Czech titanium bike maker Equator Cycling rebuilds after Zlín fire

A fire in Zlín’s historic “Building 34” destroyed the warehouse, workshop and office of Equator Cycling — the family business of Milan Šimek, who makes custom titanium frames and carbon wheels to order. The damage runs into millions of crowns, but the entrepreneur has already resumed work — right from home.

When the fire broke out, Šimek was hiking a ridge in the Low Tatras, out of signal range. When he got back to his phone, he found hundreds of messages and missed calls. “I was in shock. While it was burning, we had no idea of the scale. Then it hit us. We cried for two days, and then got down to work,” the entrepreneur recalls.

The fire destroyed all the equipment, materials and even signed jerseys from world champions — sixteen years of work. But the brand, the experience, the know-how and the determination to start again survived. “We’re working harder than ever. Since Saturday morning we’ve been going non-stop — from the living room, from the kitchen, wherever we can. At 58, I never thought I’d live through something like this,” says Šimek.

The company, which employs about ten people and has an annual turnover of roughly 14 million crowns, cannot expect quick help from its insurer — the investigation must first be completed, which could take months. So Šimek and his wife and business co-owner Ludmila are looking for new premises and re-ordering components from suppliers.

Support has come from more than just family: customers and simply caring people have started buying pre-order vouchers and making donations through the website. “I didn’t want to do it, but the young guys around me convinced me when they saw how much people wanted to help. We opened up the option on the site to support us with a donation or buy a voucher as a pre-order. Most people, even those who don’t ride a bike at all, just transferred money,” Šimek says, visibly moved.

Foreign partners have also stepped in: suppliers in Taiwan and China who make rims for Equator Cycling cut their delivery times from the usual six months to two once they learned what had happened.

Equator Cycling is not a typical bike assembler working from ready-made parts. “We make titanium frames and wheels that we design ourselves — we have our own design engineer, we test everything ourselves, we don’t buy ready-made frames from Asian catalogues. We’re designers, cyclists, and we do our own development,” Šimek explains. Test versions and prototypes were also buried in the rubble — now all of that has to be ordered again.

Šimek has been involved in cycling his whole life: in the late 1980s he was ranked among the ten best Czech racers, and in 2010 he decided to turn his passion into a business, creating “a small family bike boutique.” The company initially specialized in hand-built carbon wheels, later adding handmade titanium frames — entirely made to order, with no stock inventory, “like at a tailor’s atelier.”

Even though the business is literally lying in ashes, Šimek hasn’t considered closing it for a second. “When you’ve done sport your whole life, pushed yourself in the mountains, you just don’t give up that easily. It’s like a race: you fall behind, but in the end you turn things around, people cheer you on — and that’s how it is now too. The support we’re getting is incredible. It’s fired us up like nothing else,” says the entrepreneur, referring not only to the financial donations and pre-orders on the website.

By the Around Prague newsroom