The CEO talks with Escape Collective about five years of growth, what Tadej Pogačar is worth to the business, and why focus has carried the company to unprecedented success.
Colnago
Cycling has an increasingly complicated relationship with money. For most of its history, it was a cheap transport method, and quite a low-cost sport that became entertainment for fans who lined the sides of race roads for free, spectating the pros who were not paid millions.
That world still exists, but alongside it, something else has been growing. Over the past decade or so, cycling has become the pursuit of the wealthy. Lycra-clad executives are filling the roads on Sunday mornings, and there are not only buyers, but waiting lists for bikes that cost as much as a family car. And sometimes those buyers are not necessarily even cyclists themselves.
Not many brands in the sport have focused on this demographic more effectively than Colnago.
The Italian brand was founded in 1954 by Ernesto Colnago, who taught himself to build frames and ended up creating one of the most well-known names in cycling, known for both its high-quality frames and the prominent pros who rode them, none more famous than the legendary Eddy Merckx. But by 2020, the company was in need of a change. Ernesto Colnago was in his late 80s, he had recently lost his wife and his brother. There was no succession plan. Total annual revenue for the company was around €20 million, which was not bad for a small manufacturer, but not what you’d expect from a brand of that fame. The business was essentially running on its reputation.
That year, an Abu Dhabi investment fund called Aurora Vision Group bought a majority stake in Colnago. Aurora Vision Group is linked to the entity that owns the UAE Team Emirates cycling team, which, the year before, had just signed a young Slovenian rider named Tadej Pogačar. And Colnago hired a new CEO: Nicola Rosin, a 50-year-old Italian executive who had spent his career building cycling brands.
Pogačar’s Colnago sells for an eye-popping $190,500
The four-time Tour de France winner outmatches Jonas Vingegaard yet again.
In five years, Rosin has taken Colnago from €20 million in revenue to €77 million with a sharp rise to double-digit profit margins. Limited-edition bikes tied to the Tour de France’s Florence Grand Depart in 2024 sold out in 90 minutes, priced at €22,000 each. One of Pogačar’s actual Tour de France Colnagos sold at auction for close to $200,000, making it the most expensive production bicycle ever sold. Now, Colnago has orders stretching into the future and production capacity is not coping with the demand.
All of this happened while the broader cycling industry has been struggling. Colnago, by contrast, has gone the other way. Speaking to Escape Collective from the Colnago office in Cambiago, the relaxed and candid CEO Rosin has a clear view of why.
The following interview has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.
Suvi Loponen: You became CEO of Colnago in 2021. When you first joined, what was the company like, and what did you want to focus on?
Nicola Rosin: First, I want to give credit to the brand and the company I joined. Colnago was already a dream brand for me. I have a background as a CEO and general manager but my soul is commercial — sales and marketing — and Colnago was always a brand I respected enormously. It represents the history of road cycling: heritage, prestige, and positioning.
The company I joined was completely different from what we have today. It was a company that had just been acquired by Aurora Vision Group, with everything still to build in terms of organisation, ambition, and the desire to grow and dominate our space.
I was lucky because what Ernesto had done greatly was hire good human beings. I found a first-rate group of employees that I immediately realised were very interesting to work with. I’ve always believed — you may have read Jim Collins’ Good to Great — that if you want to achieve goals, the first thing is deciding who you want to work with, and then with those people, you decide where you want to go. So I had an amazing brand, a strong team, a company to build, and a brand to relaunch.
SL: You joined Colnago at an interesting time. Aurora Vision Group had just acquired the company, and Ernesto was stepping aside. The whole company was built by him – and of course the people around him. How was it navigating that transition?
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