Ep. 137: Brad DeVaney/Leading By Design

This week Clint and Dawson sat down with Brad DeVaney Head of Product Development at Litespeed Bicycles. Brad's life on the bike began at 5, yes 5 and at eight years old, he went from top regional BMX racer to national level talent, traveling the country on a national circuit as a factory team rider for Schwinn. As DeVaney grew, so too did his love of riding; if there was a start line and finish line, DeVaney was in. He raced for a road team in the mid ’80s that provided the team with used Team 7-Eleven bikes—providing DeVaney his first experience riding a titanium bike. In the late ‘80s, he discovered a penchant for triathlon, and mountain bike racing.

While working in shops, doing wheel builds and even his own custom frame painting job on the side while in college in the late 1980s, DeVaney would occasionally build show bikes for Litespeed in Chattanooga. The work led to a part-time gig, and with a mind full of concepts and ideas, he challenged the company—during an era of pretty staid round-tubed designs— on how to change the shape of titanium tubes in the interest of improved performance. It wasn’t long before Litespeed offered him a full-time job on the design team.

It wasn’t long before Litespeed—and DeVaney—became in-demand with in-the-know pros. DeVaney was the man in charge creating many of the rebadged Litespeed bikes that riders like Lance Armstrong were riding under different auspices. “I was making bikes for riders like Alex Zuelle and Laurent Jalabert. I had riders on ONCE, Gan, Telekom, Motorola, all riding my bikes in one Tour de France one year—it was incredible.

Once passing muster of the pros (and DeVaney), many of his progressive designs made their way into production and came to define the point of differentiation between Litespeed and any other titanium bike manufacturers.

DeVaney served as the company’s point person when NASA approached to garner an assist of the creation of the Mars rover Curiosity, in 2012. “I took that call and led our interface at that facility,” DeVaney recalls. “Their team mobility leader said ‘some of these guys, they think you’re some little bike company. If you present to 85 of our engineers on titanium forming capability, I think they’d be ready to partner with you,’” he says. “So I explained it all, in their terms, and moved our plus/minus five percent tolerances to plus/minus one percent. They did decide to work with us. I had just finished a bike ride when it landed on Mars, and they had me on the phone when it landed—that was awesome. Just amazing to be a part of that.

Today, DeVaney continues to push the envelope of what’s possible in titanium, and can be seen in the new chainstay yoke on the Watia gravel bike, and many new products that are, as they say… coming soon. He still throws on a race plate and lines up at events like Unbound, or keeps it simple and hits the weekend group road ride.

“All of this is fun,” DeVaney says of his job. “And it’s a great team—at the factory, Marcus Higgins, Joe (Headrick), Chris (Brown) and Brandon (Collier) are great guys I’ve enjoyed creating newer products with. I’ve always wanted to get the job done in a graceful way, not flamboyantly, and always looked at what form was best, what builds the best. It’s simply a passion for better instruments, and I think about cycling as my music, and bikes are our instruments. I believe in a finely-tuned instrument.”

“I was creating benchmarks, and always wanted to do something remarkable with titanium,” he adds. ”And I still do.”