The Abbey name started before the tool business was even a thought. When Jason was still splitting his time between the race circuit and a bike shop in Bend, Oregon, he and another employee wanted to build bicycle frames. Between the two of them, they had everything they needed to build bike frames, except for a name. Jason's cohort in this venture loved Belgium. The poultry weather, the cobblestones, the chips, the beer, the bike races and especially cyclocross. Jason loved Belgium and also had a homebrewing hobby and wanted to flip the craft beer scene situation by using names from cycling. After many options, Abbey was mentioned and it was the obvious choice. There may have been libations involved, but a web address was purchased moments later. Abbey Bike Works was born on the spot and adorns the downtubes of a few dozen bike frames in Oregon. Despite Jason's legitimate fabrication skills, this wasn't something that had been started with the intention of being a real business.
Abbey Bike Works built a dozen frames before the bike shop went bust during the economic downturn. At that point, Jason took the name and launched a mobile bike service to make a living and stay in Bend. This mobile business led to wrenching at regional bike races.
During the winter of 2010, Jason attended Bill Woodul's race mechanic clinic and met aspiring professional mechanic Jeff Crombie. The two connected through a shared background working in aviation, Jeff as a pneumatic airframe and powerplant mechanic (A&P) and Jason as a welder.
Fast forward two years and Jeff Crombie lands his first full-time job with the Canadian pro-continental team Spyder Tech. In anticipation of the coming season, he asked his friend to make him a custom tool. Jeff's experience as an A&P meant mistakes were not an option. Mistakes in aviation mean a plane crash and that normally involves people dying. Jeff wanted to check lockrings daily as part of the standard "bolt check" that every race mechanic goes through. One phone call later, the idea for our signature tool was born. 48 hours later, Jason was drilling holes in lockrings and welding handles onto them.
That first batch of 20 tools was given to Jeff and a few friends Jason had met over the years of working on the carnival-like circuit that is professional bike racing. Jason thought that was it, a weekend project to help friends. Maybe it would lead to a free beer at a race one day. Then Jason started receiving calls from random people asking for this excellent time-saving tool and realized he was onto something. That's when he enlisted the help of a local machine shop in Bend, Oregon to make the tools more refined and put them up for sale.
In July 2012, the Cascade Classic came to Abbey's hometown, Bend. During that event, Jason walked into the pit at Saturday night's criterium and sold a Crombie tool to every mechanic who had cash in their pocket. He sold tools to everyone who didn't at the start of the following days. By the end of that racing season, we had sold tools to almost every active race mechanic in the United States. The last two tools from that first batch were sent to two technical writers, Nick Legan and Zach Overholt of Velonews and Bikerumor respectively. These two reviews came back extremely positive. However, Jason still didn't think his "heirloom quality tool" was the foundation for an entire tool company. 10 months later, 6 different teams using our signature tool at the Tour de France, including the head mechanic of the eventual GC winner.
When emails started pouring in from those two reviews, people kept asking us "what else do you make?" You see, the problem with the Crombie tool is that not only was it revolutionary, but it was also executed at a level that no other tool manufacturer in the bike industry had bothered to do. It's a judiciously placed hole that launched Abbey, but it's the quality that built the company!
Those emails asking for more are where the Abbey of the future really began. Thanks to all the people who asked for more! Bike tools, especially in the United States, were stale and dated. Everyone in the bike industry had significantly raised the bar from 2000 onwards, but for some reason, tool manufacturers didn't keep up. They were building tools the same way they always had and in some cases worse than they used to. Abbey Bike Tools is about doing things better, as well as they could be done, damn the price.
