JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #107 - August/September 2016 - 36

MANUFACTURING company visit

Canyon bicycles:
a business & technological success
Like a Silicon Valley start-up, Canyon GmbH's story started in a
garage - or rather, in a trailer - in 1985. The leading producer of
mid-range and high-end bicycles is now generating annual sales
of more than 100 million euros. Led by carbon, composites account
for most of that.

anyon is on a never-ending quest for the
best bicycle in every category. With that
as a given, along with a direct marketing
model that reduces both the number of intermediaries and the end prices, it is no surprise
that the company has been growing by 30%
per year for the past 4-5 years.

From imports to the big time
Canyon GmbH's story began in 1985 with
Rad-Sport-Arnold GmbH, a German importer of bicycle parts from Italy, with brand
names like Cinelli, Duegi, or Colombus (for
frames). The beginnings were modest: a
garage and a trailer. The father of Canyon's
CEO Roman Arnold competed at the time
in bike racing and created the business. Roman took over later. In 1996, the company

started to produce its own bicycle under the
brand name Canyon and adopted a direct
marketing strategy.
Canyon Bicycles GmbH was created in 2002,
and the following year started selling directly
from its website, canyon.com. In 2005, the
young business presented the world's lightest
road bike, weighing only 3.7 kg. The brand
showed up in professional UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale, or International Cycling
Union) circles for the first time in 2007 with
the Unibet.com team. In 2014, the company's sales exceeded 100 million euros for the
first time, and the next year, it opened a new
state-of-the-art assembly and logistics plant
near Koblenz, not far from the old one. The
new site accommodates the headquarters,
testing centre and showroom with its museum, along with the company's only physical
sales outlet. Canyon currently distributes its

Fig. 1: Canyon
delivers bicycles
and components to
58 countries

jec composites magazine / No107 August - September 2016

products in 58 countries (Figure 1).
Canyon supplies bikes for road, cyclo-cross,
triathlon, time-trial and all mountain-bike
categories to a number of professional teams
and competitive cyclists: Unibet.com, Omega Pharma-Lotto, Silence-Lotto, Katusha
and Movistar (road), the Fumic brothers
(mountain bike), and the Canyon//SRAM
Racing professional women's team. Victories
achieved include the 2012 World Tour win
by Russian team Katusha's Joaquim Rodríguez; Manuel Fumic's win in the 2008 German MTB Cross Country Championships;
Cadel Evans' win in the 2009 Road Cycling
Championships; Quintana's pink jersey in
the 2014 Giro d'Italia; and British timetrialist Alex Dowsett's world hour record of
52,937 metres for the Movistar team.

Design and composites: key skills
To fulfil its goal to be an innovative conceptual designer, Canyon had to become a
specialist in composites (even if part of its
production is still aluminium for entrylevel bicycles). The company recruited Dr.
Michael Kaiser, with a PhD in composite
structures as applied to bicycles from the
University of Kaiserslautern's Institut für
Verbundwerkstoffe in 2005. He is now head
of product development, with a staff of 35
that includes 20 engineers, plus industrial
and style designers and product managers.
Design plays a leading role at Canyon. The
function and capabilities of each bicycle

http://www.cyclitech.events http://www.Unibet.com http://www.canyon.com http://www.Unibet.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #107 - August/September 2016