Our Story

We got the idea to build the elliptiGO really out of necessity.  In 2005, Bryan lost the ability to run for fitness because of hip and knee injuries.  Basically, a lifetime of contact sports and endurance athletics had caught up with him by the age of 32 and he was forced to engage in low-impact exercise.  As a former cyclist and Ironman triathlete, he seriously considered returning to cycling to stay fit.  However, he had always found the bicycle saddle and riding position to be really uncomfortable and cycling workouts to take too much time.  As a result, he started using the indoor elliptical trainer.  Although he liked the exercise, he hated being locked in a gym.  To solve this problem, he decided to buy an elliptical trainer that he could ride on the street.

Of course, there was no elliptical trainer that he could ride on the street.  So he called up Brent to see if he could build such a device.  As a degreed mechanical engineer, former Ironman triathlete and competitive ultramarathoner, Brent brought together not only the engineering skill and talent to build an elliptical bike, but, more importantly, a deep understanding of how such a device would need to perform to satisfy former runners.  In July 2005, Brent and Bryan sat down at a coffee shop in Solana Beach, sketched out a concept drawing on a newspaper, and shook hands.  A partnership was born.

After about six months of squeezing in time before and after work, Brent had finished designing Alfa – the initial prototype.  We were ready to cut metal.  Once he had the pieces cut, Brent set up a table on a couple of sawhorses in his patio and started to braze the pieces together.  After a few weeks, he had the frame together.  Cromoly steel tubing, some skateboard wheels, and wood boards for pedals, Alfa wasn’t much of a looker – but it worked.  The first time Bryan jumped on it, he took it for about 20 miles and was sold.

When Bryan conceived of the outdoor bicycle, he thought it was going to be really fast and really unstable.  As it turned out, Alfa was really stable, but not as fast as he thought it would be because of the increased drag caused by the standing position.  The bike was plenty fast enough, but it was clear than an elliptical biker wasn’t going to win the Tour de France anytime soon.  Most importantly, however, it was really fun to ride and the experience felt more like running than anything else he’d done.  Because the goal had always been to recreate running without the impact, the Alfa prototype was a huge success. 

After a few months of testing Alfa, Brent began designing the next generation prototype.  Originally, the new prototype (imaginatively code-named "Beta") was going to be very similar to Alfa, only more rigid.  However, once Brent had Beta designed, he realized that if he completely changed the frame, he could make a much lighter and stiffer model.  As a result, he jumped straight into designing and building "Charlie".  At the same time, we set our sights on a large cycling event to really prove the viability of our concept – the 2008 Rosarito to Ensenada 50-mile ride. 

What a day in our company’s history that was.  Charlie performed flawlessly and Bryan finished the race in 3 hours and 16 minutes of ride time, for an average speed of just over 15 miles per hour.  Importantly, he finished right in the middle of the pack, proving that this new elliptical bike was a viable alternative to the conventional bicycle for transportation and a fantastic substitute for low-impact running.

Of course, at the time we both had full-time jobs.  Now that we had proven the concept, the question was – “Now what?”  We went around and talked to a bunch of bicycle and elliptical trainer manufacturers and showed them our Charlie design.  Almost all of them were interested in the concept, but none wanted to take the idea and run with it.  At the same time, we were getting thousands of hits to our website and numerous emails from people who were asking how they could buy one.  It was something of a moment of truth for us.  There appeared to be a lot of people interested in an elliptical bike, we seemed to have developed the very first one, but we were a couple of guys without any connection to the bicycle or fitness industries and no clear path forward.  Fortunately, we decided to take a leap into the unknown and see whether we could develop this idea into a product.  In the spring of 2008 we both put in our notice and began working on the “bike project” full time.

Brent finished designing Delta, our next prototype, in the early summer of 2008.  Delta was our first foray into an aluminum frame. Brent had taught himself how to braze steel when constructing Alfa, but the complexities of welding aluminum led him to seek out support from his good friend Neil.  Neil did a fantastic job fabricating and welding Delta and the aluminum frame proved to be a much more manufacturable solution than Charlie’s steel truss system.   Neil and Brent finished building up Delta just in time for Interbike - the big bike show in Las Vegas – and we took both Charlie and Delta to Vegas in search of a manufacturer. 

Although we got a lot of interest and had some good discussions, again no one was willing to take the ball and run with it.  We loved the Delta design and concept of making the entire system smaller and easier to ride.  We were happiest about the fact that Delta was a lot faster than Charlie and much easier to manufacture.  At this point, we realized that we needed to raise some money if we were going to get this product to market and turn this project into a real business.

As you can imagine, in the fall of 2008 there was not a lot of investment going on, but the continued interest we received wherever we took Delta and Charlie carried us through and kept our hopes up.  In January 2009, we were able to put together enough money from friends and family to get the real business going.  Shortly thereafter, things really started to go our way.  We got connected with several great mentors, including Tony Ellsworth, one of the premier mountain bike builders in the world.  Brent finished designing our next generation prototype and we started working on getting a manufacturer onboard.

By the end of January we had our first “Echo” bike delivered.  We ended up having five frames built by Tony’s professional bicycle fabricators that are located outside of Portland, Oregon.  By March we had a manufacturer lined up and a production design almost finished.  It was at that point that we decided to really make a statement about the capabilities of the elliptical bicycle.  We already knew that the best thing the elliptical bike does is climb, so we sought out the most challenging cycling event in California that included as much climbing as possible.  When we came across “The Death Ride” – a 129-mile course in the Sierras, all if it at altitudes ranging from 5,500’ to 9,000’ that includes more than 15,000’ of climbing – we knew we’d found our event.  You can find a synopsis of our Death Ride experience by taking a look at our epic rides page.  Without spoiling too much of the story, it was a fantastic day for us and really solidified the elliptical bike as a legitimate fitness and traveling system. 

It’s been full speed ahead ever since the Death Ride.  We now have six employees at ElliptiGO and a research and development space in Solana Beach, California.  We could think of no better place to launch a new sport than from San Diego, the home of triathlon and the locus of the action sports industry.

In September, we took possession of our first production sample from our manufacturer.  We’ve been riding it hard since it came in and it is performing really, really well.  We’ve continued to bring in production samples and we remain on a path to start distributing production bikes to customers in the 1st Quarter of 2010. 

As you can probably guess, it’s been quite a ride.  When we stop and think about it, we can’t believe how far we’ve come over the past four years, especially since the Rosarito to Ensenada ride in April 2008, and how quickly those years have gone.  We’re looking forward to uncovering what lies ahead as we try to establish the sport of elliptical biking and deliver the first outdoor low-impact running-like device.