Tauranga outfit 2Stage Bikes overcame New Zealand’s isolation to capitalise on a global fad for mountain biking. By Suzanne McFadden

In a town in north Wales, Peter Evans is peddling a Kiwi innovation they’re calling one of the biggest departures from mainstream bike technology in 20 years. It’s a downhill mountain bike, developed in Tauranga where Evan’s entrepreneurial father, David, runs the boutique company 2Stage Bikes.

Dad sent son off to Britain to market the techno-bike with its unique dual shock system, and paid New Zealand’s top downhill riders to ride his bikes professionally all over the world. The strategy – like the bike – is a winner.

David Evans calls mountain biking “the new golf”; across Europe, bike parks are sprouting up like golf courses. While he’s a convert, he doesn’t ride and had nothing to do with bikes until someone brought the dual shock concept to him, “knowing I was an entrepreneurial type of guy” (he also makes Quantum 40ft power catamarans).

The bike’s revolutionary 2Stage technology uses two air shocks. When the terrain gets rough, the first shock takes care of the little bumps, while a new axle path takes over to seamlessly absorb the big bumps. All the while, the bike platform remains stable and the rider has higher pedalling efficiency.

Evans senior funded the development of the first prototypes in 2003. “Even though I knew nothing about the bike industry, we knew we were onto something good, something different, from the start,” Evans says.

He tested the new bike in New Zealand and Australia first, with positive results. He had some of the country’s top downhill racers ride the 2Stage Elite 9 at world championships and on the international race circuit. Then the niche company decided to unleash its bikes on the rest of the world through the internet.

“And nothing happened,” Evans laments. “I was more disappointed than shocked; I felt we had done everything right. Then I went to international bike shows and it became quite obvious: New Zealand was half a world away to these people, and they wanted to know where the support was if something went wrong.”

Riders wanted to buy through a bike shop. So Evans figured the best way to get foreign bums on bike seats was to get a man on the ground in the Northern Hemisphere. Since setting up last year in North Wales – a central point in the UK and a mountain biking hub – Peter Evans has been able to establish a dealership network. He travels virtually every weekend to European race events, taking demo bikes, posters and stickers, and waving the 2Stage flag. The growth in sales, Evans says, has been “massive”.

Funding New Zealand riders to compete in Europe has also created an awareness of the bikes. “Because we were different, we had to prove on the racetrack that we had a system at least equal to, if not better than, the best bikes in the world,” David Evans says.

Sponsored rider Glenn Haden, the 2008 New Zealand national champion, won the Italian downhill championship series in 2007 and took out a win in last year’s Japan Cup. He also competed for the Aki Factory Team in Japan: Aki makes the highly regarded Louis Garneau bike brand, and now has the licence to sell 2Stage bikes in Japan.

Exports to Australia and the UK continue to grow, with dividends being poured into bike marketing. The best marketing is still via word-of-mouth among riders and favourable reviews. The Elite9 (retailing in the UK for around £3,800) was described by magazine Mountain Biking UK as “nimble, clever and stable: sticks to the line like a flippin’ F1 car”.

Father and son stress the company is still in its infancy, and the bike prototypes continue to be perfected by the three fulltime staff in Tauranga, including designer Tim Stewart, who came from the Britten Motorcycle Company. A new “All Mountain” bike, using the same system but tailored for the weekend mountainbiker, is about to be launched. While some of the bike’s parts are imported, Evans is proud that it has been “conceived, designed, tested, and its credibility cemented, here in New Zealand”.