Hello and welcome to the Pink Bike podcast. This episode is presented by Specialized. I'm Brian Park. I'm with Dario DiGulio, and last month we traveled down to Aub Auburn, California to visit Specialize New Mountain Bike Innovation Center and talk to some of the sports most important product people.

Dario, were you surprised that they moved the mountain bike side of their business or their development to Auburn?

I'm not so much surprised that they moved to Auburn.

It makes a lot of sense to me that they're no longer doing mountain bike stuff in Morgan

Hill, considering the lack of mountain biking in Morgan Hill.

Obviously there's some in the vicinity, but Auburn makes a lot more sense to me in terms

of close access to good riding and diverse riding as well.

And like housing prices that are somewhat within reach.

Within, yeah, like a tangibility of any bike industry employee.

Yeah.

Anyways, we spend a bunch of time with Sam and Brad Benedict and their teams.

They're both industry veterans and, I mean, regular folks.

But when you think about it, the decisions those guys are making on a daily basis

of pretty massive downstream effects.

What do you think of the whole thing?

It was cool.

I mean, the facility is still under construction, but what was there seems quite impressive.

I'm looking forward to seeing what like, what kind of capabilities they'll have in-house with the new facility.

I spent most of my time with the ride dynamics team, just doing ride testing.

And it was cool to see how they operate and are kind of this like little strike force

within the machine that is specialized. Totally. I mean, we'll get to the interviews with the guys

in a second and the engineering staff, but Dario, you were there to ride a bike as well.

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