Building Ritchey

The story of how a humble man played a major part in disrupting the cycling industry. Not only is Tom Ritchey one of the founding fathers of mountain biking, but he’s also a master frame and component builder, innovator, and entrepreneur. Researching this episode and trying to put a timeline together to extract the major business milestones that Tom has been through was a bit of a daunting task. There’s so much there. He’s been in business for 50 years and as modest a business as he’s intentionally kept it, it hasn’t always been a straightforward journey. So much of Tom’s story has already been documented and I didn’t want to just do that again. In fact, I can’t do justice to telling Tom’s intertwined life and business journey in a podcast of any reasonable length. But as it turned out, what came out of Tom during our interview ended up being so much better. At this point in Tom’s life I found him incredibly reflective on his experiences, with the benefit of years of hindsight and perspective.