GERMAN ENGINEERING AND DESIGN

DEVELOPING THE NEXT GENERATION OF BIKES

Our young and enthusiastic R&D team, lives, breathes (and not surprisingly) rides bikes…all day. Creating a bike is very much a team effort, where a long list of individuals contribute their specific skill set and ultimately bring it all together at the end. From conceptual planning, via first riding prototypes, integration of colour and graphics into the overall project, refining the pre-production models to the final bike that makes its way to the shop floor of your local MERIDA dealer.

Testing, re-testing and testing again are crucial to our game. We are doing everything we can to provide our customers with the most refined and secure product possible. Our in-house testing facilities push our products beyond the industry standards, and we work with the best external test laboratories to be sure that MERIDA bikes will withstand even the most demanding trail, the steepest climb, the heaviest load or the daily gruelling chore.

THERE IS NO ‘I’ IN TEAM:

MERIDA bikes are still very much ‘made by hand’ and that process starts with the many individuals who make up our highly skilled R&D team. From marathon racer to bike packing enthusiast, from track specialist to Enduro lover and from semi-professional road racer to ironman competitor, our team does not only bring experience and knowledge in their corresponding fields to work in the morning but also the undisputed love for everything bike, and the unstoppable desire to make ever better bikes. Our team accompanies the birth of a new bike from the conceptual beginning, all the way through the development stages and onto the production process. But the development does not stop there, as small improvements and upgrades are constantly looked at and integrated when possible.

HANDMADE IN TAIWAN

BUILDING BICYCLES SINCE 1972

We have been in the business of making bikes for over 45 years and while lots of things have changed over the years, we still make our bikes by hand. It was very much the intention of our founder Ike Tseng to improve the reputation and the quality of bikes ‘Made in Taiwan’, and that still remains the main objective for us today.

The ‘creation’ of a new bike starts with our highly skilled R&D team, which is based in the technology heart of Germany, where new ideas, concepts and trends get put into the outline of a new bike. From there it goes through countless stages of drawing, modelling and measuring before the first prototypes get hand built and welded in our factory in Taiwan. These prototypes go through many stages of testing and refining until the final goal is reached. Parallel to this process, we have our graphics and colour team working tirelessly on giving the bike the perfect look. Our R&D team is a colourful mixture of skill sets and rider backgrounds bringing experiences, ideas and trends from all aspects of cycling together.

But the ideas of our R&D team would not go very far if they would not have the experienced arm of our Taiwan headquarter in Yuanlin on their side, who turn the prototypes, ideas and concepts into real products, real bikes. With more than 45 years of experience to draw from, this German – Taiwan set-up is the ideal combination of design and production power, which very much shows in the quality and innovation of our products.

Overshadowing all of these steps is a stringent testing regime before any products make it onto the production line. Our Germany based, in-house, testing facilities push our bikes beyond the industry requirements, and a long list of external test laboratories support us even further in making sure that our products will withstand even the most demanding trail, the steepest climb, the heaviest load or the gruelling daily chore. Once in production, vigorous quality control standards and a constant involvement from production engineers and our R&D team ensure that our products can carry the quality label ‘Handmade in Taiwan’ with pride.

The undisputed love for everything bike and the constant desire to make ever better bikes drive our team in our R&D centre in Germany as well as in our factory in Taiwan forward. Every part of this chain has enormous pride in our product – from CEO, via our R&D and engineer teams all the way to the welder and assembling crew member who puts the final touches to each bike, before it gets distributed to one of our many national distributor