You know that we supply wheelsets with Starling Cycles custom builds, right?

It’s pretty straightforward – you choose a bike, you use the bike builder, you select your wheelset and they get added to your order. Easy.

Well – on that note – we’ve just made a bit of a change here at Starling Cycles, and we’re now building our wheelsets in-house. This might not seem like big news, but, we like to tell a story over here and it does have some benefits for you lot.

So why’s this happening? Until now, our friends at RyanBuildsWheels and Strongheart Wheelworks have built our wheels. Both are awesome custom, handbuilt wheel builders but we wanted to have a little more control over production and timescales.

Enter Starling employee James.

James is our man of many talents. He assembles bikes, orders components, handles customer service, does some brazing, does some mitring, rides a Swoop. All sorts.

Now, James is a handy bike mechanic but he wanted to up his skills even more. He spent some time with Bristol’s wheel-building-Yoda-himself RyanBuildsWheels and upped his skills to become a fully-trained builder in his own right.

This new skills upgrade means that he’s now able to handle all of our wheel builds, right here at Starling.

So why’s that good? First – we’re proud to be hand-building another bespoke product right here at Starling Cycles. James will make wheelsets that are handpicked to be the perfect match our frames and can guarantee they’re made to a high standard.

Also, by taking wheel building in-house, we’re able to manage timescales better. We’re not waiting on another business’s build queue and we can move wheels through production more quickly. That means fewer delays and you get your frame more quickly. Winner.

You can check out Starling Cycles’ range of handbuilt and steel full-suspension mountain bikes here.