Richard Sachs on Craft, CYBC, RSCX, and New England Cyclocross

Richard Sachs is one of the most respected names in American cycling craft, but this conversation goes far beyond framebuilding.

In this episode of the New England Endurance Podcast, Richard joins Art Trapotsis for a wide-ranging conversation about his journey from New Jersey to England to Connecticut, the founding of his company in the 70's, and the deeper meaning that has kept him building bicycles by hand for more than five decades.

They talk about what truly drives his work at the bench as a bicycle frame builder, why he has stayed committed to traditional steel bicycles, and how he sees the difference between something that is manufactured and something that is genuinely made. Richard also reflects on the beauty that first drew him into cycling, the European racing culture that shaped his imagination, and the philosophy behind building a bicycle that feels right for a specific rider.

The conversation also explores Richard’s enormous impact on New England cycling culture through the Connecticut Yankee Bicycle Club (CYBC), the Richard Sachs cyclocross team (RSCX), and his continued support of grassroots racing through Project Mayhem. Along the way, he shares candid thoughts on rider development, community, sponsorship, the changing culture of the sport, and what he hopes people take from his life’s work.

This is a thoughtful and honest conversation about craft, legacy, racing, and doing meaningful work on your own terms.

This podcast embarks on a journey to showcase and celebrate the endurance sports community in New England.

Transcript

Art Trapotsis (00:00)
Is there a secret sauce that goes into these bikes Like, do you have like a little bit of craftsmanship that you put into it for that type of rider?

Richard (00:08)
No, everybody gets the secret sauce. And I'm glad you asked that question, because going back to the original ⁓ conversation about the materials and the tools and the mood and the expectations,

I feel like the human element, me, and the order in which I decide to go from the beginning to the end and everything in the middle is something I've been working on for, at this point, 54 or 55 years. And that is really the secret sauce.

It's the whole stew of ⁓ paying attention to everything that's on my bench and realizing that even if something does go a little sideways, that too is part of the whole. And I think that

the sum total of this is what makes the bike the bike.

Art Trapotsis (01:09)
Hey, welcome back to the New England Endurance Podcast. This is the show where we explore the clubs, events, organization, and companies that make up the endurance scene here in New England. And today's guest is one of the most respected names in American cycling craft. Richard Sachs has spent decades building bicycles by hand and helping shape a culture around racing, design, tradition, and community. And for longtime cyclists, his name means a great deal.

For younger riders out there who may be hearing it for the first time, this is a chance to meet the person behind the bikes, the philosophy and the legacy. So Richard, it's a real honor to have you on the New England Endurance podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Richard (01:54)
Thank you, Art ⁓ You read that just the way I wrote it. I appreciate that. Thanks.

Art Trapotsis (01:59)
I feel like I've known you for my entire cycling career, even though we've never met. I've seen you, you know, at cyclocross events dating back to the 90s, early 2000s. My good friend, Matt Krauss used to race for you. Justin Spinelli, who was recently on the podcast, you know, actually connected us. So I'm grateful for both of those guys and I'm grateful for all that you've done for the community. There's so many places we can start today.

I guess first off, where are you located? Where do you make your bikes? And I'd love to just hear about your story When did your company begin? So yeah, let's kick it off.

Richard (02:38)
Well, I'm in Deep River, Connecticut. We've been here about nine years. I moved to this area, one town up, Chester, in I think it was 1972, and watched the whole area evolve and...

By about 2008, we were starting to suffocate on ⁓ how precious some of these river valley towns were becoming because some of them became destination towns for tourists and people who want to spend the day in a country or related. I came here for a job. I came here to live.

So by 2008, when I had already been in Chester, the town that I had moved to originally, ⁓ we decided to move to the woods in Franklin County, Massachusetts, ⁓ in a little town called Warwick, just maybe 15 miles east of Northfield. So we moved up there and then we realized that ⁓ isolation and solitude ⁓

is okay, but it's not always the answer. So after about eight or nine years in the woods, we moved back here. So I'm in Deep River, maybe a mile south from where it all began in 1972.

Art Trapotsis (03:46)
Tough.

Wow, so you started building bikes in 1972?

Richard (04:03)
Well, I went to England. I, I actually didn't want to be a bike maker. That was not my, you know, first calling. I ended up after a while being a bike maker simply because I stayed in the trade long enough to realize that any, any,

Other ideas I may have had as like an adolescent or a teenager no longer existed. So I stayed with it. But yeah, I started my business in 1975. That was after maybe three or three and a half years of working for Woodcomb in England and Woodcomb USA in Connecticut, which is the second company is how I ended up in Connecticut because I'm from New Jersey. But I went from New Jersey to Vermont.

to London, to this area and pretty much stayed except for eight years in the woods.

Art Trapotsis (04:57)
Eight years in the, I mean, so you spent decades doing this and I'm sure you're right. This is like a series we would need to do with you to uncover all the different stages of your career, which as an entrepreneur that I am, I would love to hear that story. But I'm just curious, how did you keep it going? Like, how do you find the work so meaningful year after year? What drives you?

Richard (05:18)
Well, what drives me is that, you know, to hopefully put this in a neat nutshell is that ⁓ regardless of the sport or the industry or marketing or, you know, economy or anything, ⁓ what I do is make things.

Art Trapotsis (05:45)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (05:45)
What I happen to make is a bicycle frame. And while the bicycle frame has changed or evolved or in many cases devolved through the years, ⁓ it's still for me an interesting challenge to, let's say once a week or maybe five or six times a month, begin the next order. So whenever you have an order, that's when, you know, I say this often, that's when nothing has gone wrong. It's basically the ideal.

anything that you have in your head that you want to translate into a three-dimensional object for the person who commissioned you is what is at hand. But in spite of the fact that five decades plus have passed, whenever you pick up the material, whenever you start swinging tools, whenever you try to fabricate something that's in 3D ⁓ form,

that in your head is basically a fantasy because you haven't made it yet. The idea is to make it exactly the way you thought you designed it in your head so that it fits your vision and also works well with the client who hired you. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of materials. There's heat. There's torches. There's tolerances. There's accuracy. There's mood.

Art Trapotsis (07:00)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (07:10)
There's tools that are either sharp or need to be sharpened or need to be replaced. And when you get everything together and you start that next commission, let's say on Monday, we want to keep things neat and tidy, ⁓ by the time like the end of the day or Tuesday comes around, you realize that the human element or the human component of this makes it so that

you end up having a conversation or a collaboration with your materials and tubes. It's not just that, I'm Richard Sachs and I've made like thousands and thousands of these things. So it's predictable that like by Friday, it's going to be perfect. And it's going to be exactly the way I wanted it and exactly what the client hoped for. But in reality, when you have all these variables and

Art Trapotsis (07:54)
Yeah.

Richard (08:05)
things come in different sizes and diameters and dimensions and tolerances from the manufacturer, my job is to somehow find a perfect balance or an acceptable balance between all the ingredients that I have mentioned. ⁓ That is really what drives me. And I regularly refer to it as trying to tame the beast.

Art Trapotsis (08:23)
Yeah.

Richard (08:33)
because you have all the stuff and you have your tools and your mood and ⁓ the work order. it's not like you put this stuff in a form. You put some group on it. You let this group dry and then you pull it out of the form and it's a frame that looks exactly like you planned. The variables and the challenge to maybe

Art Trapotsis (08:33)
you

Richard (09:02)
eradicate the low points. ⁓ These are what they drive me. It has nothing to do with like double-blooded tubing or TIG welding or carbon fiber forks or what ⁓ Wild Ferenard rides or doesn't ride. I don't really care about the sport. I don't care about the industry. What I do care about is my relationship with what's on my bench.

Art Trapotsis (09:12)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (09:32)
and the vision that I have in my head and trying to really drive things so that on Friday, like I said, if you want to keep things neat and tidy, everything is the way it should be. And over time, I finally acquiesced to the fact that I'm in a working relationship with all this stuff, the tools, the pipes, the torches, the...

Art Trapotsis (09:52)
you

Richard (10:01)
the crap that I have to deal with, assuming there is crap to deal with. know, everything, you know, it's like a chef and a bunch of, you know, You you try to like meld things together and before you know it, it's like, it's, hey, what happened here? It kind of went over here when you wanted it to be over here. Or, you know, the stuff dried differently than I wanted it and it's not as moist as it. Like all these things,

Art Trapotsis (10:09)
Yeah.

Richard (10:31)
or what are the reason I continue. Of course, I have ⁓ loyal clients and a good demand for my products. And most people don't really do a deep dive into thinking about the question that you asked me, like, why does he do this? What drives him? But for me, it's like, ⁓ I need work. Everybody needs something to do after breakfast.

Art Trapotsis (10:36)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Richard (10:59)
And for

54 years, this is what I've been doing. And, you know, there have been high points. There have been some, you know, mediocre points. But along the way, I just feel like, you know, I know what to do. I just have to get to my bench and do it. And before you know it, it's time to start another one. And you look at the one you just finished and you think, you know, so.

Art Trapotsis (11:19)
Ha.

Yeah,

it's like each time you have a clean canvas, like you're speaking like an artist, know, a true craftsman. I mean, for someone who's never seen your bikes in person, how would you describe what makes a Richard Sachs bicycle or frame distinct without getting too deep into the technical weeds? just hearing your answer, yeah.

Richard (11:40)
Well, first of all,

I feel like at least starting in the ⁓ early 90s, I realized that like the industry is over here and I, perhaps guys like me are over here. You know, the industry just wants to keep reinventing things and making things more complicated and harder to service. I'm sure they don't do this deliberately, but.

from where I stand, it just looks like they've commodified every single part of the bicycle. And now they've introduced batteries and like Bluetooth and ⁓ motors or whatever. So like, don't really care about that stuff. I just feel like when I came into this,

And like I said before, I didn't really come into this thinking I'm going to be a professional frame builder, but I was a teenager and I did have a 10 speed bike back in the late 60s, early 70s. And I was a bit fascinated with the fact that I thought they were kind of beautiful. And the more I looked at them and the more I read about them and when I started understanding that there's a sport,

that's built around things that I found beautiful. I was really interested in the, I'll call it a construct, that there are men in Europe, you Italy, France, Great Britain, Benelux countries, who for their job go to the workbench and they fabricate these things by hand for people who race. Because back then it was really

unthinkable that you would go to a bike store and be able to leave with a bike that was ⁓ manufactured for racing. ⁓ In those days, everything was handmade because there was no robotics and ⁓ automation really was in its infancy as far as manufacturing goes. So even if you were looking at cheap bikes, they were made in factories by hand. They might have had workstations and, you know,

I'm sure some people cared more about their work than others. But at the top of the, let's say, food pyramid of bicycle making back then, ⁓ it was the frame builders who really set the tone for everything. And to use a cliche, drove the bus. And at some point along the way, I developed an affinity for this construct.

Art Trapotsis (14:19)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (14:30)
I still didn't ⁓ think about going to Europe and becoming one of them, but ⁓ I couldn't get it out of my head that these things were beautiful. There was a sport in Europe where all the photos that I've seen in international magazines were just like, draw me in the colors, the vistas, ⁓ the spirit of competition. And all of these people were riding bikes that were made by hand by people who were like called frame builders.

Art Trapotsis (14:35)
Ha ha.

Richard (14:59)
And I never really lost that taste. So my bikes, I think, are my interpretation of what I remember back when I was, let's say, 20 or 18 or 28, trying to channel the best I could.

Art Trapotsis (15:05)
Interesting.

Richard (15:25)
what I thought was actually happening in Europe. By then I had been to Europe a bunch of times and seen it firsthand, but there was still this fantasy that ⁓ if I work hard enough and long enough, I could be like some of these guys whose names were on the downtubes of bikes that I saw winning races. So that's what a Richard Sachs bike is. It has nothing to do with, like I said before, non-ferrous materials or

Y tires or all the stupid crap that they talk about these days.

Art Trapotsis (15:59)
Mm-hmm.

saying that your bikes are exclusively made out of steel, right? You're not doing any titanium.

Richard (16:08)
I'm not doing anything except steel. I have my own tubing that I designed. It comes in five different variations. I have all my own fittings that I've been producing since about 1999. And I also sell all these things to other frame builders if they want to make bikes for their clients that are kind of in the image of what we're talking about. Traditional steel bikes with forks that are made by me or

Art Trapotsis (16:32)
interesting.

Richard (16:38)
know, whoever I sell this stuff to. you know, horizontal top tubes and, you know, no springs. yeah. ⁓

Art Trapotsis (16:47)
But I mean,

just a little bit of a tangent here, but at what year or what point do you think that the riders in the Tour de France, let's say, were no longer riding hand-built bikes, but more mass produced?

Richard (17:00)
Well, I'd probably nail it down to the early to middle 90s when...

I'm going to do my best to say this in a concise manner. In the 80s, the road market was plummeting. It was probably plummeting because of saturation. I don't remember all the details. But in the wake of all that, the mountain bike, which was somewhat new in the late 70s, early 80s, somehow revitalized the bicycle business.

Art Trapotsis (17:11)
Okay.

Richard (17:37)
So stores, while they weren't selling as many road bikes as they once did, they couldn't make mountain bikes fast enough. then eventually, you know, the steam ran out for that market too. And all these mountain bike companies that like never existed before 1980 was like, what are we going to do now? So somehow, like from my vantage point, I think they got the idea, like, wow, you know, like,

we could use all this manufacturing ⁓ facility that we have and the tools and the workforce, we can make these ⁓ road bikes. And before you know it, it's like, you know, all these like mountain bike companies were putting their name on like road bikes. Everything back then was still like, you know, horizontal top tubes. And a lot of these companies never knew how to make forks in the first place, because they probably, you know, use rock shocks on most of their bikes. So they, you know, that's when the aftermarket fork

Art Trapotsis (18:15)
Yep

Richard (18:37)
⁓ business probably started to grow. So all these bikes that we're talking about that were made by like mountain bike companies had like aftermarket forks holding their front wheel. I never understood that myself, but that's a psychosis that I live with. by the time, you know, it evolved or grew a little bit into the late 80s.

Art Trapotsis (18:53)
Hmm, interesting.

Richard (19:05)
most of those companies were not rooted in the conventions that European companies were. And they started looking around for non-ferrous materials to maybe try, maybe to save money, to maybe improve the work that they're doing. They didn't embrace brazing the way ⁓ a generation before might have. So they thought, well, we can glue these things together, or we can weld them, or whatever it is. Now basically they put them in a big waffle iron and produce them.

so that they like one is like the 99 before it and the 2000 after them. And there's like really very little variation. So I think that by the time a lot of these companies figured out how to actually manufacture a frame rather than make them by hand or with like a human workforce, that's when the work that people like me,

that I do would begin to be supplanted by manufactured bikes, whether you're talking about Trek or Giant or God knows all the other Stevens or Bayer and by like Y2K. was like, you know, there's still probably a few people like commissioning a frame and putting somebody else's stickers on it. But I think that all ended by the time ⁓ the 21st century started. So now we're like in 2026 and

It'd be ridiculous to think that a frame builder per se could have a ⁓ team or a group. If I had continued in 2023 rather than shut down the team that I had been ⁓ managing and sponsoring for decades, I could have still been an example of, well, these things can be raised and they can still be

be under riders who get on the podium. But for reasons that are unrelated to this conversation at this point, I just decided to walk away from the sport completely.

Art Trapotsis (21:09)
Wow, well, okay,

so you just touched on something I sort of want to lead into, if you don't mind. So when I think of Richard Sachs, obviously I think of the frames, but I also personally, think of the someone who's a community builder. It seems like you've always had teams or clubs associated with your name. I'd love to start with the Connecticut Yankee Bicycle Club, CYBC. It has a super deep history in New England.

Richard (21:31)
Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (21:34)
Just for our listeners, you know, this was in the 60s and 70s It's my understanding that a bunch of great riders came through there Like how are you involved Richard and CYBC and what made it such a photo club for? developing riders

Richard (21:51)
Well, when I moved to Connecticut from London, it was to get a job at Whitcomb USA, which is in East Hadham, like, you know, maybe 10 miles from here. When I moved here and got that job, Whitcomb USA was already sponsoring a local club. I don't know the details of how that arrangement, you know, originated, but working there, it was like, well, you know, like I had already been

been racing in England and before that in Vermont when I was there for like one summer. So like racing was kind of like my identity. So, you know, I went straight from ⁓ like get off the plane, get a job, find a place to live. And my racing would be with CYBC. Back then we had some national class riders from America, one or two from Great Britain.

And it was a small group, maybe 10 people at the most. But back then also the entire sport was club system centric. So if you were interested in the sport, you would find a local club, you would join it, and you would become part of their small community. And I kind of fell into that.

Hook, Line, and Sinker because we had a good group of guys. Wickham USA, my boss, my employer, did a decent job of keeping the riders supported and sustained and ⁓ out of poverty, if you will. And they kept going.

Whitcomb USA ultimately decided to walk away from sponsorship probably by the middle to late seventies. There were a couple of other sponsorships that kept the club going. And by the time I'd say 1980, 1981 rolled around and one of the riders who was more active than

asked me if I could use my business, which was now like in its fifth or sixth year, and become a sponsor. In other words, we have no sponsors, would you like to, you know, come back into the fold and sponsor us? And I thought like, sure, like, you know, they were there ⁓ when I needed to be supported. It's only right that, you know, I step in.

Art Trapotsis (24:36)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (24:40)
But ultimately the CYBC thing became my identity.

Art Trapotsis (24:44)
I'd love to hear how this morphed into what I remembered was the Richard Sachs cyclocross team.

Richard (24:51)
that's easy. I got into cyclocross when I was still living in England. We used to go to the weekend event. For me, ⁓ the culmination of all of that was ⁓ the year that I was there, ⁓ the world championships were in Crystal Palace, which is, think, an area or a park in London. So I got to see, like right there, Eric Devlaminik, winner seven.

Art Trapotsis (25:18)
wow.

Richard (25:19)
I think seventh world championship, like right there in front of me. like, you know, in addition to like having spent a lot of the weekends going to the races, ⁓ I just thought that was the coolest thing because I was now watching people whose faces I'd see regularly in the European bike magazines. ⁓ And the needle was in my arm immediately. However,

Art Trapotsis (25:30)
That's it.

Richard (25:44)
When we came back, when I came back and we did all the road stuff with CYBC, ⁓ even though I had roots in ⁓ cyclocross, there really was no scene to speak of. In the late 90s, maybe it was the mid 90s, I was sponsoring two teams, again, concurrently. One of them was the Nexa team that Marco Wise, rest in peace, ran.

Art Trapotsis (26:11)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (26:13)
And it was basically a junior and a U-23 development team. And she thought that all the kids who now have their own kids should ride their bikes all year long. So they got into cyclocross quite early in the scheme of things. And I made a few bikes for them. I was really a road bike supplier to Nexo rather than a cyclocross. But ultimately,

you know, the relationships all change or end. And ⁓ I decided to kind of double dip. had a road team, which was serious. We had program riders for most of the 90s and we were really good. know it seems like yesterday, but most of the people who were listening to this might not have it have even been born yet. But I decided to kind of like diversify into Cycle Across.

Art Trapotsis (26:58)
Ha ha ha.

Richard (27:11)
by about 1997 or so, ⁓ little by little, so that the teams that I was sponsoring, ⁓ they could do either road or cross. Most people didn't do both back then. And before you know it, it's like the excitement and the bang for my buck as far as support goes was ⁓ in cyclocross was dwarfing.

Art Trapotsis (27:24)
Yeah.

Richard (27:40)
what we're used to on the road. And I just stayed with it. I think by 2001, I kind of stopped doing road stuff completely. Excuse me, there's a bug here. See ya. And just did cyclocross for the next 22 or 23 years.

Art Trapotsis (27:42)
Yeah.

No problem.

Does the team still exist?

Richard (28:02)
No, it doesn't. In 2023, it's funny because over time, the sport and it's... The sport changed. The club system seemed to break down, I don't know, somewhere along the lines. Let's just say early 90s. And before you know it, it's like we don't even know what...

the kids or the young people in my team, ⁓ they didn't even know what CYBC stood for. They didn't know the history of like how it started with some guy from my team asking me to take over the reins. They just knew that, you know, we had this presence at like every weekend and we were doing really well for a long time. And that, you know, maybe if they ask or wait or if we have, you know, the budget or the room.

they too could be part of the Richard Sachs cyclocross team. So RCX became its own identity, but it's really inseparable to me from CYBC and the whole lineage that precedes all this. So in 2023, after like I said, 44 or so years, for many, many reasons, I thought like, you know,

I think the term in the financial world has matured. ⁓ The project matured to the point that we were starting to repeat ourselves. were starting to not

Art Trapotsis (29:30)
Ha ha ha ha.

Richard (29:41)
give back to the sponsorship program as much as it once ⁓ was receiving. And people didn't really know how to reconcile that because people got so used to the fact that every August or September, we'd roll around and before you know it, we'd be at every race weekend like everybody else. And then January, we'd say, okay, see you next fall. ⁓

Most of the mechanics behind the whole thing were my wife and I. My wife's name is Deb and I'd be lying if I...

It was at least 11 months of the year of organizing and hustling and arranging and rearranging riders, sponsors, ⁓ industry suppliers, finances. ⁓ By the time like 2010 rolled around, the amount of support that we had was amazing.

Art Trapotsis (30:30)
Wow. Yeah.

Richard (30:47)
we had, I don't want to say so much money, but we didn't really have too much to worry about as far as supporting the riders. So for about 10 years, things were going perfectly swell. We were getting results, we were getting corporate sponsors. I was supplying the bikes, I was buying the clothing. One or two years we had a clothing supplier, so that kind of lightened my load a little bit. But for the most part, this was all...

Art Trapotsis (30:51)
Ha

Richard (31:16)
one long labor of love. And I think COVID was really the tipping point for us because we had a full season plan, bikes were made, clothing was made, and then COVID made it so we didn't have a schedule. So we had a whole season where the riders that we did have were, the obligation that I tried to put them under was, in spite of the fact that we're not going to races, we still need you to do reels or

storylines that relate to this project that we call RSCX so that the sponsors whose money we already have felt like they were getting their just due. But after we started racing again in 2020 or whenever we got back into it, it just didn't feel like it did before we had a year off. And I think the writing was on the wall. It was just time.

Art Trapotsis (32:07)
Yeah.

that's tough.

Yeah. Well, you had an incredible run.

Richard (32:15)
Yeah, I I I

Well, I didn't think it would ever end to tell you the truth, but ⁓ when I started, all the riders that we had in our group were my friends and my racing buddies. Ultimately, ⁓ I realized like everybody gets old, they get a job, they don't want to race anymore, and we get new people. Before you know it, it's like the big brother to a lot of people who are maybe 15 years younger than me.

And then I felt like, ⁓ now I feel like their parents. And by the time it ended, there were moments that I felt like not only was I was no longer their parents, I felt like their grandparents. And I also started feeling like a babysitter because it was, I kept holding onto this vision that we had at the front end. We're trying to do something good and support people so that if they are interested in racing, we could find some way to take.

Art Trapotsis (33:01)
no.

Richard (33:18)
three, four, five, six people create a structure within which they could ⁓ have the easiest route to fulfilling any fantasies of being a racer that they might have had. And then basically it was like, okay, it's time to go.

Art Trapotsis (33:41)
mean,

looking back, like what was, and let's say in the really good years that you had, like what made up the essence of it being a great team or club? What are some of the elements? I love sort of looking at that, because I'm involved with a number of clubs in this area, and what were some of the secret ingredients?

Richard (33:56)
Well,

when I look back and really try to examine it over like a 44-year period, as much as I love the successes that we had, ⁓ particularly in the teen years, we had successes earlier too, but by the time the teen years rolled around,

And we were already like kind of a brand by then. And it was amazing that for the amount of hustling that we once did in like the 90s or the early aughts to just get like a few thousand dollars from some entity to help the cash flow. By the time the teens rolled around, we were like middle five figure.

Art Trapotsis (34:45)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (34:52)
checks we're getting regularly. That's a lot of money. And before you know it, it's like, we don't really have a care in the world. All we have to do is go to the races and do the best we can. And the riders were doing that. But ultimately, think having so much money and so many resources at our disposal, our family of brands, if you want to call it that, I feel like

Art Trapotsis (34:56)
Nice.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Richard (35:21)
it just kind of like changed the dynamic of how the riders that are in the fold related to the bigger picture. There are some times when they seem to expect it. You know, there were some times when you have X amount of tires or X amount of skin suits or X amount of cash for travel or hotels that the only thing that you'd hear was

Art Trapotsis (35:30)
interesting.

Richard (35:51)
can we get another skin suit or another four tires or, you know, can we stay at a better hotel? This was not a daily occurrence, but I feel like, you know, we got a little used to having everything that we needed. And I think by the time COVID hit and we resumed, I don't really talk about this much, but COVID was really like a dividing ⁓

Art Trapotsis (36:06)
Yeah.

Richard (36:20)
line also between the amount of sponsors and who they were and everything that we needed to use their money to support. I stepped in and when COVID ended and we started racing again and all those big checks that we used to get from corporations, whether it's Nokia or GM watches or

you know, whoever, doesn't really matter, XYZ company. ⁓ I decided to write them myself. So I was already like doing the bikes and the clothing, doing all the administration, straight of work with Deb, my wife, and then also writing like, you know, like middle five figure checks. And I'm a frame builder. It's like, I don't, I don't live on noodles and, you know, I don't have debt or anything. Things, things are going well with my business and I've worked really

least hard and long so that this is the case. But when I start writing the checks that are like, know, like I described five figures and they have to go over the course of a five or six month long racing period, things seem to take a different complexion when the whole isn't working as smoothly as

Art Trapotsis (37:41)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Richard (37:46)
you

Art Trapotsis (37:46)
I understand.

Richard (37:47)
remember it and before you know it's like okay I'm done so good memories ⁓ but the thing is yeah nothing lasts forever so

Art Trapotsis (37:52)
Wow, good story.

Yeah.

Well, I've had fond memories of just watching the team excel and just see how you guys operate. It seemed like a sort of like a professional, you know, team in the midst of our little amateur grassroots races sometimes.

Richard (38:10)
Well, ⁓ I don't know where we'd be today if COVID hadn't really been like a demarcation point for some of the things I'm talking about, but it was. And now I'm happy to just write a nice ⁓ check to Jeremy and Jed for Project Mayhem and support the sport that way rather than having to...

Art Trapotsis (38:25)
Yeah.

Richard (38:40)
micromanage ⁓ five or 10 human beings.

Art Trapotsis (38:45)
Let's

chat about Project Mayhem. this is, correct me if wrong, this is a cyclocross series in Connecticut that you're sponsoring.

Richard (38:55)
Yeah, I think it's safe to say that I'm the title sponsor. I do it to continue the work that I started back in 1980 when my friends said, hey, you want to sponsor us? It's your club too. And I said, yeah. So it's all one big agenda. ⁓ I don't really want or need anything back from it.

Art Trapotsis (39:10)
Mm-hmm.

That's awesome.

Richard (39:21)
But I do want to feel that, like, I started in the club system. I started racing in the early 70s and like training race series that probably still exist in one way, shape or form. But everything was more community based rather than, you you go to the races and everybody sits in their like sprinter van with their like Oakley's on and nobody

talks to one another and

Art Trapotsis (39:51)
That's right.

Richard (39:52)
it's like a bunch of, like there's so much attitude that you can slice it with a knife. I wanted to return to something that seemed a little bit more humanity-based. And Jeremy Zappel, when I got wind of the fact that he was trying to create an umbrella organization under which like eight races or maybe eight or 10 races existed, I felt like...

Hey, this is like a perfect match for me and my checkbook. So, that's it. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (40:24)
That's awesome. Fantastic.

Thank you for doing that. I got to check out one of those races. I love that those series still exist in New England.

Richard (40:32)
Oh yeah, no, so I've been through a few. I kind of started to enjoy my weekends at home as opposed to like 45 or 50 years worth of traveling every weekend. So I haven't been to like every event, but the ones I've been to, it's just, it's so heartwarming to see people seeming to have a nice time racing their bikes without like the,

Art Trapotsis (40:57)
Ha

Richard (41:01)
Like this, you know, like there's, you know, there's a certain element in the sport that people have this holier than now attitude and they don't want to talk to you or they don't want to give you advice or, know, like, ⁓ don't, you know, I'm kind of in my zone, leave me alone. ⁓ I'll see you at the race, ⁓ start, start line. It's like, I don't want that. I don't need it. And I don't, I don't see any of that in, ⁓ Jeremy series. So yeah.

Art Trapotsis (41:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. So

for someone like myself who's admired your bikes from afar for so many years, what does the process actually look like for ordering one? Does it start with the conversation with Richard Sachs?

Richard (41:43)
Yeah, basically I've become email centric in the 21st century as far as my business goes. ⁓ At some point along the way, I concluded that the only sure way to have complete checks and balances with all the communications that could occur between a potential client or a committed client, ⁓ if they're an email, there's no second guessing like what you're supposed to do.

Who said what? People email me through my website or however, and they ask me a few general questions and I say, look,

you takes this long, it costs this much. And if you're interested, I have two boilerplate docs that I could forward you. And if they get the forward and they agree to like the terms of business, they're all good to go. They just send me a small deposit. sometimes I don't even care about the deposit. It's just a fiscal handshake. They fill out the form that I have and then they wait.

Art Trapotsis (42:51)
Is there a secret sauce that goes into these bikes for, you know, let's say somebody gives you their dimensions and tells you what type of rider they are. Like, do you have like a little bit of sort of craftsmanship that you put into it for that type of rider?

Richard (43:05)
No, everybody gets the secret sauce. And I'm glad you asked that question, because going back to the original ⁓ conversation about the materials and the tools and the mood and the expectations, But I feel that ⁓ just like the discussions and the ⁓

examinations of, ⁓ let's just say, 17th century ⁓ Cremonas violins and violas. And there's always somebody who's going to talk about the varnishes and the fact that we don't know. ⁓ These men didn't leave a lot of ⁓ documentation to speak to why after 300 years, the wooden instruments that they make are so

precious or so renowned or have a certain sound, I feel like the human element, me, and the order in which I decide to go from the beginning to the end and everything in the middle is something I've been working on for, at this point, 54 or 55 years. And that is really the secret sauce. There's not one particular

task or one particular type of tool or one ⁓ tolerance level that makes everything else what it is. It's the whole stew of ⁓ paying attention to everything that's on my bench and realizing that even if something does go a little sideways, that too is part of the whole. And I think that

the sum total of this is what makes the bike the bike. So they're not going to be ⁓ inspection grade perfect the way ⁓ a mold bike should be. Because if you put a bunch of goop in a mold and you take it out later, it's going to be exactly like, I call them waffle on bikes because I'm really caddy and I'm near the end of my career and I don't care what people think. ⁓

Art Trapotsis (45:14)
Yeah.

Richard (45:23)
I just think that this is part of what drives the bike, what drives me to make them. ⁓ with hope, the client senses all of that when he or she assembles it and ⁓ takes it down the road.

Art Trapotsis (45:44)
Wow.

Well, when you think about, you know, you mentioned you might be coming to the end of your career. I when you think about your legacy now, what do you hope endures most? it the bicycles, the aesthetic, your philosophy? Like, what do you think about when you think?

Richard (46:01)
Well,

don't really think about end game. So like I use that phrase before, you know, the end of the road. I got a lot of work. I don't think I will stop. I can't imagine why I would stop. I'm healthy. I got my own material. So like I'm not dependent upon, you know, other companies to supply me. And if they go out of business, like what am I going to do? So I kind of like took care of that like 25 or 30 years ago.

Art Trapotsis (46:05)
Okay.

Richard (46:32)
I like being at the bench, so I'm gonna keep making bikes, but the legacy, what people say or think, that's up to them. I'm just here swinging tools and doing the best I can. if anything, I'd be happy if my story,

Art Trapotsis (46:43)
Yeah.

Richard (47:00)
inspires other people to consider the fact that they don't have to work in a cubicle, they don't have to go to college, they could do stuff by hand, they don't have to be ⁓ indentured to like a weekly paycheck. ⁓ There are other ways to go through life that have nothing to do with the traditional conventional path that most young Americans seem to get ⁓ funneled into.

⁓ You know, yeah, that's just the way I'm hardwired.

Art Trapotsis (47:30)
That's a great point. Yeah, that's true. I love that.

Are there there a slew of Richard Sachs apprentices floating around or?

Richard (47:41)
No, ⁓ I have trained a bunch of people. ⁓ At least three of them have worked alongside me in various shops I've had over the years, but none of them have lasted either in my shop or I don't even think in general because this is a really strange business to be in because we live in ⁓ a, like, you know, to use this term again, we live in a waffle iron world now.

Everybody wants something just like what Woot won on Sunday with or what Marianne Vos won. Everything now is so different that to become in this era a person who makes things by hand ⁓ for the love of it, it's almost like, know, yeah, it's very rare.

Art Trapotsis (48:26)
Yeah.

It's very rare.

Richard (48:41)
⁓ If I could rub off on one or two people and then they could take the ball and run with it on their own, that's fine. But as far as the next in line goes, we all have to live with the baggage that we inherited when we showed up. So I'm one of these guys who showed up in the late 60s, early 70s as a teenager and just stayed. I think the success or the momentum that keeps me here

is part of the long line of staying true to my original ethos. But if you're starting now in 2026 or even 10 years ago in 2015 or 16, ⁓ I'm not really sure what that person's ethos would be because he didn't see the world through the same lens that I did. He didn't see every bike in the world was handmade and the better ones were more beautiful and better made than the factory ones.

These people, these young men or women live in a world where everything is manufactured rather than made. And I realize the term manufacturer has its roots in making. But, you know, we live in the industry, the trade, everything is ⁓ like there's a corporate entity tied to all of it. So I don't really know how somebody in the Y2K era

Art Trapotsis (49:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Richard (50:10)
might survive in what we call the frame building business. But when they ask me, I give them advice. If they want to come ⁓ see how I do stuff, that's no problem. I have like 30 years worth of images on Flickr and in my website that are process shots that show what happens when I do something at a bench. So like,

Art Trapotsis (50:16)
Mm-hmm.

Richard (50:37)
I could refer people to the galleries or the albums or take a reel and do stuff at my bench. But at the end of the day, from 1975 forward, ⁓ what drives me is to just hear my own voice. I don't actually talk to myself, but I definitely know what I'm thinking. And everything else becomes a distraction.

Art Trapotsis (50:55)
Yeah.

Richard (51:04)
So while I've had people come and go in my personal space through the years, ⁓ it was really more of a three months here, eight months there, go home and do stuff at your own workbench and come back and show it to me. ⁓ This for me is a solitary pursuit. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (51:13)
Mm-hmm.

Interesting. Yeah. Wow.

So Richard, I want to finish up with one softball question, but I'm really interested to hear it because you basically grew up in New England. Do you have a favorite New England gravel mountain bike road loop that you just you just love going to?

Richard (51:40)
Well, ⁓

Art Trapotsis (51:41)
or an event.

Richard (51:43)
Well, I used to love going to nearly all the events. I had a soft spot for a lot of the UCI races that were south of the George Washington Bridge. I used to love going to the Charm City in Baltimore. Gloucester was a good one in our neck of the woods. You know, there are a lot, but by the time, you know, like everything kind of matured,

to use that word again, ⁓ the events seem to be too big. There were too many events on a given day. ⁓ When they started charging for parking, it really changed the dynamic of the ease of showing up and putting up your tent or your tents. ⁓ It got a little like...

Art Trapotsis (52:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Richard (52:41)
what happened to our little community? It's like everybody wants to be like Woodstock or some major league promotion. And I don't know, I kind of felt like the Mac series down in south of the Hudson River, they seem to, by comparison, maintain their level of humanity more so than up here.

Art Trapotsis (52:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Richard (53:10)
That's just me. ⁓ And I don't have a license anymore, so who am I to have an opinion? Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (53:11)
Yeah, yeah,

where can folks find you? What's your website?

Richard (53:23)
It's RichardSachs.com I have a fairly active Instagram, which is at therichardsachs

Or my website has an email ⁓ that people can use if they want to click through, but it's easy to remember. It's therichardsachs at gmail.com. So, yeah.

Art Trapotsis (53:48)
Perfect, we will definitely

add those to the show notes. Richard, this has been such a pleasure. I'm really excited that you took some time out of your day. know, for the long time cyclists, like I mentioned, I think this conversation will feel like a tribute and a, you know, not a very long tribute, but a little bit of a tribute to your life and your craft. For the younger listeners, I hope they took something away from it. You know, it's sort of a real introduction to thinking about not only bicycles, but maybe even work itself.

like you mentioned, that you might not hear every day. So thank you so much for sharing your story. And thanks everybody for tuning into this episode of the podcast. Until next time, get out there, enjoy the warmer weather and the beautiful terrain of New England. So thank you, Richard.

Richard (54:18)
Yeah.

Definitely.

Thank you so much, okay?