Our Story
My name is Andrés. For twelve years, all my youth, I competed as a road cyclist in my country, Spain.
But I left cycling to do something deeply different: design. For almost 20 years I designed dozens of digital platforms, products and brands for some of the largest companies in the world. Building great beautiful products was my thing.
And then came this moment in which I realised that having totally stopped riding a bike didn't made me any less of a cyclist and that something exciting could come out of that.
So ten years ago, with the help of my great friend Toño Ortega, his track record in the sports industry and my experience as a designer, we began to imagine what could be the most beautiful high-end bikes in the world. We jumped right in, quitting our jobs and investing everything we had: one year later our first bikes were on the market.
They were incredible.
Handmade in Italy, tailor-made for our first customers, the first The Draft’s were the most beautiful bikes we had ever seen and ridden, and they carried our name!
The memories of the first The Draft are still alive in us, and still guide our product today. Ultra-fast bikes, cared down to the smallest detail.
Our first customers obsessively keep and ride them. And this is no surprise because they were machines made to win.
But it wasn't just about winning. It might sound too much, but for us all this was really about transcending cycling boundaries and reaching further, literally speaking. Riding out knowing how you are going to start the day but not when or where it will end. We wanted to make machines tailored to those who want to explore the world while exploring themselves.
And The Draft matured to what it is today.
We overcame carbon towards a deeper, more manual materiality, one with which both we and our clients could dialogue: steel. Steel had always been there, it never really left. Steel is in our origins, in countless finish lines with us pushing hard those impossibly thin and sleek frames, owning them for years and years, passing them from generation to generation.
We didn’t stop there. Many prototypes later we combined the tactility and springy feel of the finest steel with the precision of handcrafted carbon. The touch of the finest welding technique, of the centennial memory of steel, assembled with the absolutely best components that can be bought today. And of course and above all: always custom. That magical experience of a bike that is born being imagined from the sizing and preferences of its owner.
And we also wanted to transcend asphalt. The end of paved roads to be not an end but a beginning. We started making stronger, wider, more sturdy bikes. Paying a tribute to southern european roads, with robust handcrafted pieces of engineering that are fast going up the finest pavements and also fun down the most serpenting pavé passes, capable of getting well into the dirt, from sunrise to sunset, for thousands of kilometers.
Handmade machines manufactured with extraordinary care. Tailored to each of our clients. Designed to cross the world, aimed at those who understand cycling not as just pedaling but as a way of life.
That's The Draft for me.
Andrés Iniesta.
The Draft founder.