{"id":616431,"date":"2026-09-06T17:02:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T17:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/616431\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T17:02:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T17:02:19","slug":"rob-quirk-traded-art-for-craftsmanship-and-now-hes-building-a-global-cycling-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/616431\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Quirk traded art for craftsmanship \u2013 and now he\u2019s building a global cycling brand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, Quirk Cycles announced it was looking to raise \u00a3500,000 to fund scaling its production and launch new small-batch models.<\/p>\n

Quirk was founded in 2015 and since then it has gained a reputation for creating some of the most desirable custom bicycles. But founder Rob Quirk told me at the company\u2019s workshop in Hackney Wick, London, that it was his plan \u201cfrom day one\u201d to build a bigger company.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it\u2019s romantic, the idea of being the only person in the workshop making these things for the next 30 or 40 years \u2013 I\u2019m sure that\u2019s a Ring of Hell,\u201d he joked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Quirk, choosing the right time to grow was a case of building the right team. \u201cI’d had various people offer to invest, but it wasn’t a case of money. It was a case of skill. I needed to find the right people to work with, who had the skills to help me build it and scale it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those people was Noah Warren, who Quirk met two years ago. Warren had previously helped grow Temple Cycles. He began working with Rob and now works for Quirk full-time as the company\u2019s operation manager, alongside a head of brand and creative, and a \u201cshit hot\u201d marketer, who has worked for MAAP and Cannondale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another key person was Rapha co-founder Simon Mottram. Mottram originally came to Quirk as a customer looking for a bike for Rapha\u2019s Manchester to London ride and later came onboard as a lead investor<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Rob\u2019s words, Mottram now acts as an “unofficial advisor\u201d. \u201cWe probably speak once a month or something like that. He\u2019s given advice on brand strategy, and he\u2019s just opened a lot of doors,\u201d Rob said. Mottram has said: \u201cQuirk isn\u2019t following trends; it\u2019s defining what\u2019s next for boutique performance cycling.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Catching the bug\u00a0
\n\"RobRob Quirk: learning to build a steel bike was a \u201clife changing\u201d moment. Quirk Cycles<\/p>\n

Quirk may have grown to a team of four, and have the support of a former Rapha CEO, but Rob wasn\u2019t always a frame builder \u2013 or into bicycles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before Rob established Quirk, he was an artist. It was on a three-month residency in Berlin that he became obsessed with riding a bike and discovered how cycling offers \u201can amazing sense of freedom\u201d. \u201cThe project had a budget and we had to do a lot of travelling, so it was like, \u2018Maybe the best use of our funds is to buy a bike\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rob said he \u201ccaught the bug\u201d and, alongside using bicycles as a mode of transport, he became fascinated by their mechanics and design. He took to buying vintage steel bicycles from the 1940s and 50s, rebuilding them and selling them on, before getting into more modern bikes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheThe 2026 Quirk Mamtor endurance road bike. Quirk Cycles<\/p>\n

At the time, Rob was studying for an MA in research architecture at the University of Goldsmiths. The course was less about the realities of designing buildings, and more the production of space and its political connotations, including how the public and private interact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This aligned with a residency he completed in Berlin, which saw him build a house made from pallets and water cooler bottles overnight in Alexanderplatz to \u2018claim\u2019 the land, an idea borrowed from folk law (rather than lore) in England and Wales. But Rob said the course\u2019s emphasis on theory meant you didn\u2019t \u201cnecessarily see the fruits of your labour manifest in front of you\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think because of that, and whatever else was going on in my life, it had this quite depressing effect on me,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was cycling that provided a remedy to his situation. Rob became hooked on trying to make a carbon fibre bike in the UK<\/a>, after he was inspired by Argonaut Cycles, which was doing the same thing. He approached UK-based composite companies, who he said were interested, but didn\u2019t have the capacity to take the idea on. He returned to the drawing board and joined a course at the now defunct Bicycle Academy instead to learn how to make a steel bike<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole experience was one of these life changing moments,\u201d he said. \u201cIt returned me to that immediacy of seeing what you’ve been working on manifest in front of you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rob\u2019s other bike was a carbon Cerv\u00e9lo with light wheels and \u201call the bells and whistles\u201d. \u201cIt wasn’t inspiring me, or making me feel like it was pushing me on to ride harder. It was just a pretty neutral experience. Then riding this first steel bike I built was just like\u201d \u2013 he clicked his fingers \u2013 \u201cBam, this is it, this is what it should have felt like.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Craftsmanship and 3D printing\u00a0
\n\"RobRob Quirk: \u201cA good welder doesn\u2019t grind his welds; a bad welder grinds his welds.\u201d Quirk Cycles<\/p>\n

That experience at the Bicycle Academy led Rob to start Quirk and build steel and titanium bicycles<\/a>. While he\u2019s no longer a practising artist, his background isn\u2019t far away when he speaks about the form and function of his designs, particularly the welds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rob keeps the welds on his bicycles visible, which is something people often remark on. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to see them,\u201d he said. But he explained the decision to keep them plainly: \u201cA good welder doesn\u2019t grind his welds; a bad welder grinds his welds. If you grind them, you hide them. A bad weld can look good when you grind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a pride thing. I\u2019m a craftsman, I\u2019ve learned a skill and this is part of it. But then there\u2019s an engineering reason: if you\u2019re removing material then that weakens the weld.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Rob these welds are a \u201cbadge of honour\u201d and draw attention to the component parts. This uniqueness is also part of the reason why Rob began developing 3D-printed<\/a> parts back in 2018. \u201cAt the time, if you were making a steel bike, all of your components that go into the frame \u2013 so your dropouts, head tubes, bottom brackets \u2013 would all be off the shelf.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"3D printing offered Quirk a way to create visually unique parts with a mechanical advantage. John Watson<\/p>\n

Developing 3D-printed parts then became a way to create proprietary designs that would be recognisable as a Quirk even without their paint. Yet the decision to use 3D-printed components was also borne of necessity and engineering logic.<\/p>\n

Quirk was originally in a workshop above its current ground-floor premises and there was no way to get heavy machines into the space. The 3D-printed parts meant Rob could cut almost all his tubes at a 90-degree angle, and therefore avoided needing heavy-duty machinery. The decision had the added benefit of speeding up production; he went from spending a day making a set of chainstays to building a complete frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 3D-printed parts also offer Rob a \u201cmechanical advantage\u201d. He said they distribute stresses through the frame more effectively than tight corners and joins, which could increase the risk of failure. \u201cAll these 3D-printed parts have smooth contours because that helps distribute the stress and spread it out of a wider area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Off-the-peg and future ambitions\u00a0
\n\"\"Quirk Cycles launched the Kegety gravel bike in August 2026. John Watson<\/p>\n

The visible welds and 3D-printed parts have become signature features of Rob\u2019s designs, and they have carried over into Quirk\u2019s latest range of off-the-peg steel bikes. These include the Durmitor race bike, which won best road bike at Bespoked<\/a> London 2026; the Mamtor<\/a> endurance bike; and the Kegety<\/a> gravel bike, based on the bike Rob built to ride the Silk Road Mountain Race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moving from custom to small-batch designs is a well-trodden path in the world of bespoke bicycle makers, and Rob said it fits with why customers come to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn’t because I can give them endless options. It’s because they obviously like what I make and value my opinion on the choices and the process that I’ve taken to get to that point,\u201d he said. \u201cSo then offering the standard sizes and off-the-peg options is kind of the same thing, where it’s me making what I think is the best version of a road, gravel or race bike.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The geometry of his bikes is still informed by the years he spent making custom bikes, and buying a bike from Quirk offers a level of fit customisation few mainstream brands provide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The framesets are stamped with the workshop postcode and \u2018Hackney London\u2019. <\/p>\n

This simplified range should also help fulfil Mottram\u2019s ambition to help Rob \u201cscale his vision into a modern, globally respected performance brand\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I asked Rob where he sees Quirk heading, he said one brand he\u2019s looked at is Colnago, which combines artisanal design with performance. He also highlighted how Colnago has kept much of its production in Italy \u2013 which comes back to Rob\u2019s interest in space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Quirk\u2019s bicycles have the postcode of the workshop and \u2018Hackney London\u2019 stamped boldly into the frame and he hopes to keep the company in the East London borough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a great deal of value in the fact that we’re manufacturing them in-house. London has been instrumental to the growth of the brand and Hackney has a lot of value,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

However, he acknowledged that it\u2019s becoming harder to be a manufacturer in the city, and how artist studios and workshops in Hackney Wick have been turned into flats. For Rob, it\u2019s a \u201cbattle of space\u201d, a phrase that sounds as if it could\u2019ve come out of his MA degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story of gentrification in a modern city and how we\u2019re able to resist that,\u201d he said. \u201cThat’s part of what you\u2019re buying into here, which is the authenticity of a product that is made locally and knowing who\u2019s made it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late last year, Quirk Cycles announced it was looking to raise \u00a3500,000 to fund scaling its production and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-616431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}