Inside Orbea: 175 Years of Manufacturing Heritage

The bicycle business ebbed and flowed over the years, and in 1969 the company found itself teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, which would have caused 1,500 workers to lose their jobs. To prevent this, the employees set up a cooperative, and the company became part of the Mondragon group of cooperatives. The fact that at the time the country was headed by dictator Francisco Franco creates a unique juxtaposition of economic models. On the one hand, Spain was effectively being governed by a single, fascist ruler, while on the other Orbea was being governed by its employees, a distinctly socialist business model. Orbea's switch to a cooperative allowed the company to stay in business, and a few years later the company moved their headquarters to Mallabia, where they are still located. To this day they are still a cooperative, which means the workers still, in a very real and legal sense, own the company. Twice a year they get together in company meetings to make the important decision about the future.

By 1998, Orbea had experienced enough growth that the decision was made to expand internationally, and over the next decade operations expanded to the United States, Australia, and throughout Europe. In 2000, an additional factory was added in Portugal, and in 2007 Orbea opened another factory in Kunshan, China, expanding their global reach even further. Orbea has 180 employees at their Mallabia headquarters, 50 employees at the Portugal factory, and another 50 employees in China.
















Development and Testing

Orbea has close ties with the Biomechanics Institute of Valencia and the Centre of Studies and Technical Research (CEIT), Tenneco, and the Universitry of Mondragon, relationships that have proven to be instrumental when creating a new bike through their Advanced Dynamics program. Orbea is able to use the information processing and and analytical capabilities of these institutes to help make sense of the massive amounts of data that are collected when telemetry sensors are mounted onto a bike and its rider.

If you ride an Orbea mountain bike, it was developed by these two: Beñat Auzmendi, Orbea R&D Engineer, and Mikel Bergara, Orbea Industrial Designer, along with Xabier Narbaiza, Orbea MTB Product Manager (not pictured).

This may not look too exciting, but it might just be the part of the most advanced mountain bike development program in the industry. Working with the scientists and test riders they accrued a vast amount of data to translate trail experiences like comfort and pedal efficiency into numbers. For instance, they have a very precise measurement for shock movement from pedalling - if the shock moves more than a certain number of millimeters it is ruled too inefficient to be used, and they also found the threshold that riders could discern. What that means is that even though you could make a shock more efficient, there is no need to, as it has no impact on the riding experience and would therefore mean unnecessary sacrifices in other areas of shock performance

Getting the bike fully configured for data gathering is a complex process, and it can take up to a month to complete the set up. All of these efforts go towards compiling hard data that Orbea's engineers can use to make changes to the bike's design if necessary. As useful as rider feedback is, data with concrete numbers is even more valuable, allowing the results of a change to the bike to more easily be detected, as opposed to asking a rider to describe the sensations they are feeling.


Prior to production, various prototypes are created, including ABS plastic models like the bike in the upper two photos, as well as an aluminum mule. This allows Orbea to fine tune the aesthetic and the function of the bike, ensuring that the final version is as refined as possible.



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