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With its roots in a beer garden somewhere in Fitzroy, the Spoken Handmade Bike show has grown into a full-on bespoke bike showcase where builders from Australia and around the world come to exhibit their handywork.
Set for 20-22 June, this year Spoken has bid farewell to the Seaworks in Melbourne, heading north to Sydney for the Carriageworks in Redfern.
With a new venue and a boatload of builders, we caught up with the man behind Spoken, Nathan Lorkin, to get the lowdown on what you can expect at the 2025 event.
Check out our coverage from previous editions of the Spoke Handmade Bike Show:
- Columbus Steel, Wooden Handlebars and Gearboxes Galore | Exploring the handmade goodness at Spoken 2024
- Shredding In Style | Revisiting the Spoken Handmade Bicycle Show 2023
- Tig welders and titanium: Handmade Bicycle Show 2021
Why move to Sydney?
Spoken has called Melbourne home since 2018, when the event first ran at the Meat Market in North Melbourne before expanding into the Seaworks in 2021.
According to Lorkin, the show had a fantastic problem of having a high retention rate among the folks who come each year.
“I want to give as much ownership to the guys and girls who are part of the show exhibiting. And while we love seeing the same faces year after year, we all need new customers. If we move to a different market, we get new faces and we’re speaking to new people,” he says. “Moving to Sydney also makes us more accessible to people in Brisbane.”
Lorkin tells us that of the tickets sold so far, the majority are folks who live in Sydney — postcode 2000 — but the next most common postcodes are from Queensland. At the time of writing, more Queenslanders are coming than Melbournians.
The Carriageworks in Redfern was an obvious choice for a venue as it’s highly accessible by bike, and is the opposite of your sterile conference space.
“It’s not dissimilar in character to the Seaworks, where we’ve come from in Melbourne, and the space before that called the Meat Market. Those spaces have characters. They’re old but beautiful, and they’re a little bit quirky and unusual,” he says.
What builders are coming?
Lorkin has assembled a substantial list of builders. Some of the well-known folks like Prova, Devlin and Baum, builders from Sydney and wider NSW, that they have not seen in a few years, like Tempest and Chimera and some fresh faces like Sugarloaf Cycles from Brisbane and Kumo from the NSW South Coast.
However, it’s not just for drop-bar enthusiasts, mountain bikers or bespoke performance bikes, as such. There are bikes for every rider.
“There is a new outfit from Melbourne called Loop, which is along the lines of utility builds, which means cargo bikes and one-less-car sort of bikes,” Lorkin says.
There’s also an international contingent of builders who will be on display.
We have a Japanese builder who focuses on street-friendly fixies and singlespeed bikes, and we also have a road and gravel Italian consortium that is coming. So by way of builders, there is Sarto, Deanima, and Cicli Barco,” says Lorkin. “We’ve also got Acol, which is actually Ernesto Colnogo’s grandson.”
Looking at the list of exhibitors, you’ll also notice some bike brands among the bespoke builders like Trek, Pinarello, Wilier, Open, Look and Cervelo, to name a few.
Lorkin says part of the reason for this is to showcase some unbelievable custom and cool bikes coming from these mainstream brands, but also to lend some legitimacy to the local builders.
“I quite like putting them all in the same room now and treating them the same way. It’s nice that a Baum, for example, can stand up proudly next to something like a Pinarello,” he says.
There are also quite a few parts and accessories exhibitors who will be on hand, showing off the latest and greatest bits that are attached to these bikes.
“With all of the bike launches happening, especially with Shimano and XTR Di2. We’ve all seen it online, but for most of the public, it will be the first time they get to see it in person,” he says.
Lorkin also hinted that there may be some other new gear that will be on debut at the show.
What else can folks expect?
Lorkin tells Flow that the entire show is about telling the story of a bespoke-built bike, because it goes well beyond just the guy or gal with the Tig welder.
“There’s someone there who’s exhibiting just as a painter to educate the show. There’s also someone who does fitting, so that you’re in the right size frame, and the right saddle and your cleat placement is right — all of the fundamentals like that. We’ll also have Columbus there, which makes the steel tubing many of these builders use,” he says. So there is quite a bit of an educational, interactive dynamic going on as well.”
Friend of Flow Mitch Docker will also be on hand, hosting Spoken Word, where he’ll sit down with some of cycling’s most interesting characters for intimate and off-the-cuff conversations.
“Josh Portner from Silca will be there to give one of his Marginal Gains talks and have a conversation with Mitch on stage. Last year, we had Mitch talk to Phil Anderson — the first non-European to wear the Tour De France Yellow Jersey, Simon Gerrans and people like that,” he says.
Tickets for the 2025 Spoken Handmade Bike Show at the Carragieworks in Redfern are on sale now. Head over to the Spoken website for more info. We’ll see you there!
The post Handmade, Custom & Wildly Cool | Spoken 2025 Lands in Sydney This June appeared first on Flow Mountain Bike.
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[[{“value”:”With its roots in a beer garden somewhere in Fitzroy, the Spoken Handmade Bike show has grown into a full-on bespoke bike showcase where builders from Australia and around the world come to exhibit their handywork. Set for 20-22 June, this year Spoken has bid farewell to the Seaworks in Melbourne, heading north to Sydney
The post Handmade, Custom & Wildly Cool | Spoken 2025 Lands in Sydney This June appeared first on Flow Mountain Bike.”}]] Read More Flow Mountain Bike
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