Surly Bikes, or Surly, is a bicycle brand based in

Bloomington, Minnesota Bloomington is a suburban city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, on the north bank of the Minnesota River, above its confluence with the Mississippi River, south of downtown Minneapolis. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 89,987, ma ...

, United States, that was founded in 1998. It is a division of

Quality Bicycle Products Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) is a large distributor of bicycle parts and accessories in the bicycle industry, with revenues of $150 million in 2008. In addition to wholesaling bicycles and components from other manufacturers, QBP owns and m ...

, a manufacturer and distributor of bicycles and bicycle parts. Despite sharing a similar name and being headquartered in the U.S. state of Minnesota, Surly Bikes and Surly Brewing Company are separate enterprises, with an agreement between the two companies allowing the bicycle company to display the single word "Surly" on its products. Surly Brewing’s Omar Ansari reached out to Surly Bikes before launching the brewery to make sure there would be no conflict.

History

The Surly brand was developed in house at the Minnesota-based Quality Bicycle Products in the 1990s as a complement to its other brands, such as

Salsa Cycles Salsa Cycles is an American bicycle brand based in Bloomington, Minnesota. The company produces touring, mountain, road, and gravel bicycles, as well as bicycle components. The Salsa Cycles brand, along with its sister brands Surly Bikes and All ...

. At the time, "fatbikes" were emerging on the market for winter use in snowy climates, but they were considered exotic and too expensive to produce. Quality Bicycle Products hoped to standardize parts to make mass production easier. Soon after its founding in the late 1990s, the Surly brand was mostly known in the bicycle industry for its

single-speed bikes A single-speed bicycle is a type of bicycle with a single gear ratio. These bicycles are without derailleur gears, hub gearing or other methods for varying the gear ratio of the bicycle. There are many types of modern single speed bicycles; BMX ...

, but in the 2010s it became known for fat-tire bikes that it helped pioneer with machinery it owned. By the 2010s, many brands that manufactured fat bikes used Surly tires. In April 2020, Surly's parent company announced layoffs for 12 percent of its workforce due to the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

pandemic.

Products

Surly's Pugsley fat bike that debuted in 2005 was praised by reviewers for its common hub feature that allowed for interchanges, additional gearing combinations, and ability to handle a variety of conditions. In 2019, Surly faced a

product recall A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker/seller at risk of legal action. The recall is an effort to limit ruin ...

of 5,000 bike racks due to crash hazards.

References

{{American bicycle manufacturers Cycle manufacturers of the United States Companies established in 1998 Companies based in Bloomington, Minnesota Mountain bike manufacturers