We meet Chris King, known for producing immaculately machined and long-lived headsets, hubs and BBs
The career choice I was a cyclist in high school and cycling was more environmental than driving, so riding and making bikes made sense. If you’re making a product that goes into a responsible use you’re already on a good foot.
The good life I worked 70 to 80- hour weeks non-stop for 11 years and made maybe $5 an hour, but I was happy and it was fun.A good life isn’t necessarily built on money. It’s built on people appreciating what you do and benefiting from what you do in a direction you believe in. Success from mountain biking didn’t come until 1991.
The changeover When roadies who’d been cult believers in my headset in the mid ’70s crossed over they took the product with them. They literally pulled the headsets off their road bikes and stuck them on their mountain bikes.With other headsets you could maybe get two rides before a bearing tumbled out. So if you wanted to ride a bike seriously, there was nothing you could buy except what I made. The only guys who knew that were roadies.
The industry Bikes are pretty affordable and you can get some pretty fun technology for much less than buying a Formula 1 car. That’s what we in the bike industry have been living off – people’s fascination with technology and excitement. If I wanted to make a lot of money it wouldn’t be through bike parts. The best thing about this industry is that it’s full of people who just have a passion for this stuff. There’s a lot of really good people and there isn’t a lot of space for supporting a lot of empty ego stuff.
GREEN PIONEER
WASTE NOT
1 “Waste for waste’s sake has never been big with me. Our first headset box was printed in black and white – that was as far as we wanted to go with waste and toxic inks.When we started shipping hubs, we had corrugated cardboard boxes. To minimise the printing, we made a branding iron!” NON TOXIC
2 “When I started in the mid ’70s I struggled with the idea of doing machine work, partly because of the power consumption but also the toxic chemicals involved. So we went out and found straight mineral oil – no chlorine, sulphur or any other crap. This was back in 1988.” WELL OILED
3 “Later we found we could replace the mineral oil with soya oil. I figured, if I don’t do machine work there’s going to be someone else ou there who does and maybe they won’t be as responsible. So I had to figure out how to be as responsible as I could, within a reasonable cost.”
