Our weekend in Madison with the Saris Cycling Group

This past weekend Mike and I had the opportunity to visit Madison, Wisconsin with the Saris Cycling Group. Throughout the weekend we had he chance to explore Madison’s awesome bike culture, take in a Green Bay Packers game, tour the Saris headquarters and manufacturing plant, and of course chow down on some deep fried cheese curds. The weekend flew by but it was an excellent learning experience which really helped to deepen our understanding of the Saris brand and their commitment to bike culture and the bicycle itself.

Saris HQ and Plant Tour

Saris Cycling Group is based in Madison and is made up of Saris Bike Racks, Saris Parking, CycleOps Trainers and PowerTap. Saris is committed to manufacturing their products in the USA while also sourcing the raw materials which go into their products from within a 50-mile radius of Madison. Saris is one of very few companies in the USA who are actually sourcing and building there products in their own home country and this really shows in the quality of their products.

During the tour we had the chance to chat with product engineers, product designers, customer service staff, owners, and the advocacy team and hear the Saris story first hand.

We also had the chance to participate in a session where we provided feedback on many of the new and innovative products Saris has come out with over the last few years. It was nice to give direct feedback and help to them to improve their products all at the same time. We also got a sneak peak of some new products that are still in the development stages which was really cool.

Green Bay Packers Game

The team at Saris also treated us to a Packers game at Lambeau Field, which was an incredible experience. People from all over Wisconsin flock to Green Bay and boy do they take beer, brats and football seriously!

The game started off with a shaky start but the Packers made a huge comeback in the second half to take the win over the Jets.

Madison Bike Culture and Saris Bike Advocacy

When we first arrived in Madison we rented a couple of bikes from the B-cycle bike share program and rode around the downtown area, university area, and part of the waterfront. We were overwhelmed with the number of people riding bikes, the number of bikes parked at bike racks, and the bike infrastructure that has been built. Although Madison is the Capital of Wisconsin there city population is only 250,000 with an additional 50,000 students for 9 months of the year. With this size of a population we did not expect to see the vast number of bike and bike riders as we did.

The Madison Bike Culture is the way it is thanks in large part to Saris and the Fortune family who are huge advocates of cycling and creating a bike and active transport culture in Madison. Their passion for cycling is not just because their business revolves around the bike; they believe in the bike and what it stands for. You can check out the advocacy efforts as well as a video from the owners or Saris about why advocacy matters to there company over here.

Thank you Saris!

We want to send out a big thank you to the team at Saris for treating us to an awesome weekend. We were very impressed by the Saris story and culture as well as the manufacturing process and goals.

If you, our customer, have questions about any of Saris’ products such as Saris Bike Racks, Saris Parking, or CycleOps Trainers feel free to drop by either of our store locations or give our staff a call!