Geekhouse Bikes

[geekhousebikes]

Hello, my name is Marty Walsh and I’m the owner of Geekhouse bikes. I decided to go all-out with this and write a fairly extensive history. Sorry if this is more of a novel than a thread…

I was bit by the bike bug very early on. When I was thirteen I got my first mountain bike, and I fell in love. My bicycle was a new sort of freedom for me, I could be across town in 20 minutes all on my own, and with everything I needed in my backpack. Since then, bikes have been my life. The same sentiment carries through to today. I’m never happier than when I’m riding with everything I could need on my back.

As soon as I was 16 I started working at my local bike shop, Landry’s. It was the mid 90’s and I was a huge fan of local companies like Fat City, Merlin, Rygen, and later on Indy Fab and Spooky. I started racing XC at around the same age and later got into racing down hill eventually qualifying for Semi-Pro, before an injury ended that form of racing for me. I continued working at Landry’s through college and after graduating became a manager of one of their stores. I was 23 at the time and running a retail store was a lot to handle, especially for being fairly young.

Around this time a buddy and I started joking about starting our own bike company. The name Geekhouse came to me in a dream. The term “Bike Geek” was something I always identified with. And for a lot of years growing up, it was never “cool” to be really into bicycling. At that time Geekhouse really was more of a dream than an idea, but it’s when I started thinking about it.

After managing a shop for a couple years, and still dreaming about making bikes, I decided retail was not for me and I started looking for other jobs. I ended up getting hired by Super Innovative Concepts (SIC) a producer of mountain bike components. Right when I started at SIC my boss said to me. “Marty, I just want to design. If you want to run a company, then go ahead.” I thought it was a joke at the time, but it was actually how things ended up. Working at SIC taught me a lot about running a small business including managing employees while learning bookkeeping and accounting. I also got to see a larger view of the industry, including exhibiting at Interbike three years in a row, attending Eurobike & the Tai Pei show, and visiting Taiwan three times to oversee our manufacturing there.

I started Geekhouse, not necessarily because I wanted to make something better, but because I wanted to be part of creating something that I loved.

The original frames were just sketches on napkins while working at the bike shop. This eventually led to working with mechanical engineers to create CAD drawings, then sending out the designs to Brew Bikes in North Carolina. We did a couple batches there, before I moved production to Taiwan. This was a natural progression since I already had relationships in Taiwan from SIC Components. But I quickly decided Taiwan and mass-production was not something that made me feel good about what I was doing. Frames had to be purchased in batches of 100qty, and I was just not in a position where I could really afford to make multiple models. Nor was this model something that I was compelled to pursue as a lifetime career. Carrying a heavy inventory of multiple models, and not being able to easily change designs seemed like a very large liability to me.

So after a lot of thought, I got the idea in my head that I wanted to start building all the frames one by one, in my own shop, all by hand. Though I had years at the bike shop under my bet I’d never had a hand in fabrication. So I started looking into frame building classes. I left SIC in 2003 to pursue my dream of making Geekhouse a real full time gig. It was a little crazy at the time, but I knew it’s what I wanted to do more than anything else in life. All I needed now was a teacher.

Mike Flannigan of ANT Bikes was that teacher. The way I first got into contact with Mike was by simply picking up the phone and calling him out of the blue. Our first conversation went a little like this. “Hey, I was wondering if you could teach me how to build bikes?” His response was an adamant “NO, I DON’T DO THAT!” So much for that idea, I thought at the time. This was only a couple year’s after Mike had left IF and I started seeing more and more amazing bikes he had built on the streets of Somerville. It was really important to me that in learning the craft of frame building, that I had the right teacher. What really appealed to me was the idea of a sort of Zen lineage of frame building. I wanted that mind-to-mind transmission of something that started with one of my hero’s, Chris Chance and ended with Mike one of the original founders of Independent Fabrication. It might sound like a silly idea, but it meant a lot to me to be part of that Boston tradition I loved and still love so very much.

So I kept pestering Mike. We still joke about it today; I was the kid that just wouldn’t go away. After a while Mike came to me and said he’d been thinking about it and he only needed help at ANT with two things. If I knew how to do one of these things, he would teach me to build frames. One was powder coating, which I hadn’t a clue how to do. And the other one, the other one was bookkeeping. That I knew. I spent the next year and a half in Mike’s shop helping with all the bookkeeping and cleaning up of office work, and he taught me how to TIG weld and the machining necessary to miter tubes. He even went so far as to help me build a jig, and the mitering fixtures one would need. Mike also originally set me up in a little shop next to his Water Street shop in the small New England town of Holliston. I’ve never quite met someone like Mike Flannigan. He went so far out of his way to help and teach me, his kindness is something that I’ll never fully be able to repay. To this day he is one of my good friends, and will always be that one great teacher that you meet only once in a lifetime. For this I am forever in his debt.

While I loved Mike and ANT, I always knew that I wanted to be out on my own. And it was always my goal to be building frames inside the city limits of Boston. In January of 2008, I found a 1000 sq ft garage right in Allston, a neighborhood of Boston. The garage was in a commercial-residential neighborhood right out the outskirts of the Harvard University expansion into lower Allston. It had been empty for seven years, was run down and disgusting. It was perfect.

Leaving ANT was bittersweet, but it was something that I felt I needed to do. For the next few years I have still helped out Mike with bookkeeping whenever I could. And actually because bookkeeping had worked so well there I also started offering my services around town. This led me to Seven Cycles where I worked as a bookkeeper for a little less than a year. Bookkeeping at Seven taught me a lot about running a larger bicycle fabrication shop. It’s also where I met Ian Sutton from Icarus Frames, and Bryan Hollingsworth from Royal H Cycles. These guys went in with me on the new shop space for the first two years, before expanding to their own space in Somerville.

After the first year in the shop, I was still doing bookkeeping and accounting 30-40 hours a week for a variety of businesses around Boston. At the same time I was pursuing Geekhouse at an additional 40 hours a week. One day I started looking at borrowing enough money to buy much needed equipment. I came upon the City of Boston website where I found a program through the BLDC (Boston Local Development Corporation). And after six months of meetings and business plans, I got a loan for enough to purchase many of the machines I needed to be a fully supported shop. Since I got that loan I’ve been full time at Geekhouse.

2011 Marks our fourth year in the Geekhouse Shop. Over the past three years it started with three builders working on their own companies. To now, where Geekhouse occupies the space itself with three full time guys. It was never my goal to be a solo builder; it’s not Marty Walsh Cycles for a reason. I’ve had help from countless individuals in the Boston community to get this going. Over the past two years I’ve had immense help from Brian Kelly, now moving on to Indy Fab in NH. Also, Mike Salvatore has been invaluable. And most recently Brad Smith and Gregory Ralich have joined the full time crew, with Dan St. Germain doing all of our graphics work. I really love all these guys, and I feel truly lucky to have them working with me every day. I’m going to be 32 years old this year and I’ve been working in the bike industry for 16 years now, exactly half of my life.

Growing up in the bike industry and having countless interactions with people, one thing that I’ve always tried to live by is to never be pretentious. Whether our customers are buying their 11th custom frame, or if this is there first bike, we are here to help and inform them to the best possible bike they can have, without judgements. A motto that we’ve been throwing around in the shop is “Make it yours”. In a small business like ours we have this really close connection with people that you just don’t get in other industries. I really love this about what we do, and I still wake up every morning excited to get to the shop and start my day.

So, that’s where I’m going to end it for now. I’m really excited about the projects we’re working on for 2011, specifically NAHBS coming the end of Feb. We have a great crew, we have a lot of fun, and we’re making the best bikes we possibly can.

Happy New Year everyone!

-Marty Walsh

[geekhousebikes]

PS -

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Flickr: Geekhousebikes' Photostream
geekhouse bikes
Geekhouse Bikes on Vimeo

[edoz]

Glad to see you here, and that's a neat story you've got there. Most of what I see of yours are the urban fixie type bikes. Is that your mainstays, and what percentage of other stuff do you build?

[geekhousebikes]

Hey guys! The original frames where actually dirt jumpers in the early days. Then when I started doing hand built frames, my initial ones were fixed gears. This was around 2006 and living in the city and being part of fixed gear culture really got our name our there in a new scene. I've never intended to doing any one model of bike over another, but to this day a lot of people think we only make fixed gears. Don't get me wrong I love these bikes, but we're now expanding to many other types of bicycles. I'm currently building myself an 11-speed Alfine bike for NAHBS and I'm really excited to have that as my daily ride after the show...

[dashDustin]

Damn. I remember when all I wanted in life was a derailleur-compatible, disc compatible Geekhouse w/ a Sherman Jumper, Profiles, and Jim Cs. That had to have been before Evil had the DOC. Ah, the good ol' days of hcor.net and Ben@Unreal.

[Generalcuz]

Cool story. Love your vimeo videos by the way.

[Dornbox]

Marty- love the story. Super cool to hear about how you brokedown Mike. Sounds kind of funny though because like you said, he really is a super generous guy. He and Toby S have become roll models in that way. It's even better to hear that you value it as well. So how many beers and how much pestering will it take to get you to give me some book keeping voodoo tips!?!? Seriously though, Brian and I do plan on bringing some beers up sometime.

[vulture]

Right on Marty, your story is Rad. I have been a fan for a while, and I dig the fork dropouts. Way to go on having bookkeeping skills and metal skills. I can weld but the books kick my ass...

[protijy]

Ah brings me back to Ken's couch trying to figure out how to make horizontal drips work with disk brakes....
Ah the early days:)

Nice work Marty so pumped to see geekhouse grow!

[Rody]

Marty,

Welcome to the smoking room.

Your story shares much about what it takes to be successful in frame building that so many overlook...small business skills; accounting/book keeping, time/personnel management, supplier relationships, customer service and communication. As your story exhibits, the evolution of metal skills comes with time, but the ability of a business to stay afloat until they are achieved is dependent on the prior.

Love your enthusiasm and quirkyness, keep jamming forward brother.

rody

[JimFrain]

Hi Marty,

I can appreciate the work that your doing and your vision of having a shop/business with many employees instead of being a solo builder creating one of a kind frames. What wouild you see as your next step in both creating "production model" frames and how (or would) you expand your shop given the opportunity?


Thanks!
Jim Frain

[geekhousebikes]

Marty- love the story. Super cool to hear about how you brokedown Mike. Sounds kind of funny though because like you said, he really is a super generous guy. He and Toby S have become roll models in that way. It's even better to hear that you value it as well. So how many beers and how much pestering will it take to get you to give me some book keeping voodoo tips!?!? Seriously though, Brian and I do plan on bringing some beers up sometime.

Haha, well I'm really good at pestering people I guess...;) I can show you a really quick and easy way to keep track of all your books in Excel, just let me know when you guys can come by. Preferably some time after NAHBS, we're pretty slammed til then.

[geekhousebikes]

Marty,

Welcome to the smoking room.

Your story shares much about what it takes to be successful in frame building that so many overlook...small business skills; accounting/book keeping, time/personnel management, supplier relationships, customer service and communication. As your story exhibits, the evolution of metal skills comes with time, but the ability of a business to stay afloat until they are achieved is dependent on the prior.

Love your enthusiasm and quirkyness, keep jamming forward brother.

rody

Rody, thanks for the kind words man! It's really true though, the bottom line is that we all run small businesses, there's more than just metal skills that are necessary to keep that a float. I think it's a good idea for any builder individual or not to think about entrepreneurship, I find myself reading Inc. Mag on a daily basis in my reader. There's a lot of great articles on there from bookkeeping, to branding. Thanks!

-M

[geekhousebikes]

Hi Marty,

I can appreciate the work that your doing and your vision of having a shop/business with many employees instead of being a solo builder creating one of a kind frames. What wouild you see as your next step in both creating "production model" frames and how (or would) you expand your shop given the opportunity?


Thanks!
Jim Frain

Jim,
I don't really see us expanding to that huge of a company. After all we're still just three guys in a garage, haha!! As far as stock size production models, I don't think that's really in the cards for us at least at this time. I'd instead like to focus on building more complete custom bicycles, even if that means a smaller number of Geekhouse's produced each year. I'd really like to just focus on that, while at the same time exploring other materials like Ti in the future.

-M

[squaretaper]

Marty is an amazing human being. I've had the pleasure of working with him and watching Geekhaus grow over the last few years and I can't say enough in regards to his business-savvy, innovative and personal approach to framebuilding and bike design, and incredible ability to become "Party Marty" at will. Congratulations, Mr. Walsh.

[anomaly]

I am really excited to be racing one of your frames this coming cross season in SF.

Any plans to start doing lugged and/or fillet brazed frames?

What percentage of bikes get the Yo Marty fork?

What are the groups goals for 2012?

Nate

[anthonymaietta]

Marty,

You seem to have really embraced the "framebuilder sponsors a small cross team" idea with complete gusto. Can you speak a little bit about how that came about when it seemed like you were focusing more on urban culture (fixed gear, commuters, etc). Your team kits are peppered with a pretty impressive group of credible businesses. Did you have a hard time pitching the idea to them? Have you seen a blip in your bottom line as a result of your involvement in the local cross scene?

Looking forward to seeing you in Austin. Keep up the good work.

Tony

[geekhousebikes]

Marty is an amazing human being. I've had the pleasure of working with him and watching Geekhaus grow over the last few years and I can't say enough in regards to his business-savvy, innovative and personal approach to framebuilding and bike design, and incredible ability to become "Party Marty" at will. Congratulations, Mr. Walsh.

Aww shucks, you're making me blush! Good luck to you as well on your frame endeavor, you have a name for those yet? Thanks man!

[geekhousebikes]

I am really excited to be racing one of your frames this coming cross season in SF.

Any plans to start doing lugged and/or fillet brazed frames?

What percentage of bikes get the Yo Marty fork?

What are the groups goals for 2012?

Nate

We're excited to have you racing in SF as well!!!!

Actually, I do have a set of Richard Sachs lugs that I'm going to build as a frame this year. As far as offering lugged and fillet, I'll probably hold off on those for a bit.

The 'Yo Marty', and the newer 'Hey Martey' forks have been nearly every fixed gear as well as touring bikes. The only time I generally substitute is on road and cross for carbon, and Suspension on most MTB frames.

We have a lot of goals and things we're trying to do this year. First off we're currently working on a kick-ass new website. We're creating a XC MTB team similar but smaller than the cross team. Turning our Open House into more of a block party. Hopefully doing a little west coast CX satellite team. But the really big thing we're trying to push is adding a charity component to all of our race teams. And lots more, but Greg my office guy is going to yell at me for trying to do too many things...

[geekhousebikes]

Marty,

You seem to have really embraced the "framebuilder sponsors a small cross team" idea with complete gusto. Can you speak a little bit about how that came about when it seemed like you were focusing more on urban culture (fixed gear, commuters, etc). Your team kits are peppered with a pretty impressive group of credible businesses. Did you have a hard time pitching the idea to them? Have you seen a blip in your bottom line as a result of your involvement in the local cross scene?

Looking forward to seeing you in Austin. Keep up the good work.

Tony

I often describe the fixed gear craze of the last few years as the gate-way drug to other forms of cycling. A lot of people who got into fixed gears after a while started buying more bikes and different bikes. The New England cross scene is one of the best in the country and has been thriving for many years. I think it was just a natural progression for people who enjoy riding bikes for transportation to also race them for fun and sport. So a lot of my friends started racing cross and a Geekhouse squad just made sense. More about this transformation can be seen here:

Back at my days at SIC we used to sponsor a lot of riders for Downhill MTB. I ran a race team for a bit while I was there and it taught me a lot about what a team can do for a small business. The team has definitely been good for the bottom line of the business and we build many cross bikes for non team members. That being said, I probably put way more time and effort into the team than financially makes sense. So in the end it's one of those things you do more because you love it.

As far as sponsors, I'm going to bring that back to my skills in pestering...;) I'm always talking to people about what they do and their own business. This kind of networking has helped me meet many other small business owners in the area, and sponsoring a team is a great way to help promote your business.

Hope that answers everything!