http://cielo.chrisking.com/build-team/
"THE BUILD TEAM
The build team supporting Chris at Cielo Cycles is a mix of framebuilding veterans along with staff drawn directly from the production team at Chris King Precision Components. Much like the bicycles they create, the team is a mixture of heritage and modernity.
Founder: In addition to prototyping, design work and overseeing the entire operation Chris King is still very much a part of the build process. Cielo by Chris King are individually made, ultra-premium bicycles made in limited numbers by Chris King himself.
Design Manager: Jay SyCip founded SyCip Designs in 1992 with his brother Jeremy and for 16 years designed bikes overshadowed only by his remarkably gregarious personality and passion for the bicycle community. Jay joined King Cycle Group in 2008 and oversees the Cielo Cycles production process while also serving as a product manager for Chris King Precision Components.
Senior Frame Builder: Buck Olen grew up in Santa Rosa, where, at the age of five, he got his first bicycle. After school, some traveling and a brief Coast Guard stint, Buck made his way back to Northern California.
“I hooked up with some friends in San Francisco who were still cycling, mostly BMX and mountain biking. I also had this brakeless single speed road bike, when I wanted to stop I had to put my foot in the front wheel. Everyone was just excited to be doing it, it wasn’t an elite scene at all, everyone was just riding and I fell in love with cycling again.”
Buck quit his construction job, sold his tools and his truck and started buying, repairing, trading, fixing, modifying and wrangling bikes out of his apartment – “garage shop” style. He made the rounds, thrift stores and garage sales, looking for parts and frames. He also rode as courier in SF four days a week, five hours a day, which left him plenty of time to ride on his own too. Buck began to informally apprentice with some old-school lifer-mechanics. This lead to an introduction to Jay and Jeremy Sycip and a few years wrenching experience at Dave’s Bike and Sport, a local shop and institution. By this time Buck was considering going after a professional mechanic certification. He started to look around and interview for the next career move. He interviewed for a brazing position at Co-motion Cycles in Eugene, Oregon; two months later, he was hired. Buck was trained by Bob Westman, a 15-year veteran, the only other brazer working at Co-motion. A year and lots of late night and weekend practice later, Buck took over welding and started mitering and moving through and experiencing every station on the floor. Buck estimates he built more than 1000 bikes in three years. Around that time, Buck ran into Jay Sycip again, but Jay was now at Cielo. Buck mentioned to Jay that funnily enough he (Buck) was looking for a challenge and the chance to move to Portland. Four months later Buck was building bikes in Chris King’s barn with Gabe and Chris King himself.
“It was intimidating to work with Chris, but you could tell he was so psyched to be back in the shop and building, so there was this sense that we were all there having fun.”
Production Supervisor: Nick Sande can count on one hand the number of years in his life that bicycling wasn’t a daily experience. Four were spent learning to walk and talk, the fifth year was a brief detour in high school behind the wheel of a ’84 Chevy Caprice Wagon, or as Nick described it, “a couch with wheels.” Since then, Nick has spent much of his time riding and thinking about bicycles. During his twenties, he worked in shops and bounced between Minneapolis and Portland, In 1993, Nick found himself working for QBP and spent the next 16 years doing everything from distribution and wheel building to product development and engineering. Nick ended his tenure with a seven-year stint working to help create much of the current Surly line.
The long, cold Minnesota winters eventually took their toll and Nick’s exuberance for using bicycles as a vehicle for exploration led him to uproot and move to Portland. The city’s thriving bike culture and easy access to the outdoors conspired to create an irresistible combination. Now, when Nick is not managing the complex task of keeping perfect Cielos on time step-by-step, he can be found in the far reaches of the state looking for the place he hasn’t been.
Frame Builder: Jesse Bambrick grew up outside Lansing, Michigan. His first bike was a mountain bike, it was a beater but it was his only way out of town and he liked to get out of town. After high school and part way through an unimpressive electronics program at the local community college, Jesse and his girlfriend Beth went on a five-month bike tour that ended, 3,600 miles later, in Eugene. Jesse fell in love with cycling. After several years working at a bike shop back in Michigan, Jesse and Beth moved back to the Pacific Northwest, this time to Portland. He worked for Chris King first as a materials handler and then, after catching wind that Cielo was in the process of being re-born, as an apprentice Frame Builder.
“Ever since that cross-country trip, I’ve wanted to build bicycle frames and this was my chance.”
Detail oriented and compelled to make things with his own two hands, Jesse, with Gabe and Buck’s help, has learned to build bikes. Jesse likes to make things fit and he still likes to get out of town on his bike.
Frame Builder: Chris Scuglia grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico with lots of miles hiking and mountain biking along the Rio Grande. San Francisco called his name in 1994 where he quickly found a job as bike messenger for a company located directly across the alley from Sycip Designs. (ed.- How strange is that?!?) After six years turning the pedals as a messenger he was offered a job at Kelly Bike Company and did everything from finishing raw frames to shipping and receiving. Somewhere in all this he fought fires for the National Park Service for two years and around 2003, Chris left to pursue a career in fine architectural metal fabrication in Boise, Idaho. He opened up Scuglia Fabrication, an 800sq./ft fab shop, making a couple bikes, doing some frame repair, adding on braze-ons for people as well as making trophies and furniture and truck racks and hand rails and whatever paid the bills. As only love can do, Chris followed his wife to Paris, France in 2009 and worked as a mechanic for a bicycle tour company. On a lark, Chris sent his resume to Chris King in June 2010 for a machinists position, nailed his interview and made the move to Portland, OR. It didn’t take long for Cielo to grab a hold of him and to Chris King Precision Components we say, “Merci beaucoup!”
Painter: Ben is a perfectionist. At a company built on the idea that when you do something you do it exactly right, perfection is the precise quality you want in someone who is going to apply the piece de resistance, the frame paint. Ben spent three-and-a-half years at Seven cycles. During that time he first apprenticed then ran their paint department, developed new paint schemes, trained other painters, and put the paint on countless frames. He draws inspiration from his many side projects that include developing a jewelry line and printmaking while constantly feeding his fascination with architecture and design.
Having spent time mountain biking in Colorado before he moved himself out to Boston for architecture school, Ben now uses his bicycle as his main mode of transportation. If you believe that each day of work inspires the next, that each new challenge breeds a new solution and each new solution breeds a new challenge, then you could go on creating forever, and Ben wouldn’t have it any other way.
Cielo Support: Eric Speakman was raised just outside of Philadelphia, and cut his teeth mountaineering in the forests and mountains of the eastern United States. Cycling has always been a part of his life, but it wasn’t until his move to Portland, where he began working for Chris King that it became a focal point. Upon moving to Portland he came to realize that road cycling allowed the same type of escapism and solitude that he cherished in mountaineering, while offering the immediate satisfaction of being able to leave right from his front door.
Eric spent three years as part of the Chris King sales team, addressing any and all customer service issues before taking a year off to finish his geography degree. Eric now works part- time in the Cielo shop buffing, cleaning, and scrutinizing each frame before and after it goes to paint. He could be considered the Cielo gatekeeper, as he is most likely the last person to touch your bike before it is delivered into your hands.
Cielo Support: Ben Schultz was born in the great state of Wisconsin in October 1986, by all accounts he is the youngest member of the Cielo team. His first obsession was with cars, with a penchant for “spirited” driving Ben found himself modifying, tweaking and tuning everything, never happy with good enough. It was Ben’s other passion, his love for coffee, which brought him to Portland. His obsession with cars had morphed into an appetite for coffee. While he supported himself through college by pulling espresso shots, he developed a heightened awareness of environmental issues and found himself falling in love with bicycles.
Soon he was balancing coffee with part-time work in local bike shops while he completed the UBI frame-building course. It was a chance meeting with Jay Sycip outside of Water Avenue Coffee that lead to a conversation about coffee and bicycles and eventually led him to a job handling a majority of Cielo’s prep work. It is Ben’s drive to refine and perfect everything put in front of him that makes him a perfect fit for Cielo. We look forward to seeing him continue to add his golden touch to each of your frames.
Collaborations: Chris King Precision Components, with its renowned engineering and manufacturing departments, supports the build team at Cielo – Machined fork crowns, stainless steel dropouts, head tube collars and engraved seat stay caps are just a select few of the items they help Cielo Cycles fabricate."
MTB, MTB, MTB.
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