Adam's 2025 Year In Review
I know I said it last year, but wow – what a year.
It is so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, but the end of the year is a good time to reflect and take a moment to appreciate all that we did. 2025 was another big year at Sklar. I have always adhered pretty strongly to a “show don’t tell” philosophy when it comes to how I present this brand to the world, but here is a little chance for me to get poetic and provide a little peek behind the curtain. Not that there is anything we are hiding back here, but I don’t know – let’s take the chance to go over what we have done and where we are heading. Switching from framebuilding to a little bicycle brand has honestly been a lot harder than I expected, but this year things started to come together in a way that, four years later, looks like we may have, to put it in cycling terms, made it to the top of the first climb and it’s going to be a really pedally, almost uphill descent!
In January we finally launched the Performance Basket Jammer, or the PBJ. Goals are always changing, especially when running a business. One goal that hasn’t shifted as much since going production was my vision of a three-model company. I felt like the gravel bike (SuperSomething), mountain bike (Tall Tale), and the touring/all-arounder (PBJ) were the three models that covered my personal interests, and when one was slow the others could cover and keep things afloat. Years ago my friend Mason casually dropped me one of the pieces of business advice I think about most often and that is that you have to do things your own way. The reality is, with a business like this, you can’t sell things that aren’t true to yourself. It is just too intimate and personal to fake. In that way I do often feel exposed with the bikes and parts that I design. Because of how personal they are, it has felt truly special to see folks resonate with them and the fact that it is supporting me and Nick is something I am extremely grateful for. I hope to add another one or two people to the Sklar team in 2025 (hit us up if you think there is something you could do here). I am excited to bring in more voices to the brand, do more collaboration, and continue making really cool and thoughtful things that bring joy to others’ lives.
In February we quietly relocated the shop from Oakland to San Francisco. I didn’t want to make a huge deal about this, because does it matter that much? I suppose it does. The reasons are mostly personal, but at this point this is a pretty personal business. I had been living in San Francisco for nine months and commuting to Oakland to a big, lonely warehouse, and when the opportunity came up in a beautiful space next door to my friends at OuterShell and a whole bunch of other amazing community, I couldn’t say no. My good friend Chris McNally, famed cycling-world illustrator, is just a few doors down, as well as my buddy Jess, who does Tunitas bags. Not to mention many artists and creative folks who are the type I normally enjoy surrounding myself with. I feel so lucky to have landed here, and having the shop just a 20-minute ride from home in one of the coolest (and sunniest) neighborhoods in SF couldn’t be more perfect. Seeing this brand through the lens of California has been really interesting. I know that Montana was a large character in the Sklar brand, and so many people asked me “why?” when I moved away. We don’t need to get into that now, but I do feel like the way that cycling can integrate into life here is really aligned with Sklar as a brand, and that is cool to see. Not to mention the way the cycling community has really embraced us, and I just feel incredibly lucky about that. SF was always the number one place I sent my handbuilt bikes over the years. It’s a big reason I ended up visiting here and falling in love with the city, so now being a part of it is really neat.
March and April were an awesome time to be in SF. As I settled into the new shop, we saw really nice traction with the business. Back when I was a framebuilder, demand was pretty year-round. I always had a list, and sure, inquiries would come in waves a little through the season, but this was the first year where I was really like, “Oh, spring is here.” That was quite interesting to see. It was right around this time that I also hired my friend Nicholas. I had been putting out feelers for someone to help with customer service, sales, and some of the creative work, and I was extremely hesitant to hire a friend. That can be a complicated endeavor. But in the back of my mind I knew I was really looking for someone with Nick’s experience, and having collaborated already many times over our decade-long friendship, we took the leap, and that has been one of the best things for the business so far. It is awesome to have him on board, and I am really excited about the things we are doing together here at Sklar.
In spring my friend John Watson also came to hang out for a few weeks, and we got to not only go on a sweet bike tour around the Bay, but also chat and hang. Lots of lunches and dinners. Always fun to hang and chat with John. We went on a sweet bike tour to take photos for the PBJ’s too.
PBJs were slated to show up in late June, but after a delay pushed them to late July, I decided to hit the road to see some summer. San Francisco is foggy and cold in the summer; good thing it’s beautiful everywhere else. I went to see my parents in Colorado and all my dear friends in Montana, with lots of stops for bike rides and creek dips and hot springs along the way. It was the reset I needed, and I think about it often. What a great trip.
In July the PBJs finally did arrive. This felt momentous for a few reasons. The first being that any time a shipping container of bikes with your name on them shows up, that is pretty exciting, especially a new model. The big reason, though, is that the arrival of the PBJ was more or less the culmination of my original vision for Sklar 2.0. Three models, a sprinkling of parts, some complete builds here and there, and some special runs here and there. I have spent the last five years scraping every penny and leveraging literally all of the debt I have access to to put back into the next run of bikes. There were lots of times it felt like this point was a long way away, so finally seeing it was really freaking cool. One step closer to turning this thing into a real (very small) bike company.
In September I got to stop by Grinduro, an event that is a lot of the reason I ended up in California. I went to the first five or six of these events and met so many Bay Area folks who ended up becoming friends I would visit in SF, and those visits made me want to live there. So closing that loop felt very sentimental and nice. Right after Grinduro, Nick and I hopped on a plane to Japan, where we got to visit our long-time partner, Circles. We wrote and vlogged a lot about that trip, but the gist of it was that through all the designing dropouts and nerding out on geometry, the coolest outcome of all this is having friends across the world who you really connect with. Also, bikes are the best way to see a place.
We came back shortly after to another shipping container of bikes. This time, the updated SuperSomething. This launch was another big step for the business, as we did a no-pre-order launch. Our customers (possibly even you) have been incredibly gracious by participating in pre-orders. The real tough part of this business is cash flow. It just doesn’t make sense to order less than about 250 frames at a time. You pay half down, half when they are done, and that is two really big chunks of cash. Doing a pre-order can greatly soften the blow, and Sklar would absolutely not have made it this far without pre-orders because banks still don’t really want to give me a large enough line of credit to cover these batches. Pre-orders are also a little nerve-racking though. You are holding on to customers’ money without delivering a product, which is a real liability. What if the bikes show up with something wrong? What if someone changes their mind? It’s really stressful, and it is exciting to see enough equity built up in the company that we might not have to do it again. I really hope we can keep on this no-pre-order train.
From a design perspective, the new SuperSomething is interesting because it is the result of four years of customer feedback. I am not sure if people realize, but we are getting 5 to 10 emails most days asking for fit advice on bikes, and we pay close attention to that information. For example, we found that the previous size 52 and 54 were too close, and most folks were sizing up to the 54, so I sort of mixed those sizes together based on real feedback and fit numbers and made the smaller size smaller.
I hate to make cheesy framebuilding metaphors (just kidding I love it), but I have been thinking that “the factory is the file”. A file is a metalworking tool often used in framebuilding, if you didn’t know. You can have the nicest tools on earth and still build super bad stuff if you don’t know how to use them. Craftsmanship is a result and not a process. When I look at the updated SuperSomething, I truly see the last five years of working with factories in Taiwan.I see myself getting better at working with that tool in the same way I first saw myself laying down welds that I had previously only dreamed of after years of practice. There isn’t much more gratifying than seeing things get a lot better and I think we are starting to push towards a quality of production bike that I was not sure could happen. Making special things is special.
Well now December is nearly over and here we are, thanks for sticking with me if you made it this far. I say it every year, but sheesh, that was the biggest one yet. So much is in store for 2026. It should be the first spring with all three models in stock, not to mention handlebars and other things. We have a cool rear rack on the way, a drop handlebar on the way, an XC hardtail on the way, and some other things in the works too, but not too many. I am excited to stay focused on what we do well and to do a really good job at those things. We’ve got some events lined up. Nick and I are finally going to check out Mid South all the way in Oklahoma, and then we will be at Lost and Found and Grinduro in California, and probably some other fun local events too.
OK, thanks for following along, and happy new year!
Adam