Minnesota’s Adventure-Bike Trio Is Taking the Market by Storm

Otso Cycles

Minnesotans have a lust for adventure— just look at the state’s ever-growing cycling scene. New mountain biking areas are popping up across Minnesota, like Redhead Mountain Bike Park in Chisholm, Tioga Recreation Area on the Iron Range, and Split Rock Wilds in Beaver Bay. Gravel cycling races, like the Heck of the North series, Ragnarok 105, and Day Across Minnesota (DAMN), give suffer-enthusiasts a heavy schedule of adventure racing options. And bikepackers can choose from hundreds of wild bikepacking routes, which combine camping with biking. How to make all these authentic Minnesota experiences even more local? Ride them on a Minnesota-made bicycle.

Three top local manufacturers— Otso Cycles , Salsa Cycles , and Surly Bikes —exude Minnesota values: a thirst for exploration, top-notch quality, and a make-it-count attitude.

Here’s how Minnesota know-how is transforming the bicycle industry today.

Quality Bicycle Products

The Wheels

Your bike’s chain wraps around what’s called a “chainring”—or, the toothed cog that turns as you pedal. You know the one.

Three Minnesota-born mechanical engineers saw room for improvement here. Using their collective knowledge and first-hand experience in manufacturing techniques, they produced a unique chainring in 2013. Mike Pfeiffer, Brendan Moore, and Dan Dittmer were all working corporate tech jobs at the time. Their new “narrow/wide” chainrings, designed to keep the bike’s chain from falling off, took off in popularity among hardcore gravel cyclists. Within two years, the engineering trio quit their day jobs to focus on their new bike parts business, Wolf Tooth Components.

Along the way, they sought to improve the fat biking experience, too. A fat bike sports wider wheels that make snow biking easier. Moore had been testing the burgeoning fat bike scene on his daily winter bike commute since 2009. He had tried out a couple models by fat bike companies owned by the well-known Quality Bicycle Products, based in Bloomington: the Surly Pugsley and the Salsa Beargrease. “Those two companies influenced and led the way,” Moore recounts.

Quality Bicycle Products

But Moore and his team went further. In 2016, Moore says they “took a pretty big risk” and entered the extremely competitive bicycle market. Their bike manufacturing company, Otso, was incorporated as a separate and additional business to Wolf Tooth Components.

“One of the challenges of fat bikes is that you have to fit the crankset around that big tire,” Moore explains. “Most bikes at that time were designed around the tire. But we said, ‘We think the pedal stance is too wide on fat bikes.’ It hurts our knees and hips to pedal. So, we took a mountain bike crank and designed the bike from the crank out. We analyzed every last millimeter and launched our carbon Voytek.” This ingenuity thrust Otso into the rapidly expanding fat bike scene. (The Voytek can also be ridden on mountain bike trails in summertime using thinner tires.)

A second version—the bomb-proof Warakin gravel cycling bike—was made of springy, corrosion-resistant stainless steel.

David Baldus, membership director of a Duluth mountain bike advocacy organization, notes that Otso bikes are in high demand because they’re designed to be modular and adaptable. “That really attracts me to brands,” Baldus says. “I chose my Warakin because I wanted something locally made that lasts forever and adapts to whatever I want it to do.”

Osto Cycles

The Trails

Otso is firmly embedded in Minnesota’s expanding biking infrastructure. To start, the company name comes from Finnish mythology, with Otso being the sacred bear king of the forest in the epic Finnish poem “Kalevala.” Otso’s partners say they were inspired while riding through Minnesota’s north woods and the “places that lead to adventure,” Moore says. Today, Otso bikes are popular with many cyclists who want to go off road.

Take the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area, smack dab in the middle of the state. One of Minnesota’s original mountain biking meccas, opened in 2011, it continues to expand.

“It’s only getting better out there,” recounts Moore, praising the new Sagamore Unit, which has trails ranging from the very difficult Dynamite to the less intense Bison Run and the easy Klondyke and Copper Nugget trails. There’s also the Blaster adaptive cycling trail, allowing bikers of all ages and skill levels to ride together, with no ride-stopping obstacles or tip hazards.

Osto Cycles

The interconnectedness of all the different trail units at Cuyuna is the mecca-maker. “The most amazing thing is that you don’t need to drive to any of it. You can access 70 to 80 miles of trail without driving,” explains Moore, who has a family home in Crosby, which is the center of the Cuyuna trail system.

The southern suburbs of Minneapolis are another biking mecca but in a different way. While Bloomington is home to shopping temples like the Mall of America and Ikea, it’s also headquarters for Quality Bicycle Products—the parent company of the Surly and Salsa lines. Neighboring Burnsville is home to the production facilities of Otso and Wolf Tooth, making the south suburbs Minnesota’s “Silicon Valley” of bike manufacturing.

Baldus notes the importance of homegrown products to bicyclists. “All Wolf Tooth products are made locally,” he says. “That is so cool and so rare to have something that is accessibly priced but made in the U.S., right here in Minnesota. Especially in the bike industry, people love local.”

Quality Bicycle Products

The Riders

On top of that, more and more Minnesotans appear to be biking. Chelsea Strate, Otso brand manager, does outreach at bike events across the state and has seen increased ridership throughout Minnesota inspired by the Minnesota Cycling Association’s high school and junior high mountain bike racing program, along with constant improvements in the networks of paved trails, mountain biking trails, and bike lanes around the state.

“If you go to a fat bike race in Minnesota or Wisconsin, you’ll see a lot of Otso bikes,” Strate says.

It’s the same at gravel riding events. “We probably had 10 employees racing the Heck of the North” bike race in September, Moore explains. “It’s not hard to do outreach when you have 10 employees going up there to race. We live what we make.”

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