Prestacycle on building up its UK and European cycle market reach
With a new EU warehouse set up in France, and key personnel in place, Prestacycle has a solid footing in Europe and the UK as the firm looks to build sales. CIN speaks with Prestacycle’s President and founder David Finlayson on ‘me too’ product and innovation in the bike tool sector…
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Upstate New York, Prestacycle is no stranger to the wider UK and European market (thanks in part to a strong OEM back ground and some high profile pro team partnerships), but lately the firm has been steadily building its infrastructure in Europe and the UK: including bringing European Brand Manager Richard Eakins on board at the end of 2023 and now with a European warehouse set up in France, from where it is centralising is distribution efforts in the region.
This all comes as Prestacycle’s performance has been flying high – a record year in 2024 has been followed by an even stronger ‘25 – passing the previous year’s sales total by August. With its redoubled efforts in Europe, the firm is looking for a third record year in a row.
“Don’t do something that’s already been done”
One throughline from Prestacycle’s early days has been a philosophy to deliver product that can do something better, focusing on a concise range rather than a vast array of me-too products.
“We’re at about 130 SKUs, including parts and service items, and that’s an important point for us,” explains Prestacycle’s President and founder David Finlayson. “When you look at the bundle for our premium inflator, it includes the optional urethane cover, the optional hose if you want to use any of our premium heads, and an additional urethane rubber. It is a wear item, particularly if you’re putting it on and off threaded valves often, so it’s a good idea to replace it every once in a while to keep things snug. For pretty
much all of our products with wear items, we provide kits.
“For the first 10 or 12 years when I came out with something new, it would take off and go down well with the public and I would say to myself quietly ‘oh gee, that’s it, I don’t think I have anything else coming up…’ and then next year ‘oh there it is, there’s the
idea’. So, the excitement is there and I’m not dead yet!”
“Someone asked us in the comments of a Facebook post ‘why don’t you make a cassette tool?’ I replied that of course we could make a cassette tool, but there are many available that are essentially the same tool on the end of an arm.
“You could add another 200 products to the range, but they wouldn’t be any different. So having a smaller range that’s improving on things or doing something better or doing something nicer is way more interesting than just going, oh, let’s have 500 SKUs and try
and sell them all.”
“It’s always been our philosophy to not do something that’s been done. The only time we get accused of doing something that’s been done is when we actually did it for somebody else first as an OEM product. When we first came out with the Elite last year, we got a number of comments along the lines of ‘Oh, isn’t that the Feedback tool?’ and the answer was yes, it is. We did that for them.”
Talking of pressures to expand its tool ranges, how does Prestacycle view innovations like Schwalbe’s Clik valve, an alternative to the long established Presta and Schrader? It turns out, Prestacycle had that covered right from the off. “We were actually doing Clik
from day one,” says Finlayson picking up the story. “This was a fun day at Eurobike. We visited the Schwalbe booth and that was the first time I had heard of it or seen it. We noticed that Schwalbe had three ball bearings where we had three pincer clips in our Pro Presta Head. So I pulled one out of my pocket, clicked it onto the Clik valve, and it worked perfectly. They were intrigued that our head works on both perfectly and has a zero pull release… so it works on either and it’s been very popular. It has been a top seller for us, and it’s been on the market now for close to two years.”
Key launches
Electric bike pump Prestaflator GO has proved a firm favourite on the bike media review circuit and has since been followed up with the Prestaflator GO Lite. Finlayson says: “When Fumpa’s OG Bike Pump first came out, they approached me at Interbike about helping them with distribution as a brand-new single product company. We really didn’t see at the time that it was going to be a volume product. It was an excellent product, but pricey, more of a serious mechanic-level product. But we watched the technologies
and saw the changes in the market. We accessed a microchip-controlled drone motor that has an exterior that spins and self-cools and also lithium polymer batteries. Those are the batteries you find in an iPhone, and that’s why you never hear about iPhones catching on fire. They’re a solid gel rather than a flammable lithium liquid. And we were able to leverage those technologies to make a pump that is very fast, cool and reliable.
“Generally, when I do design work on products, if there’s anything to compare to, I look at the downfalls. Like with a torque tool and there is the warning ‘do not unscrew’, and I’m the kind of engineer where I say, well, why not?
“With the inflators heat seem to be the biggest issue. You know, they have a hose just because the tool gets so hot, they need to keep it away from the bike to not harm the bike. I said ‘why?’. It shouldn’t be hot. We can solve that. And we did. And coincidentally, it incorporates one of our existing technologies, our oversized urethane head. The large urethane rubber absorbs all of the vibrations which generate heat in the first place. So we’re able to simply push that thing on… Really, it’s about tackling the issues to get rid of
them, and that is mostly my approach in the design work that I do.”
Another key recent launch is the TorqRatchet Elite: “The original of that elite tool was longer. It didn’t have as much torque range and it had a heavy steel head, but it was still incredibly successful. I went back to the drawing board to cut down the size, increase
portability and cut down weight. I was also able to increase the torque range. For me, two through 12 Newton meters is a magic range. It’s no compromise. If you go beyond 12, you just need a tool that’s so long you’re not going to put in your pocket. Now I feel
like we have the perfect tool. It’s a go everywhere tool in a lot of incredibly positive ways.”
Building presence in the UK and Europe
“We started small in the US,” explains the Prestacycle founder to CIN. “I introduced the Prestaflater in December 2006, went to Interbike in 2008, and came back with three distributors selling them into bike shops from that point. We grew, started adding products, and then ended up in the big distributors by 2015… When we got to a size that we really recognised we need to be global, we started pursuing UK and Europe. By that time, B2C was becoming a big thing, particularly in US markets.
“We started to reach out to the consumers directly with marketing campaigns to make sure everybody knows our name. We made our products available, not in a discounting way, but as a way to publicise and make us more visible. We thought that was going to hurt our retailer market, but it didn’t. It increased it. The more retailers that got asked about our products, the more started to say, well, we better carry some of those things. People want to buy them. So, it’s been a growth area for us. But we also recognise that our best resource to reach people with modern tools is to simply have a website there, a ware house there, and approach the latest in multimedia marketing. So we opened that up with Richard in Europe, and in the UK two years ago.
“We did also have a focus of reaching out to Europe. We opened a similar operation in Germany and in Netherlands. These were with third-party distributors. But the only way for us to get all of Europe is to just go there ourselves. So that’s what we’re doing.”
“Although primarily we are B2C, at the moment in the UK we have 20 bike shops working with us. We probably wouldn’t have another distributor in place in the UK because it’s small enough that you can manage that. But there is certainly room to grow on the
bike shop side of things as well.
“We’d like to think that we look after the bike shops. You won’t really find us discounted online. And we’re getting more visibility, too, through the likes of Ribble having a tool kit that is from Prestacycle. It’s an offering with any of their bikes, either in a bike bag or in the down tube. It high lights offering the smallest and lightest with the most capabilities.”
“We’ve been working quite hard in expanding our visibility and our partnerships across Europe. We push forward, we run lean and we’re going local. We aim to meet the needs of the end users themselves. And we do find a lot of mechanics love us for that, but
that’s more of a bonus than a focus.”
