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WOODALPS was born from a personal challenge: to build my own bike.

A few years before founding WOODALPS, while studying at engineering school, I covered countless kilometers by bike — mainly as a means of transportation, mountain biking with friends for fun, and road cycling as a form of training. At that time, I was also competing in rowing at a high level, and I was really putting a lot of power into the pedals!

Unfortunately, both my mountain bike and my road bike developed cracks in their frames. That's when I set myself the challenge of building my own bicycle.

During my studies, I steered my career toward composite materials engineering — a choice that allowed me to work for 15 years as a mechanical and materials specialist on numerous cutting-edge projects. I started close to the ground in automotive racing, then moved up to aerospace, then to launchers, and finally to the space sector, working on scientific satellites in low Earth orbit and telecommunication satellites in geostationary orbit. However, this path took me a little too far from the mountains and forests I loved.

Alongside all these activities, I designed and built a CNC milling machine, which eventually allowed me to create everything I needed — including my first bike.

My main goals were to create a bicycle that was both original and high-performing. I chose to use wood as the primary construction material. Certain species, such as ash, offer particularly interesting properties: an excellent stiffness-to-weight ratio, viscoelastic properties that filter vibrations, and above all, incredible design freedom, which I fully embraced to create organic forms while maintaining mechanical logic.

I built my first bike in 2012 in my very first workshop — a tiny 6m² room that was actually a ski locker, facing the Mont de Grange in La Chapelle d'Abondance.

Seeing the interest they generated and the positive feedback from riders, I decided to take the adventure further and officially create a brand in 2022, to share this passion with other cycling enthusiasts.

Today, WOODALPS' mission is to make the pleasure of riding wooden bikes accessible to all. Our bikes deliver surprising performance, are crafted with passion and meticulous attention to detail, and are built in a way that is both artisanal and modern, sustainable and environmentally respectful.

Our bikes are handcrafted in Lugrin, Haute-Savoie, by the shores of Lake Geneva and at the foot of the Alps, in a spacious 100m² workshop equipped with two CNC machines, a woodworking station, a paint booth, and a testing bench.