On any given Saturday in Minnesota, you'll find families riding around the Chain of Lakes, group rides vying for town line sprints on rural roads, and friends loading up their bikes for a weekend of camping. Come winter, the scenery changes, but the riders are still out there. They just add a few more layers.
Cycling in Minnesota isn't confined to one discipline, one season, or one type of rider. It's woven into everyday life. And it's a big part of what influenced the design behind the bikes at Monarc.
Minnesota isn't the kind of place where you can get away with building a mediocre bike. Riders here know their stuff. They can spot gimmicks from a mile away, appreciate quality components, and aren't afraid to tell you exactly what they think.
Ryan Callahan, industrial designer explains, “The riders here are serious about making cycling a 4-season affair. Monster snowstorms, ice, and cold do not deter riders from getting outside and enjoying all that Minnesota has to offer. We invented mainstream fat-biking so we could ride on frozen lakes and creeks. We also have a claim on some of the first gravel bike events with the Almanzo encouraging riders to test their endurance and equipment on low-maintenance roads. Minnesota encourages you to get outside and ride regardless of the weather or terrain. The people here are just wired differently.”
That’s why Ryan and Julia Moran (principal engineer at Monarc) aren’t designing for a made-up customer persona or trying to chase the latest trend. They’re designing for the kinds of people that ride every day of the week—friends who commute by bike, parents hauling kids to school, riders who want one bike that can handle a grocery run on Wednesday and a bikepacking trip on Saturday without skipping a beat.
The goal was never to build the fastest ebike or the lightest one. It was to build the bike they kept wishing existed. One that puts utility first, removes little points of friction, and makes it easier to choose the bike instead of the car.
That's why Ryan and Julia rarely talk about features for the sake of features. What most people see as a spec sheet, they see as a series of problems to solve.
Integrated lights make it easier to ride home after dark. Two batteries mean you don't have to think twice about taking the scenic route. Full-coverage fenders let you ride after a summer rain without showing up soaked. A sturdy rear rack turns grocery runs into bike rides, and an overbuilt kickstand keeps everything stable while you load it up. Even the touchscreen was designed around one simple idea: it should be so intuitive that you never have to think about it.
“Our mandatories were pretty clear: the bike had to be safe, reliable, intuitive, and genuinely fun to ride. I wanted every part to have a purpose, with nothing added just for the sake of it. The goal was a cohesive experience, not a collection of random components stitched together,” said Julia.
At Monarc, bikes aren't reserved for perfect weather or weekend adventures. They're transportation, recreation, freedom, adventure, and how you spend your Saturday.
As Julia puts it, “I don’t think there’s any one way to ride a bike. I love a big ride or working toward a big goal, but I also love riding my ebike around the city with my nephew on the back. I love riding to the lake to go swimming, riding to meet friends, or just using a bike to get around town. And then there’s the other end of the spectrum, like multi-day bikepacking trips where the bike becomes the way you see and experience an entirely new place.”