Bespoked Dresden – 2023

Big Forest Frameworks has been around for 11 years as I am writing this.   For a long time I had wanted to attend the Bespoked bike show in Bristol, which has always been Europe’s biggest hand-made event.  But the costs of travelling and attending an event in the UK are pretty high, which always kept me from signing up.   At the start of 2023 it was announced that Bespoked would be held in Dresden, Germany.   A dream come true!   Dresden is only 2 hours away from Berlin/Potsdam.   I signed up immediately!

Preparations were pretty hectic as usual!   We couldn’t really decide on which bikes to bring, how many, and how the stand should actually look.  But somehow it managed to all come together.   First I want to thank Ludwig Heinze from Designmöbel Heinze.   Ludwig put a ton of work into build 3 stands for 3 of our bikes, and they really turned out nice!  The stands have a massive metal base, connected to a thick piece of oak with a nice live edge on both sides.   Ludwig’s style of construction was a great fit with Big Forest Frameworks, and the stands really showcased our bikes as best as they can be.

Konrad & Falca handled the main transport to Dresden and got everything set up on Thursday, and manned our stand together on Friday for the media.   A big thank you to Konrad & Falca for all their hard work!   I stayed in Potsdam to finish up teaching the frame building course for the week, and drove down on Friday night with Ludwig.

We ended up bringing 4 bikes with us.   First we brought our new Disc Racer with fully integrated cables and a complete ENVE build with Chris King hubs.  We hope to get the first frames built and ready for the spring of 2024.   Then we brought as well one of our ‘old’ Disc Racers which is still a beauty.   If you’re not completely sold on the idea of having batteries on your bike, this is your road bike!  Then we brought Konrad’s new CX machine, a modern take on a dying breed of bikes with cantilever brakes.   They still do work!  What a great color and lots of trees to be found on the seat tube really made this bike the show favourite.   Then finally we brought the Cargo Bike that Konrad built over the past year.   It was the Bespoked show that really pushed us to finally get this bike finished.  Love how it turned out!  More on all these bikes is still to come, stay tuned to the website and our instagram channel….

So the Dresden Airport (the event location) was filled with bikes, but would anyone show up to see them?  I was skeptical.  With being Bespoked’s first time abroad, I wasn’t expecting too much to tell you the truth.   I figured it would be cool, but not very full.   But it was great!  Really full on all three days.   I couldn’t believe it!  Among the crowd we met lots of faces we knew via email or the web, but hadn’t met yet.  Among them were Johanna Jahnke from DIE WUNDERSAME FAHRRADWELT podcast, as well as Juliane, better known as the Radelmädchen.   Could there be something in the works, here???? And of course we met lots of people we haven’t seen in a while, especially former course students.  Thank you for coming and stopping by!

First of all, what a great collection of awesome bikes!!!  Usually at the bike fairs I’ve taken part of, you tend to see less bikes and more general cycling gear (hats, jerseys, pedals, etc.).   Or the bikes tend to not really be super interesting.   But this event is really about smaller builders presenting their best work and it really showed.   What a pleasure to walk around and check everything out!  Lots of builders not just from Germany, but really all over Europe, and few from even farther away.

All in all super happy with everything.  Perhaps the highlight, though, was actually the afterparty on Saturday.  The guys from bespoked organised a Goldsprint event.   Two people race head to head on trainers.   The winner moves on to the next round.   Pretty simple idea, maybe even sounds boring, but it’s a party atmosphere and when you’re on the trainer with someone head-to-head, guaranteed you will go 100% as fast as you can!  When we arrived anyone could try out the bikes without registering for the race.   It took a while but I managed to convince Ludwig to race against me in a practice round.   It was really fun!  You basically ride as fast as you can for about 20 seconds.   There is not really any resistance on the trainer, you just need to spin the pedals as fast as you can.  While we were practicing Konrad signed us up for the main event without asking us.   We decided to give it a shot.

I think there were 32 competitors.   I fell out in the 2nd round already, the competition was tough, and the races were tight. After riding about a total of 60 seconds counted between my three times on the bike, I was completely wasted!   Ludwig made it through to the third round!!!  And then the 4th round!   It was so exciting!!!  It was pretty intense and we all had a great time.   And for Ludwig to end up fourth place, when he didn’t even want to practice, was really amazing.   Looking forward to racing next year!

Lastly, thank you to Josh and all of the staff at Bespoked for all of the hard work in organising and putting on a great event in Dresden this year!  We already heard that Bespoked will return to Dresden in 2024, so if you missed it you will have another chance next year.   Looking forward to seeing you there!