When Open arrived on the scene in 2012, heralded by the superlight hardtail, the ONE, the bike world (mostly) yawned. But when the brand's next model, the U.P all-road bike, arrived in 2015, a shift happened. The upstart company, the brainchild of two industry veterans, singlehandedly changed the industry's thinking about what a road bike could be, shepherding in a new normal of wide tires, disc brakes, and thru-axles.
Founded and based in Switzerland, Open is the result of a collaboration between former BMC general manager Andy Kessler and Cervélo co-founder Gerard Vroomen. Today, Open's disruptive designs continue to shift perceptions on what bikes are capable of and where they can take the rider, with the award-winning U.P setting the bar to which all other "mixed-surface" bikes are measured.
The small size, lean methodology, and innovative mindset of Open bikes allows the brand to pivot on a dime, with many prescient concepts arriving before their time, like disc brakes on drop-bar bikes, and manipulating carbon tube shapes to make their extreme ideas geometrically possible.
The latest chapter in the Open story is the WI.DE. An evolution of the game changing U.P, pushing the boundaries even further with even more tire clearance and capabilities. It's like a drop bar, fully rigid MTB of the 80s, reimagined for the modern era.
