Curt Goodrich Bicycles

I began my apprenticeship building bicycles in 1995 under the watchful eye of Dan Wynn in Seattle. I’d always loved craftsmanship and for a year paid my dues filing, sanding fillets, machining and aligning frames and forks. I was acquiring crucial skills, working hard, and learning by the day. When Matt Houle at the well-established R&E Cycles shop offered me a job, I spent two years TIG-welding and further evolving my skills, though my heart still lay in traditional lugged construction.

When I’d heard that Tim Isaac was setting up match bicycle company as a high-end production shop and that our first project would be to build Schwinn Paramounts, I was third to be hired. I had the good fortune to be working with Kirk Pacenti, whose contributions to lug design are now well-known, Steve Hampsten who moved onto his own company with Hampsten Cycles and Cycles Tournesol, and Mark Bulgier, Dan Swanson, and Martin Tweedy, and others.

Two years after the Paramount project began, Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works approached match bicycles to relieve Rivendell’s long backlog of frame orders. For the next year I built Rivendell frames while Martin Tweedy built forks. But change was in the works: match was closing shop. Ben Serotta, founder of Serotta Competition Bicycles, offered me a position building steel and titanium primarily in TIG-construction and it was then I realized how I felt about building lugged steel designs. I declined Serotta’s generous offer and shortly afterwards Grant Petersen offered me the opportunity to continue building custom Rivendells. I moved my family to Minneapolis to establish my own frame shop and from 2000 until 2007 I built custom lugged steel frames for Rivendell and, when asked privately, the occasional Goodrich frame.

I prefer to build road bikes. A great road bike is for all seasons but really shows its stuff when the going gets fast. Whether accelerating, descending, holding a line, or carving a turn, the bike is balanced and responsive, poised and predictable. I’ll design your bike to suit your preferred style and to meet the road head-on, whether you like to race, take long solo spins, ride weekends with friends, or train with the club. I prefer level top tube designs or nominal slope for fit with smart, straightforward choices to enhance the bike’s purpose, like maximum clearances for tires using short-reach brakes or braze-ons for a pump or chain-hanger. I’ll choose the lightest tubes appropriate for your size and weight so that the sum of design is greater than the parts. Options are kept to a minimum because a great road bike is all business and the fun of riding speaks for itself.