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Kirk Frameworks
As we go through life we have experiences that shape and guide us in both our personal and professional lives. Some of these experiences fade from memory over time and some never do. Below are a few anecdotes that have stuck with me and played a role in shaping me as a person, my choice of career, and the essence of Kirk Frameworks.
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In the mid 1960’s many American military officers came back from tours of Europe with exotic cars they bought overseas. Living in Rome New York, next to the Griffiss Air Force base, meant there were a large number of foreign cars in the area that needed servicing. This was a time when foreign cars were truly foreign and you couldn’t bring your V12 Jaguar to the corner garage to have it serviced - so enthusiasts brought their cars to my father, John Kirk. His natural mechanical skills and knowledge of foreign cars made him very popular. So popular that it was normal to wake up on Saturday morning to see the driveway outside our apartment filled with British, German and Italian sports cars owned by men who wanted John’s help synchronizing their Weber carbs or deciphering the mystery that was Lucas electronics. I watched my dad work on the cars just for the joy of working with his hands on such exotic machinery. Bent over the cars, he used his experience and sensitive hands, eyes and ears to diagnose problems with ignition timing or carburetor jetting and with a few tweaks got the cars running as they were designed to run. Seeing the smiles on the owner’s faces told the story.
It was at about this time that John gave me my first real bike. Despite the fact that he worked on expensive cars he didn’t make much money and couldn’t afford to buy me a new bike – so he built one for me. Using parts pulled from junk bikes he built me up a road bike with 20” wheels, drop handlebars and 3 speeds. He painted it British Racing Green and put my name on the chainguard in chrome letters. To me it was every bit as cool as the Aston Martin parked in the driveway on Saturday morning because he made it for me, with his own hands. This was my introduction to the idea that things like bikes and cars didn’t just pop out of a molds but were made by people using their knowledge, skill, and experience. I then understood that there were passionate craftsman hidden away in their shops building the things that we use and I knew that I wanted to become one of those craftsmen.
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Once a year, Davis Phinney, leader of the Coors Light professional cycling team, would come to the Serotta factory for a few days to boost the morale, get his hands dirty, go for a ride with the shop guys and visit the birthplace of his bikes.
The rides were a ‘no one gets dropped’ type of ride and they were a good time to hang out on the bike and talk. We were heading back to the factory at a casual 15 mph when one of our builders, Richard, started taunting Davis. Richard called him names and told him that he didn’t think that Davis could stay on his wheel. Richard then sprinted up the road ahead of the group and Davis just smiled and laughed. After Richard got a good 200 meters up the road Davis asked, “Should I reel him in?” We were approaching a corner that I knew was full of gravel and sand but before I could give a warning Davis flew out of the group and up the road. I’ve ridden with some very strong riders but I’ve never seen anyone accelerate that quickly before and he was going an easy 35 mph when he passed Richard and dove into that dirty corner. I thought for sure he’d go down in the gravel and imagined the huge road rash he’d have. Yet Davis counter-steered into the corner, laid the bike way over and two wheel drifted through the corner in complete control – gravel spitting out from under the tires. The look on Richard’s face was priceless.
This was remarkable in two ways. The most obvious was that Davis had no trouble at all carving around the corner with so much junk in the road. He never backed off or stopped charging – he just railed it. The second was he did it on a bike I designed and built for him. Prior to racing Serottas he raced on ‘crit’ bikes with silly steep angles with short front-centers. While racing in Europe Davis realized that a solid stage race bike was the bike of choice for both long and short events and we built him stage race bikes from then on. I can’t tell you how cool it was to see my work put to that cornering test. It was rewarding to know that he trusted the bike so much. I’ll never forget that.
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Shortly after I started Kirk Frameworks I started working on what would become the ‘Terraplane’ seatstay option. I’d worked on this kind of thing before when I designed the Serotta Hors Categorie and wanted to build on my previous work. While the Serotta-DKS worked well, I felt it had too much – too much stuff, too much weight, and too much travel. I wanted a more elegant and simple design that would keep the rear wheel firmly planted at all times.
I worked on many designs and settled on a simple ‘S’ curve to the seat stays. I took Kirk frame #1, my personal bike, cut the seat stays off it and set it up so I could try different stays on that same bike. It took a long time to get the radius and duration of the bends right to give the desired spring rate and a lot of steel went into the recycling bin. After testing many stays on the same frame it looked like hell. It had burnt yellow paint, a rear wheel travel indicator brazed onto it and it looked like a school science project gone wrong. But I’d arrived at the final design and it rode wonderfully – stiff and responsive when out of the saddle yet calm and stuck to the ground in corners and when going downhill. Ripping around corners it had that same hunkered down feeling the DKS had but without any feeling of softness. I loved it.
And then I started doubting myself. I’d cleaned the bike up and emailed photos of it to friends, family and a few customers along with an explanation of how it worked and waited for the positive feedback to come flowing in. It didn’t. Most feedback was negative and centered on how much they disliked the looks of the bike. I was pretty bummed. Even my mom said it looked ‘nice’ and you know what that means.
I kept riding the one and only prototype and despite the negative feedback from others I loved the way it rode. I then thought of a Henry Ford quote from the time he invented the automobile. He said, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” With that in mind I decided to offer the Terraplane to see what would happen. The feedback online, before anyone had ridden one, was much the same as from my focus group – that thing is ugly and no one needs it. I even had ‘experts’ tell me that it doesn’t work. They’d never ridden one and didn’t know much about it, yet they knew it didn’t work. Alrighty then. But I kept it on the price list and over the next few months a few open-minded riders ordered them. Once I got them out there the owners started reporting back how they have never been able to corner so fast before – or they had never felt so confident descending. The customers were confirming what I already knew - that the Terraplane worked. In time other customers took a chance and they too liked the Terraplane. At this point, 6 years later, about 50% of my customers chose the Terraplane seat stay option.
The Terraplane lesson was invaluable. It taught me that if I have a good idea and can back it up, I should get it out there and let the market decide if I was right. If I’d listened to the initially discouraging feedback I’d never have gotten the idea out there to let it prove its worth. It feels good to have done that. Ask any owner how they feel about their Terraplane and I’ll bet they’re glad I stuck with the idea.
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The above are three of the many formative events that helped point me down my chosen path. I thank you for your time and look forward to answering your questions. As my literary hero Spaulding Gray once said – “I don’t promise answers, but I do promise responses.” Thanks so much to Richard and Josh for making this Smoked deal possible.
Dave
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Originally Posted by Carl S
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