Case Study: Helping Evari Bikes go from Prototype to Market Ready

We spoke with Craig McDonald, CEO & Founder of Evari Bikes, to unpick how Cambridge Design Technology helped take his dream from prototype through to market launch. Craig approached Cambridge Design Technology after a referral from a trusted partner, to support on some mechanical design issues and help develop their Evari e-bikes.

Alex Moys [AM]: How did you come across Jon Plumb and Cambridge Design Technology?

Craig McDonald [CM] I started working with Cambridge Design Technology [CDT] last year while chatting with Prototype Projects, who are essentially a prototyping company.

I always ask for advice from people if not 100% sure, and they recommended CDT straight away as a trusted mechanical engineering partner they’d known and worked with for a number of years.

I prefer recommendations when it comes from trusted sources, so I contacted Jon and we’ve been working with him ever since. We’ve completed around three or four projects now.

[AM] When was the last project you worked on with Jon and CDT? 

[CM]: The most recent one was a tool we’re making for our bikes.

It’s a tensioner for the carbon belt on the bike. Carbon belts are fantastic because they’re clean, great for easy and silent running, last longer than chains and don’t tend to stretch as much. The downside with a carbon belt is that it needs to be tensioned quite accurately.

We prototyped a couple of designs, but nothing could take the high torque required. That’s when I went to CDT.  As a mechanical engineer Jon took a look and gave me his opinion with various options.

It felt we were in a safe pair of hands. Jon has a really helpful, nurturing nature about him. I said I needed his experience, and he kind of took me under his wing. I love chatting with him for his encyclopaedic knowledge of mechanical engineering. He’s got so much experience and knowledge which he loves to share, and this is exactly what I need.

[AM]: Let’s delve a bit deeper in your working relationship with Cambridge Design Technology. How does it work in terms of the steps and the processes?

[CM]: My background is in CG and visual effects with some engineering. We used to create car launches for Jaguar, Land Rover and Ford which is a very technical job, and because of that knowledge it was a great basis to begin designing our bikes, and I’ve literally designed, developed all the CAD for all our components.

I take a well-polished design to Jon, and he makes it work. He’ll tells me what can and can’t be achieved and then I factor that back into my design. He understands the tolerances I’m working with and so we work through it together to the get outcome we need.

[AM]: Have CDT helped take Evari Bikes from Prototype through to Market launch?

[CM]: We’ve used CDT on components such as the tensioners, some tools and the bolts package, All the bolts on the 856 are titanium and most of the bike is carbon fibre, so it’s quite a high end product. This tensioner has got to be so precise and so with Jon’s help we’ve taken it into a finished product from a design that I first went to him with.

[AM]: Did you have a brand and creative vision idea before you went to Cambridge Design Technology?

[CM]: We were quite well progressed when we started speaking to Jon. However, if I’m honest, I wish I had met him four years ago when we first embarked on this endeavour.

It was in the latter stages of completion that Jon came in to enhance various mechanical parts. Like everything in design it’s an iterative process and we’ve been through various iterations of this tensioner as the force loads are quite significant.

We needed a robust and reliable solution …. that’s what Jon gave us.

[AM]: Are the bikes ready to go and available to buy on your website?

[CM]: They will be in July 2022. All the components on the bike are really high-end, and there are still a few issues with supply-chain after Covid all across the bike industry. Frame and forks arrive next month and the other parts are pretty much British, Italian or German, and so we’ll be shipping in August.

[AM]: Just going back a little way to why you first started. How did the whole idea and concept of Evari Bikes begin?

[CM]: It was about 2012 when the first E-bikes hit the news and I thought this has got to be big. I always had a strong passion for bikes after racing BMX, mountain bikes and motocross in the past.

I had the idea to set up a bike company back in 2017, It seemed a natural evolution of things that I’ve done in my career in architecture, product design and from running a visual effects company.

I really wanted to make a good product and having this passion for bikes and product design led me to converge those two things together.

E-bikes are exploding now and are a dependable way to get around and good for the environment. There is nothing negative about an E-bike.

[AM]: How have you found the journey taking Evari from a dream to a real business?

[CM]: This has been a passion project which is turning into a commercial business. We launched our bike last year at Eurobike – the biggest B2B bike show in the world – and won the Eurobike Startup award.

To create a high-end bike, we needed high-end mechanical engineering people working on it. Which is why I enjoyed working with Jon. He loves coming up with solutions for engineering problems which have a small form factor necessary in the bike world.

[AM]: What are the most important attributes you look for when looking for a partner?

[CM]: First and foremost they have to be collaborative and not transactional. I don’t like it when someone says now your time’s up, you’re done.  Jon and I have a lot in common. He’s passionate about what he does and has a love for his work. When you find people on this journey, you want to work with them because it’s pleasurable and you gain something from it.

I always feel like I leave a project with Jon knowing more than I did about this vast area. Taking away new knowledge is important for me. 

[AM]: How much do you see sustainability influencing product design?

[CM]: Massively! Through all stages of the lifecycle. What we’re trying to do is drive less, that’s one thing we can impact there.

We’ve just made our own film in our production company Form Films, highlighting our work with a Professor from Oxford, “Nine ways to change the world now”. We made it with our own budget and put it out there for COP 27. It’s been picked up by Water Bear, which is the environmental Netflix if you like. It’s just a 5-minute film and it highlights tangible things we need to do in the world now to combat climate change.

In terms of the bike business, it’s scary how many resources are being used around the world and just the frequency and turnover of products. I think this general consumerism way of life we’ve been led into is just not sustainable.

By getting people out of cars, may be small but it’s doing something. We want to make bikes that last a long time, we don’t want them falling apart. Our bikes are more expensive, but the truth is it’ll last you.

It’s engineered out of carbon fibre and titanium, and we look to the high-end automotive industry for these kind of cues.

[AM]: Do you see yourself working with Cambridge Design Technology and Jon Plumb in the future?

[CM]: Definitely. In 2023 we’re developing a second bike, so we’ll be working with Jon from day one, starting later this year.

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