Gerard Vroomen founded the racing and triathlon bike company Cervélo together with Phil White in 1995. Andy Kessler served as CEO of BMC and subsequently as head of Cervélo's European headquarters. And despite this wealth of experience, the two of them pile deep on the newly launched website: "Yes, our engineering background is not based on mountain bikes, but good engineering remains good engineering. Our outsider position gives us an advantage: we don't do something because it's always been done that way".

The result of this way of thinking is a company called Open Mountain AG, founded on January 19, 2012 with its legal domicile in Bottmingen near Basel, and a deliberately simple 29er hardtail. Even at first glance, this bike reveals that a great deal of knowledge about the use and processing of carbon and a great deal of attention to detail has been applied. The bike is also packed with unique design solutions and equally unique designations. As samples: "Trapezium toptube" describes the shape of the top tube or "MultiStop" refers to the possibility of routing cables for electronic circuits internally on the frame.

The "Hardtail 0-1.0" is available as a frameset, in an unlimited and a limited version. In the "Unlimited Edition", Opencycle relies on an XO drivetrain from Sram, MT6 brakes from Magura, seatposts and stems from 3T and wheels from DT Swiss. Opencycle is currently quoting a purchase price of CHF 6,900. The "Limited Edition Hydraulic" rolls out of the bike store for a whopping CHF 13,900; this version comes with numerous Enve parts and the gears are shifted by the hydraulic A-GE drivetrain from Acros.

On the market launch of the new bikes, Andy Kessler says: "The bikes will be available from mid-May - in homeopathic doses. We will achieve good availability in June". Opencycle has already brought the Basel bike store Cycling Emotion and the Baden bike store Bike Zone on board as suppliers.

www.opencycle.com