europe. Is that correct?

Joe Mc (17:20.182)
Yeah, yeah, so we've actually got the first batch of frames from Ford, who's a manufacturer in the Czech Republic.

They make for lots of German brands, lots of UK brands, steel bikes, so they're very good steel manufacturers. So they are building our core bikes from now on, so the Murmur and Twist front triangles. The swing arms will still come from Taiwan for the time being, just because we've got that supply chain, what they're building is good. But getting them made in the Czech Republic, I think it's hard to get things made in Germany.

You've got a big manufacturing industry. Your country has valued manufacturing. In the UK, we hold no value to manufacturing at all. I'll get into politics, but historically...

Jens Staudt (18:15.096)
Hahaha

Joe Mc (18:16.276)
Historically, certain people have got rid of manufacturing in the UK. for me to run a small manufacturing company is really hard. And it's not just the cost of the staff. There's no supply chain. So even now we get our machine parts made in the Far East. The tubing, yes, comes from Reynolds in the UK, but the head tubes come from Taiwan. So it's very difficult for us to scale up our manufacturing in the UK.

Our is subcontract the things we sell most of the core bikes to the Czech Republic but then we'll continue our manufacturing capacity in Bristol doing the niche bikes, the exciting bikes, like the BD Little I single speed bike and the single speed downhill bike and we've got lots of other ideas but we'll do those exciting things in the Bristol but the ones we sell more of and we need to scale will come from Czech Republic.

Jens Staudt (19:12.888)
Do you find new, if you wanna scale your business with Philip Racing or bicycle building in a rather old school way, do you find people wanna take up that job? Is that an easy task or is this just something they rather have a desktop job?

Joe Mc (19:32.865)
Yeah, so I've got Ily who was a, Ily's our only frame builder at the moment.

He was a fabricator, of doing just industrial steel stuff for 10, 15 years, and he loves bikes, so we've got him in. And he went from doing totally TIG welding to picking up brazing, because he's very good in the space of like a week, his brazing was amazing. And now he's probably one of the best brazers in the world, because he's just put so much effort and thought into what he's doing. But it's not such an industrial process, it's slower than TIG welding.

We've tried to get some kids, like work experience kids in.

We've got one at the moment, but I don't think there's a future for him. So he's probably gonna go into another industry. Other kids, we've had trouble getting them to even come to work. So the kids these days aren't interested. I get emails from people who've been a lawyer and have earned loads of money, they went, I'd love to come and work and braze bikes, but I don't think they understand it's manufacturing. They've got this idyllic kind of standing there in lovely light, gently brazing, whereas in reality, I'd be going, come on, get on with it, go quicker.

Yes, it's difficult to find people to do it. Especially here in the UK, there's no manufacturing culture even. People don't think of it as a job option.

Jens Staudt (20:58.39)
Is 3D printing and you can 3D print steel an option at some point?

Joe Mc (21:04.618)
Not, I'm disappearing. 3D printing is very good for small numbers of prototype parts.

is very good for doing complex parts. So they use it in aerospace and they use it in aerospace engines where you can bring together three or four machined or fabricated parts into one clever part that saves a bit of weight. But these things cost 20,000 pounds, but you're saving parts so that that value makes sense. It doesn't make sense on bikes.

They're ridiculously expensive, aren't they? why, so I don't know, I won't quite any names. So imagine a head tube, a 3D-printed head tube with some lugs for tubes.

A 3D printed one might be three, four hundred pounds to manufacture that part 3D printed. Spend a bit of money on tooling and get it cast and then you end up with exactly the same part for ten pounds, twenty pounds. 3D printing is only selling because it's considered a high tech, a high tech, but it's considered a clever technology. So people want to buy that technology. But you could create exactly the same bike out of cast with bonded in tubes for a fraction of the cost and it would be identical.

So it's it's again this technology for technology sake it doesn't create anything clever you can with a little bit of design thought you can have exactly the same behavior out of something cast or machined or forged or other ways cheap ways of doing it. So it's useful for prototyping but and if people want to spend 20,000 pounds on a frame

Jens Staudt (22:54.286)
that can go for it.

Joe Mc (22:55.6)
Yeah, I can do it,

Jens Staudt (22:57.752)
I'm thinking about like 3D printing and maybe a jigs and all this kind of stuff. With your manufacturing now be taking place in different locations. Will you offer for the total enthusiast also custom geometries or custom options?

Joe Mc (23:13.718)
We will still do that in-house in Bristol, so that's something.

But in reality, we sell so few custom frames. I think we've sold like four in the past year. We haven't really been pushing it because we've been concentrating on the core ones. I'm going to sound cynical again. I've got to stop sounding cynical. what you are selling with a custom frame isn't any performance gain. is you're selling love to the person who's buying the frame. They are buying something that's been made for them. And in reality, unless they're a really weird shape, which nobody

Nobody's a weird shape. Everybody thinks they're a weird shape, but nobody in reality is a weird shape. So, you're selling a bit of love. Very few people. I think more in roads, but mountain bikers aren't that fussed by custom geometry. We sell so few, but we can do it if need to be, if you want some love.

Jens Staudt (24:07.5)
But you also spend a lot of love on new projects. So for instance this year you showed the Stern version 3. So I guess you're not selling, this is not your best selling bike rather than the...

Joe Mc (24:11.381)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (24:16.181)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (24:21.302)
No, it's almost the marketing tool, the Stern. It's a great bike, will sell. It'll be a great bike for people who are park riders, because it's single speed. It's lovely to ride. It's sort of...

Whenever I used to ride downhill, I always rode single speed because it's just really engaging and I'm not the best rider in the world, but I felt it actually made me go quicker because I was just concentrating on flow rather than, you're always in the wrong gear on a downhill bike, I always found. So I think we'll sell a few.

But it's a really interesting bike. It looks beautiful. I think it's the most kind of balanced bike we've ever done. Just the lines of it look beautiful. Even though it's got a relatively complex jack drive system, it looks really simple and it looks really balanced. So I think we'll sell based on aesthetics because it's a lovely looking thing and it rides really well. But we don't expect to sell more than 10, 20 of them.

Jens Staudt (24:58.072)
Absolutely.

Jens Staudt (25:21.334)
As you said, it's really lovely looking, the third version. And then will stuff like what you learn on these kind of bikes trickle down to the Mürmer for instance?

Joe Mc (25:33.847)
So the Jack Drive is potentially an option for a high pivot enduro bike. We could use the same platform and get a high pivot enduro bike out of that stand. So we're looking at that, that's sort one of our projects going on. It helps, we're sort of looking at a gearbox bike.

So some of the learnings from the Sturm will feed into the gearbox bike, but I'm a little bit cynical about those two things that What we're seeing is that the longer travel Sector is basically ebikes now. very few people are buying long travel enduro bikes People are buying ebikes instead We've seen much more sales in the the trail category the people who still want to pedal there's still people who still want to pedal out there

always will be, but they're probably going to want something, a trail bike. A capable trail bike is what you want. The park bike is perhaps an exception, that if you live somewhere with a chairlift, you don't want an e-bike, but I think we'll probably focus more on the trail bikes going forward.

Jens Staudt (26:44.871)
What's your take on a steel e-bike then?

Joe Mc (26:48.118)
We've made a couple of prototypes. It's very difficult to do. Inherently, e-bikes are more complex, aren't they? You've got to accommodate a battery, you've got to accommodate a motor. It's quite tricky thing to do. And I think you probably, did you see the shovel bike?

Jens Staudt (27:13.154)
Thank you.

Joe Mc (27:14.302)
Okay, that's, I'm the engineer for that project as well, so I've kind of got a side project doing an e-bike. So that's not steel, but it's aluminium. I think we've come up with an interesting, I'll do another podcast on that when we release a few details if you want. So that's not Starling, it's a different company to Starling. So I personally think,

Starling probably won't do, our current thinking is we won't do an e-bike because it doesn't really suit the brand. I don't know, it's a difficult question isn't it? It's a very difficult question.

Joe Mc (28:00.14)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (28:11.286)
Yeah!

Jens Staudt (28:20.736)
Starling then also be somewhat of a traditional brand, like traditional in the way you manufacturing the bike or having a more, how you say that, like a more old school connection to the trail. Like also not going with e-bikes, having a focus on ride feel and the looks remember or remember the old days or feeding some nostalgia.

Joe Mc (28:50.038)
I think I've sounded really bad, I'm getting cynical, I'm gonna be really cynical. I've sort of lent into a little, talked about it a little bit. I'm really worried that we're killing mountain biking with technology. I'm really worried that who's the standard mountain biker now? It's me and you, isn't it? It's old men, not that you're old, but you're not young anymore. Most mountain bikers are sort of in their 40s.

Jens Staudt (29:13.528)
Hahaha.

Joe Mc (29:19.378)
We're getting to the point where bikes are becoming so expensive that it's only people with disposable income, only wealthy people can buy them. If you're looking at mountain biking from outside, you just see a load of old men riding around. It's rubbish, it's really boring. It's gonna kill the sport. We're gonna kill the sport by turning it into golf. And I...

All I think is why do I ride a bike? I ride a bike because it's fun and I'm an engineer so I love the technology and I think we've all got an engineering slant to us. So we do love the technology but.

In reality, and the more time I've spent building bikes, it makes no difference. The thing that makes a bike ride well is the rider. If you've ridden three times a week for a couple of months, you'll ride really well. If you've only ridden once a month, you'll ride crap. If you're not fit, you'll ride crap. If you haven't slept very well, that has way more impact than anything to do with a bike. So why don't we just design the bikes to be...

beautiful, functional, just everything they need, but nothing they don't. You don't need all these linkages, you don't need all this nonsense. So the more time I've spent designing bikes, I'm just thinking, what are my values? My values are, I want to pick up this thing and love how it looks. I want to feel attached to it. I want to know that when I get on it, it's going to be a lovely, exciting experience to ride it.

So personally, I've recently been riding a fully rigid bike quite a lot. I'm really enjoying that. you know, we're doing it for fun, aren't we? But there's a really big...

Jens Staudt (30:55.608)
Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Mc (30:59.434)
problem in society that we believe we can pay for performance. We believe, we've been told, if I spend $10,000 on a bike, it will make me better. The proper answer is spend 3,000, 3,000 pounds and put a load of effort into yourself. Go and get fit, have some lessons. But we are in a culture of buying performance. And it's wrong, it's really wrong. It's gonna fuck the world up.

Jens Staudt (31:04.59)
That's true.

Jens Staudt (31:24.206)
It's interesting because you say your bikes are built to last and it's actually hurting your business. I mean, you rather should pay them.

Joe Mc (31:31.776)
Must be, yeah. Must be, yeah. Must be, yeah.

Jens Staudt (31:35.405)
Yeah, you could like sell more bikes if they're like only last a couple of years and then people need to buy a new one, but you don't want to like get the bikes to break and piss people off because they, man, this bike sucks because I broke it and need to move to another brand. So, but as you say, it's a race towards technology and it's not about a new color or adding another pivot maybe sometimes.

Joe Mc (31:41.174)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (32:02.774)
Yeah, we just need to think why are we riding bikes? So few people race in reality and even when you do race, it's not the bike that makes you fast. The people who win races, it's all in their head. You see them and they're generally dicks at races, aren't they? Even one of our team riders, we've got Joe Vandale, young lad, loviest lad. And he was moaning about how miserable everybody was at the races. And they go, but Joe, I bet you're a dick at the races. And he goes, yeah, I am, because I'm going to win.

The people who win, it's a mental state. It's not the bike, it's in their head. you don't need to buy performance, you need to sort your head out.

Jens Staudt (32:42.19)
Absolutely, yeah. It's easier to blame the parts and the bike for not being able to conquer any trail or conquer a feature and riding around it. I don't feel it. I need to buy a maybe 15 grand superbike. Won't make me do a 30 foot jump.

Joe Mc (32:46.229)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (33:00.502)
So what we find with our customers is you say they don't buy a game, but we've reduced the amount of technology, a single pivot, it's steel, it's reduced to its minimum. Once they've bought a Starling bike, they never feel the need to change to more technology. They've realised that the amount of technology they've got on a Starling is all you need. They don't feel they need the next latest and greatest.

So we do have lots of recurring customers actually and lots of people have bought like two or three frames. So we do get people who keep buying, but yeah, they don't feel the need to change. If we were ever to bring out a new frame, we would always make sure things like the swing arms and the front triangles are interchangeable and backwards compatible. So we can put an old swing arm on a new frame so you can, you never kind of made obsolete.

Jens Staudt (33:54.511)
So I mean, your geometry, everything seems pretty dialed already. There are no major changes and it's overall in the industry as well. So we sat on somewhat of a head angle. Maybe you could say this as well 10 years ago and then things changed again. But right now, every bike is better than pretty much every rider riding it, I would say. It's always the weakest part of the chain is always the rider who could be better. So.

Joe Mc (34:14.848)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Joe Mc (34:20.554)
Yes, yeah, totally, yeah.

Jens Staudt (34:23.138)
So what is the future going to bring for Starling now? Like, do you think there's like some crazy out of left field innovation coming up?

Joe Mc (34:35.158)
I really don't know. really don't know. The industry is really hard at the moment. Biking is really struggling. The discounting by everybody is making sales really hard. So what the future of Starling is, I don't know. I suppose my, me saying I'm frustrated with buying technology, I suppose the logical conclusion is try and come up with a cheaper bike. But other people will always do that better because they're...

bigger, you know, how cheapness comes. So, I don't know, I think just continue making bikes that last. I think that's the only thing we can do really. I don't see there's any need to radically change our designs. We've got a few things.

Jens Staudt (35:05.538)
Yeah, sure.

Joe Mc (35:23.7)
The biggest issue we have really is piggyback to water bottle clearance. kind of that, you know, certain piggybacks affects bottle clearance. So that's something I'd like to resolve. On some size frames, the leverage ratio, there's a bit of variation in leverage ratio between frames. So that's something that would be nice to make consistent. But I look at the frames as they are and I think...

I don't need to change anything. It goes back, it's better than any rider. I enjoy riding it. I have a smile on my face when I ride the bike. yeah.

Jens Staudt (36:03.955)
You mentioned pricing when going to the Czech Republic, like will this affect the pricing for our own consumer level as well?

Joe Mc (36:12.086)
Which, keeping our prices the same, mainly because we're not making any money. I'm not rich out of this. I'm very poor out of this, to be honest. So we're not making loads of money as a company. If it hadn't been for discounting, we probably would have put our prices up years ago.

You know, there's been no opportunity to increase prices because every brand around us is selling everything at 50%. So there won't be any change in prices going forward. We've been sucking up, reducing our profits over the past few years to keep going. So, no.

I'd love to do, love to, I think if we went steel, steel unfortunately is quite expensive to manufacture. think because there's very low end bikes that make out of steel.

but they're made out of very low-end steel. They're just like MIG welded. They're thrown together really quickly. But once you get into high-quality steel, it actually becomes really expensive. Tube prices are really expensive. Getting things machined is really expensive. Aluminium is way cheaper to manufacture on a bigger scale. So no, they're not getting cheaper. I'd love to get them cheaper. But not anytime soon.

Jens Staudt (37:31.694)
You said you let get your rear triangles out of Taiwan. So would there also be an option to do some back in the days, remember the Balfa and it did with the reverse. So the front triangle was alloy and the rear was a steel. So do you think you want to play with?

Joe Mc (37:47.232)
Yeah, yeah, it's something. I'll just, I'll just, don't say any words, but...

Jens Staudt (37:57.453)
Okay.

Joe Mc (37:58.817)
We're thinking about it. We're thinking about it. I'm not, not... Materials is an interesting one because my background is in carbon fibre.

But I also designed lots of aluminium aircraft parts, a lot of the airspace stuff is made aluminium. It's only bikes I've worked in steel. And it was kind of by default because that's what I started when I was manufacturing in my shed. But I've then gone to, and it's what I always bought. So there's a lovely ride feel to steel, I love it. But I'm not against aluminium, I've had lots of aluminium bikes. I'm not actually against carbon fibre. I'm only against the way they manufacture carbon fibre at the moment.

When I was in aerospace, carbon fibre was generally flat sheets. You could inspect it and see that all the layers were good, there was no porosity. You see the cut-ups of carbon fibre stuff and it is appalling. The fibre's all over the place. There's bits of holes everywhere, there's resin-rich areas. The quality is shocking and it's maybe fit for purpose, but when I've seen aerospace carbon fibre, I can't then build a bike as shit as they make them.

It works, I'll have this page. It works, but I'm not against carbon fibre, but it would have to be a way that I think the quality can be guaranteed. So I do have some ideas, I am kind of working on some things behind the scenes with carbon fibre as well. But I need, if somebody wants to give me, I don't know, quarter of million pounds, I've got very good idea to revolutionise bike manufacturing, but I need some money.

Jens Staudt (39:37.242)
So you said like steel has a specific ride feel. there maybe also some misunderstandings out there on what steel bikes ride like?

Joe Mc (39:48.193)
So yeah, so you touched on the testing we did on the lateral stiffness, the sideway stiffness of the frame. So everybody thinks steel is flexible. And they're kind of right that the stiffness of a tube is dominated by its diameter, more so than the material and the thickness. The diameter is kind of the primary thing that dictates its stiffness. So steel, because steel is strong,

you if you went to a large diameter you would end up with very thin side very thin walls in the steel so it just get dented easily whereas carbon is weak but lightweight so you end up with big diameter with thick walls that don't get dented so that's why carbon lends itself to thin tubes and that's like steel lends itself to thin tubes and carbon to big diameter tubes so when you look at it you would say yes steel is flexible because it's got thin tubes but the stiffness is

often dictated by the overall geometry. the swing arm has got two arms that are spaced apart. So that spacing actually dictates the stiffness more than the individual tubes. So it's the system stiffness rather than getting all technical here. so, okay, so, but so by default, people look at steel frame and think it's flexible. And there's lots of people saying, oh, steel frames are flexible.

Jens Staudt (41:02.446)
It's perfect.

Joe Mc (41:13.524)
When we've then done this testing and we compared it to like a Nuke, it was a Nuke proof frame that was the same.

It was a trail bike, the same as the Murmur. All the geometry was really similar. Very similar bike. And we hung big weights off the side and tested how much it deflected. And what we found was that the Starling ended up being stiffer than this NukaRoof bike. And the NukaRoof bike, nobody has ever said the NukaRoof is flexible. Everybody said the Starling is flexible. So there's something going on. They aren't any less flexible. And you stand on the bottom bracket, they don't move any more than any other bike.

but there's a feeling that they feel different. So I think what's happened is the bike has got a lively springy feel. The media is saying, steel bikes are flexible. So people go, they're, it feels different, therefore it must be flexible. But I don't think it's true.

Jens Staudt (42:06.542)
that do you think that the bike industry also like development wise has a little bit way to go in regards of ride feel and focus on that because different materials also have different frequencies in the material properties. So for instance, if you have the same shape,

Joe Mc (42:22.762)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Jens Staudt (42:29.592)
just make it a leaf spring, for instance. Just take it out as an example. And you have a leaf spring made of carbon and you have a leaf spring made of steel. it will, the way it, if you like put some force into it, how it returns, how much energy is getting dissipated in the molecules is different. Would you say this is some kind of, people consider it black magic and not.

Joe Mc (42:45.28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Mc (42:49.173)
Yeah.

Jens Staudt (42:57.24)
taking that like really objective and trying now making rear triangles maybe out of different materials and really figuring out like how the springy feel, which is I consider a good thing. You're going into a berm and you're loading your bike like a spring or a ski, which actually helps you return it back up again. You're pulling it out into the next corner or jumping to the next corner. And this is a part that's really...

Joe Mc (43:07.786)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jens Staudt (43:26.092)
like was eye-opening to me when I rode really stiff bikes and I had a hard time getting it out of the corner and stand up again because the bike wouldn't help me and I needed to apply more force.

Joe Mc (43:33.047)
Yeah, yeah. You could also look at it and say, I've got somewhere in my head, I've got a design for a bike which has a vertical damper and then a lateral damper.

So the swing arm can move sideways, but you damp and control that. To me, that's a, you know, when we're leaning the bike over in corners, it needs to move sideways. So you could argue a carbon bike has got more damping in it. You go back to the leaf spring, the way carbon behaves, all the fibres moving over each other actually creates a bit of damping. So maybe a carbon swing arm is better because it damps out. but.

Yes, we don't really talk about it. Nobody's really thought about it. What's difficult with bikes is, because it's such a rider dominated thing, it's not like a car where you've got the lump of the car and you can change something and you know it's a pretty good control test. On a bike, the rider is so dominant, it's very difficult to do any kind of control testing because the riders just change how they behave according to the bike they're on. And it's also very difficult to take...

a certain bike and then just put an aluminium swing arm on it and test it and ride it. So it's very difficult to do control testing. So then all the discussion becomes discussion and not sensible numbers. There's no real way of quantifying it. So I think at Starling we've actually been really lucky that I know I can fit three different swing arms on the same front triangle and this is something we talked to you about.

So I've ridden identical bikes with a 435 27 rear wheel, a 445 29 inch wheel, and a 455 29 inch wheel. Otherwise everything else is the same. So I've had a really good control of understanding what difference that makes. Whereas, quite often magazines will do a test and they go, rode this steel bike and compared it to this aluminium bike, and this is what we found. they have all the parts are different. So it, the,

Joe Mc (45:35.702)
It's very difficult to be scientific in biking because riders dominate and it's difficult to do control. So therefore it's just all this opinion. There's a lot of bullshit.

Jens Staudt (45:43.811)
And absolutely, I would say like if your bike is too flexy, you may also look into your tires and your wheels. And you might even, if your frame is too flexy, you could go for the stiffer wheel. Or if you're...

Joe Mc (45:58.827)
We've actually found, one thing we found is the other way around. we, very early on, people, when carbon wheels first came out, they tended to be massive, didn't they, and really stiff. If you put one of those really stiff carbon wheels on a steel frame that had that springy feel, it felt awful. And as time's gone on, carbon wheels have got much better profiles now. They're much smaller, so they've got more give in them, and they're okay. we had, I won't name it, one tester said, this steel bike's so flexible,

Jens Staudt (46:08.056)
Yeah, absolutely horrifying to ride.

Joe Mc (46:28.61)
can't go around corners on it. But what he'd done, he'd put some 40 mil wide carbon rims on that were deep section and they just didn't work. He couldn't put these massively stiff wheels on a flexible bike or on a steel bike because of the feeling of it. So, yeah.

Jens Staudt (46:45.294)
Early on we had a test session on these super stiff carbon wheels and it was like when you, when you, had one section of the trail wasn't kind of a shark fin. You entered a berm, exited and just like jumped out of it. And we had a super weird feeling in the bike and you had like the rear end kind of vibrating in the air. It's just like jiggling. And then it was like.

Joe Mc (46:58.549)
Yeah.

Jens Staudt (47:11.306)
As you said, it took a couple of years to actually make carbon feel good, riding-wise. I wouldn't necessarily say it's just for this guy you just mentioned that he had a bad feel because he paired steel with these stiff wheels, which was just the first iterations of those were just not good.

Joe Mc (47:29.28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but as a journalist, he didn't understand, I was upset because he didn't question the wheels, he just questioned the frame. And it was, yeah, it was...

Jens Staudt (47:41.37)
It's also hard if you look into testing how you actually quantify these numbers. Could you measure it or couldn't you? Because we are talking about maybe frequencies and sometimes you can't really measure it.

Joe Mc (47:58.271)
You could, but this is where we just end up, we're just riding bikes. We're just riding bikes. Yes, you could, you could, but why are we doing it? We're doing it for fun. This is the whole problem. We all love the technology. We really love the technology, but we're just riding bikes. It's not going to change how much fun we have.

I'm sorry, I'll shut you down there. But you know what mean, yes, you could measure it. you know, like, does it matter? Like, I'd much rather have my bike, what was bad 10 years ago was wheels broke all the time and the chain snapped. Now we've got something where bikes just keep going. They're really good, aren't they? Other than the bikes with loads of bearings that you have to swap out.

Jens Staudt (48:25.302)
No!

Joe Mc (48:47.402)
Bikes are very reliable now and I think that's almost all we needed to achieve. We just needed to achieve reliable bikes and now we should just be working on how to make it more fun. And we don't just make it more fun by putting bigger jumps in and putting scarier features in because that actually puts more people off the sport.

Like recent Red Bull's a classic one of, like, it's just too far, isn't it? It's too far. And it doesn't help the sport. It's a spectacle, but it doesn't make people want to ride bikes. yeah, the most fun you have is a flow trail with a few nice little pop jumps and you've got that lovely feeling and the sun's shining and you know, that's what's good, isn't it?

Jens Staudt (49:33.048)
Do you think we also, as an industry, we maybe went too far geometry wise and wheel size wise that it makes it too easy to conquer crazy trails?

Joe Mc (49:45.087)
Yeah, wheels, I think the wheel size thing, it makes a bit of difference, but you know, people still ride the same stuff they did then. I think the main thing is bikes don't fall apart. I think the lengthening the bikes was a big difference. So I think making the wheel bases longer, making chain stays longer has made bikes more stable. But I think people still, I still ride the same trails.

Jens Staudt (50:13.87)
And you said you recently bought or you ride a full rigid bike or a hardtail. And then now we're seeing like 32 inch wheels coming up. while some, it's a tough one to argue because 29 inch made our life easier, made it maybe somewhat safer to ride crazy stuff. Should we go all the way down to even out the trail by increasing the wheel size and making it like...

Is it too easy? Is it maybe part of the challenge to have a bike that's... Nervous is not the right term, but agile?

Joe Mc (50:50.132)
Yeah.

The rigid bike I've been riding is, I really enjoy it, it's really good fun, but it does, I remember when I first started mountain biking and they had girving flex stems and it makes me think of those, that it hurts your wrists. So a little bit of suspension stops you hurting your wrists. But the amount of fun I have on here is amazing and I can ride relatively tame stuff.

but you still hit it flat out and it's terrifying, it's absolutely terrifying. But the consequences are relatively low. Whereas if I was on my Enduro bike, I've got to be hitting big fast things, I've got to be hitting really scary stuff. So 32 inch, we're going to try and prototype one because we can do it really easily, it's something we can do really easily. I, running a business, have to keep up with what the latest trends are because I can't just ignore it.

If we always go back to what is fun, 26 inches is fun. Rigid is fun. You know, everything is fun.

Jens Staudt (51:51.137)
Everything, I mean, it's just not that, not one thing is better than other. You can choose your taste and you can look into Bia Max, it's fun. maybe just maybe you heard it here first, imagine a gravel bike will come with 32 inch wheels. And if you go on a gravel road and you just conquer a hundred miles in a day, it's easier and maybe it makes sense there.

Joe Mc (51:55.978)
Nice.

Joe Mc (51:59.563)
Yeah, yeah,

Joe Mc (52:07.551)
Yeah.

Joe Mc (52:12.896)
Good.

Yeah but again does it matter if you've gone 80 miles or 100 miles?

Jens Staudt (52:20.408)
For some it is.

Joe Mc (52:23.466)
That's modern world gain isn't it? This is another problem with my car, I've got to be quiet. The Filly Ridgid bike is a Starling gravel bike that we've been prototyping but again I don't think it's right for the brand. It's flat bar, it's a mountain bike really, it's a flat bar mountain bike, Ridgid mountain bike.

Jens Staudt (52:29.454)
So no gravel bike from Starling, I see.

Joe Mc (52:51.112)
If people want to buy one, let us know and we can do it.

Yeah, like, we, why do we need metrics? It's this same thing, isn't it? Again, we have to buy performance. We also need metrics. How many meters have we climbed? How many miles have we covered? How fast have we gone? We're all data driven, whereas just, just feel it. It's like people have apps telling them how long they've slept. I've to know how long I've slept. So they have apps telling them, telling them when they need to drink water. Like, we know, we know how to do these things, don't we? So maybe that's what I'm fighting against a little bit.

We enjoy ourselves the most when we just go out and do it on our own, with other people, but it's the experience. And if we break away from computers and we break away from all these metrics, we will have more fun. It will be better.

Jens Staudt (53:46.827)
You made it really clear that Starling doesn't go anywhere, but still maybe focusing on the fun out there. And maybe that's the perfect summary of this podcast. it's, it, course we, technology is important and we need to have reliable bikes and that hold up for a couple of years. Also like not only because maybe it's good not to buy another bike every year just for environmental reasons as well. But yeah.



Jens Staudt (54:16.714)
It's good to have you out there as an option and thank you for...

Joe Mc (54:21.014)
think, I'll just quickly about sustainability. That's a really key thing as well that our bikes last a long time. They're warrantied for seven years and we've got customers riding around on 10 year old bikes or nine year old bikes.

that are still happy with them. We can repair and look after them. get refurbishments back quite a lot. So we keep our bikes going and if they get damaged we can repair them. All the material, the steel comes from recycled steel. We're not...


Jens Staudt (55:19.598)
If you enjoyed this episode and want to listen to similar motivated people and unique approaches. We have two German episodes, one with Thadeus Tisch, who builds continuously creative bikes out of steel, or maybe you want to know the basics of 3D metal printing. Then the episode of Christian Lengwenath will suit you. 
Rather an English one? Cam Zink does his own bike brand and did many other things besides throwing insane Rampage-Runs or doing world records. 
Until next time!