For Day 5 of our 12 Days of Christmas big reads we bring you a We Work Here feature from issue 85. Whether racer or hipster, you’ll probably recognise one of its distinctively loud designs at fifty paces, but what makes the founders of technical and casual clothing brand Morvélo tick? And do they really ‘ride everything’? We sent Jenn south to find out.
We Work Here: Morvélo – Ride Everything.
Words and pictures by Jenn.
In magazine land it’s common practice to refer to brands as singular entities when writing about them: it rather than they, is rather than are. Yet when I’m writing up my notes following a morning spent in the company of Morvélo’s co-founder, Oli Pepper, it’s very difficult to depersonalise the company and refer to it as a faceless entity.
Partly that’s because I’ve been aware of Morvelo’s story right from the very start; I spent a decade living in the city the founders call home, riding the same trails and bumping into them in the pub. So Morvélo feels less like a brand and more like a friend to me; someone (something, if you must…) with a character and personality whose story I’ve followed with interest, even though we’re not so geographically close any more.
Which, I suppose, probably makes me a victim of some very effective marketing – as well as a sucker for a nice T-shirt…
Rules are made to be broken.
Morvélo occupies a corner of a small, second-floor office right in the middle of Brighton’s city centre. Waiting on the doorbell at 10am on a sunny Tuesday, I am just one of a hundred people heading to work, among one of what feels like a thousand tourists on their way to gawp at the Pier. Over cups of tea, we look out of the open window; the view consists of the back of the adjacent terrace, a healthy slice of blue sky and the rooftops of the jumbled ground floor in-fill below us.
As the morning progresses this view provides ever-changing entertainment: late-rising residents pottering around their bedrooms, office workers sat typing at desks behind frosted glass, cats and seagulls patrolling windowsills. All accompanied by the distant traffic hum and the smell of things toasting (and later, torturously, frying steak), from the kitchen of the restaurant below. It’s cramped, cheek-by-jowl city living at its grubbiest and best, and it’s the perfect fit for Morvélo.
The ordered, everything-in-its-place-in-chaos is echoed within. Like the clean white walls of the individual buildings outside, there’s a definite lack of scribbled Post-It notes and empty coffee cups on the clutter-free twin desks occupied by Oli and his partner-in-crime Dave Marcar. But, like the plants forcing their way through the cracks between those white walls, every nook and cranny is stuffed with the sort of ephemera I imagine ‘creative types’ like to keep to hand, while the walls are stacked with framed prints and scribbled-on printouts. Here and there I spot familiar typography samples, toys and colour combinations that I recognise from Morvélo creations new and old. It’s unclear whether the environment fosters the creativity, or vice versa; maybe both are co-dependent. But Oli explains that the brand probably would not have become what it is now, had it been based in any other part of the UK.
London by the sea.
Morvélo lives a 30-second freewheel from Brighton seafront; it’s retained a certain cool vibe despite the city’s relatively recent gentrification. The sheer diversity of the local riding is amazing (I should know, it kept me occupied for a decade), and well in keeping with the ‘Ride Everything’ slogan, which has become both motto and ethos for the brand.
From the wide-open spaces of the South Downs, tight singletrack in Stanmer Park, endless quiet back lanes of the Sussex Weald, local ‘cross leagues and of course the Brighton Big Dog race, Preston Park velodrome, the skate park on the Level – it’s all within a stone’s throw of the beach. The only thing that’s really missing here – as in 90% of the rest of the UK – are the truly epic, technical downhills. To get those you need real mountains; obviously the Downs don’t count but the mindset is still there. “Yeah – we’ve been sessioning the downhills… dropper posts have nearly made it to the South Coast!”.
And so we come to the history bit. How does a brand like Morvélo become such a recognisable element of UK cycling culture in just five short years?
Like many start-ups, it has its roots and energy in adversity. Oli and Dave are both graphic designers by trade; made redundant by their defunct design agency, they started up on their own consultancy in 2009 focusing on sports and lifestyle branding while “tinkering” with T-shirt designs on the side. In the best tradition of side projects, this very soon got out of hand; inspired by a friend who gave up his TV presenting job to open a BMX shop, the duo were motivated to do something they really wanted to do and the side project became Morvélo. Which, via a “very, very steep learning curve”, has now become a full-time job.
It’s clear that Oli takes the intent of ‘Ride Everything’ to heart – or perhaps it just came straight from his heart, because it’s clear that the boy lives and breathes bicycles of all kinds. A Felt track bike leans against the office heater; his latest acquisition is a 24in cruiser, “an old man’s BMX” that he’s been riding at the skate park on the Level. “I still get intimidated by 15 year olds but I’m completely [off] their radar.” Or – as old giffers we still think we matter more to young people than we actually do…
As well as the track bike and the cruiser, Oli’s prized DeSalvo (winnings for racing the ‘most battered bike’ – a Kona mostly held together by stickers – at a singlespeed championships in the dim and distant past) still puts in an occasional appearance. Though, with a wry look that will be familiar to anyone struggling to juggle work and life, none of them get ridden as much as he’d like.
Dave meanwhile is a skater at heart and the brand’s ‘encyclopaedia’. The office’s bookshelves and walls are full of well-thumbed inspiration but, says Oli, Dave keeps even more in his brain. (Dave is also responsible for feeding the seagulls from the office window, earning himself the nickname of Doctor Doolittle.) Between the two of them, they curate Morvelo’s diverse design inspiration. “It really does come from everywhere; street design, artists, print material, bike colourways, trends, what other brands are doing…”A fresh set of designs appears on a strict, six-monthly schedule; it’s a very fashion-led way of doing things and though the garment patterns don’t change much from collection to collection, there’s always something fresh and new for people to buy.
The daily grind.
So, has Oli hit the jackpot of balancing creative satisfaction with earning a living wage? He looks pained as he explains that perhaps only five percent of his working day is spent ‘designing’. The rest is taken up with the administrative side of the business; product codes and distribution logistics, answering customer queries, event organisation and marketing. I get the feeling that this is perhaps not how he envisaged it would be when Morvélo was a fledgling start-up four years ago. He concedes that he’s glad they can now afford to outsource at least some of the distribution requirements. “I was rubbish at packing, people would phone us up and say ‘Thanks for the parcel, it arrived really quickly but it’s got completely the wrong T-shirt in it…'”
Spreading a small, domestic brand’s reach internationally is hard; traditional distribution channels aren’t usually appropriate and small quantities make gathering momentum in larger markets hard. But Morvélo has followed the same path as many other independent brands, working with ‘friends’ and brand ambassadors who endorse the product internationally and raise its profile among the target market of peers. Thus Morvélo apparel can be seen on the roads and trails of Singapore, Japan and Indonesia as well as Sussex, Lancashire and Glamorgan. The brand is, as Oli says, “a long way off global domination – we’re going for one county at a time…” but this method of growing the brand sustainably and organically has proven successful for others in the past, and is working for Morvélo, too.
Of course this would have been a good deal tougher – perhaps impossible – in the days before social media. Morvelo’s riders are all active on Twitter and Facebook, and contribute regularly to the Morvélo blog. A tie-in with fellow Sussex brand Kinesis (purveyor of fine road, mountain bike and cyclocross frames, based just over the Downs and – conveniently – right next door to Dark Star Brewing Co.) further expanded the reach of both brands’ stories. Collaborations like this keep the brand fresh and provide a diverse outlet for the curious corners of Oli and Dave’s creativity.
They’re currently working on a kit for ‘multi-discipline artist’ Death Spray Custom, which is a weird mix of op-art and metal that gives me a headache just looking at it. It’s far removed from the first collaboration with the Tour de France three or so years ago. Morvélo has since worked with brands as diverse as Bicycle Academy, Tokyo Fixed, The Ride Journal, Dark Star, Great Rock and Alpkit, working alongside brands with similar values on fun projects. I ask Oli what his dream collaboration would be; after much umming and ahhing he elects to think on it, but two weeks later I am still none the wiser, and I don’t think he is, either. I get the feeling that he’s happy to work his design magic with any brand or individual that shares Morvelo’s values and is prepared to invest their time and energy in it. That sounds like a short list of requirements but judging by the effort that’s clearly gone into previous designs and the excitement they clearly still inspire, anyone hoping to step up to the plate has a lot to live up to. Oli’s peak of the colabs so far has been a T-shirt design with Charlie Kelly, editor of the original Fat Tyre Flyer mountain bike magazine, which was (in Oli’s own words) “f***ing cool!”. No competition there, then…
Stories past and present.
Sometime in the dim and distant past, a young Oliver Pepper wrote to the founder of Howies, David Hieatt, expressing his excitement at the emergence of a brand which he identified with and wanted to wear. (And yes, in case you’re wondering – Hieatt did write back.) This sense of personal discovery, of having found something which you can call your own, is of course what drives the initial momentum of small brands like Morvélo. It’s not enough to just have a good product and great customer service; you need to involve people in the brand. Stickers and stories matter as much as jerseys and musettes; accessibility and authenticity are important.
As people jump onto the bandwagon though and small brands become bigger, it’s hard to strike a balance between growth and saturation. Die-hard fans might have turned their noses up when Morvélo kit started appearing on Wiggle’s online shop front but the involvement of a strategically large distribution outlet has been important to the brand’s development. Wiggle is in a position to back what are (for a brand of Morvelo’s diminutive size) large advance orders, which can in turn give Dave and Oli the confidence to develop less popular product lines – for example, their women’s jerseys which (though they’re among the best designs on the market) are still seen as a niche product by the mainstream sports retail sector.
UK manufacturing is the Holy Grail for many British companies but though Morvélo would love to do it, it’s still something which isn’t going to happen for a while. They’re doing their best to keep manufacturing in Europe – Lithuania, to be precise – as a compromise, but one which works. The factories are accessible and it’s easy to get samples quickly, often within a week, which makes prototyping and development much more efficient. The time difference is negligible, which sounds inconsequential until you realise that they’re juggling young families alongside the business and midnight Skype sessions just aren’t an option.
Like everything Morvélo, the reasons behind a particular decision balance pragmatism with principals; Oli accepts the fact that it’s virtually impossible to be perfect in modern manufacturing’s current climate, but an informed and practical compromise is the next best thing. He admires Hope Technology’s resilience, and says that it’s great to see them still engineering on their own terms. He also points to Brompton and Brooks as two small companies who do just one thing, and do it well; they’ve refined their products so that they’re almost a distillation of what they originally planned to be.
Tech talk.
And from here it’s just a short jump to talking about the kit, as in a timely fashion a parcel of prototypes arrives. They’re the final samples for Morvelo’s newest jersey, the Enduro, which marks a departure; it’s the first jersey they’ve designed from the ground up to meet some very specific requirements. The ‘Enduro’ model name is no accident, though it’s been on the cards for a while – enduro is, as most people have probably now figured out, just another name for a formalised version of what we all do of a weekend. Cruising the uphills enjoying a chat, then wringing every last scrap of enjoyment from the descents – just riding bikes.
So it requires kit which is comfortable, practical and attractive; not an easy ask, when you’re also asking it to still look great while performing as well as a form-fitting, road-oriented garment can. Or, as Oli says, a T-shirt is a T-shirt; by all means wear it to ride to work but don’t expect it to be comfortable on a 100-mile road ride. In the same vein you can wear your best race strip to ride to the station every day but don’t be surprised if you feel the stares of your fellow commuters prickling your lycra’d behind. You’ll enjoy your ride more if what you’re wearing is fit for purpose.
Keen to get the jersey right, Morvélo enlisted the help of technical designer, Julie Greengrass. Having cut her teeth working on garments for Montane and Sprayway, she was well placed to help – and she’s an experienced and enthusiastic mountain biker too, so has first-hand experience of what a riding jersey needs to be able to put up with. The result will hit the internet in November and Oli’s justifiably excited as he runs me through the features, as well as the year-long process they’ve been through in bringing it to fruition. Like lots of creative types he’s expansive with his gestures as he explains what every small detail of the jersey is meant to achieve, and after just ten minutes of intense discussion I feel as though I’ve lived through the whole process with them.
I leave the office with a pre-production sample of the Enduro jersey in my bag and several pages of scribbled notes from which I’ll later write this story. The words continually repeated throughout though, are ‘enthusiasm’, ‘creative’ and ‘ride everything’ – I guess Morvélo would be happy with that.
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