Category: Italy

If you want to build high-quality bicycles, there’s no better place to start than with creating essential parts that make up a bike: handlebars, stems, and cranks. And when you attempt to make these items using all the innovation of design and engineering available, the next obvious step is to put the knowledge into building amazing bicycles. That is essentially the 3T Bicycles story.

The 3T Story from Bicycle Parts to Bicycle Builder

Although 3T has been around since 1961, its beginnings were simple and the company (known at first as 3ttt) wasn’t called 3T until almost 30 years later. The company originally directed its focus to creating rigorously designed handlebars for Italian pro racers.

But by 1975, innovative engineering and design took hold. 3T created the lightest cycling handlebar on the market with ergal alloy materials known as the Superleggera. 1989 gave birth to the Forma SL anatomic grip bar and that became the industry’s most influential and copied handlebar.

Then, between 1994 and 2000 (the year the company officially became 3T), the company developed a threadless headset and a carbon stem. By 2008, the company was producing its carbon Rotundo handlebar and fork.

Bike Building, Production, and More Innovation at 3T

In 2012, 3T was producing, designing, and engineering all the major parts for bikes but not bikes themselves. That was about to change. In 2016, it built its first bike, the Exploro adventure bike.

That bike would be followed the next year with 3T’s first road-specific bike, Strada. This bike was not the company’s example that it could build a highly desirable road machine, it was more than that for 3T. Besides being built all in-house by the company, the Strada also had a fork that could accommodate wider tires and came with disc brakes pre-installed.

Eventually, 3T built its own warehouse and factory in Bergamo, Italy. The intention was always to keep its operations within the borders of its own country. In-house operations gave rise to the company’s next bike, the Exploro Racemax, a full-blown gravel bike way before that category or cycling became as popular as it is today.

3T was one of the first bicycle builders to bring the idea of a gravel bike to the attention of the cycling industry. Today, 3T is reimagining its Strada bike so that it can be both ridden on pavement and gravel.

Last Thoughts

3T is a company that has made every component and bike build count in that it moved the company forward in some way. 3T only lists 5 bikes on its website, two road bikes, two gravel bikes, and a hybrid bike. It seems the company only builds a new bike or updates an existing one if it has something significant to add.

That’s unusual in an age where everything is so competitive and survival in an overly inundated cycling industry is not guaranteed. So, keep an eye on 3T because whatever the company next produces, it will probably be something not seen before.