Ritchey often cites his friend, the late
Jobst Brandt as being crucial not only to his development as a cyclist and component designer, but for his deep passion in off-road riding. Brandt, author of the iconic book,
The Bicycle Wheel, had a riding style that was unlike anyone else at the time. Brandt would lead his infamous rides that quickly left the paved roads behind and ventured onto to dirt single-track trails on traditional road bikes with no modification—something completely unheard in the 1960s and '70s. In 1978, Ritchey was approached by
Joe Breeze and
Otis Guy to build a tandem for them to use in a record attempt across America. Breeze brought his newly made off-road "ballooner" bike to Ritchey's shop in Menlo Park. While he credits Joe Breeze for building the first custom off-road specific 26" wheeled frame, however, known only to a few people, Ritchey had already built an off-road specific
650b bike along the design lines of a fatter tired, flat barred "woodsy/cow trail" bike. Ritchey says he was influenced by the late
John Finley Scott, who encouraged him to build a bike for years with 650b wheels and tires. Upon seeing Joe's bike, he said, "I think I’ll build something like that also." Breeze returned to his home of Fairfax, CA and told
Gary Fisher of Ritchey's intentions to build a 26" "ballooner." Immediately, Fisher called Ritchey and asked Ritchey to build him one as well. Because of Ritchey's production mindset, he built a third frame. When Fisher picked up his frame a few months later and learned of the third frame, he told Ritchey, "I can sell that." The seeds of the new "mountain bike" company were sown, beginning with Fisher selling bike #3 to a fellow Marin resident. These "ballooners" were first featured in BMX Plus magazine, before the world identified them as a mountain bike, and a new buzz surrounded this new style of off-road bike. Fisher enlisted the help of his friend and roommate,
Charlie Kelly, to market and sell the bikes Ritchey was building. Because Ritchey had years of custom frame and component manufacturing experience, he was uniquely suited to tackle and establish many of the new designs and standards this new breed of bicycle would require. The company initially was called Ritchey MountainBikes, with Ritchey fillet brazing over 1000 bikes over the course of those beginning three years. This high volume of production lead to Ritchey becoming mountain biking's first production frame builder, earning him the moniker, "The
General Motors of mountain bike frame companies," from
Mike Sinyard of
Specialized. The informal business lasted about three years, with Ritchey building the bikes in the mountains of the south bay peninsula while Fisher and Kelly sold them out of Fairfax and Marin. In 1983, Ritchey left the relationship. Kelly also left for personal reasons. On his own, Ritchey sold his remaining frames to a new company out of British Columbia, called
Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Out of this turbulent time Ritchey built his own sales and marketing company, hired a retired professional road racer,
Mike Neel, as his salesman and created Ritchey Design. By the early 80s general interest in cycling was in decline, however, mountain biking was growing. Events like Pearl Pass and the
NORBA '83 National Championships drove interest in the emerging sport. By the mid 1980s, over 25 percent of the bike industry was based on mountain bikes, with Ritchey emerging as the #1 off-road component design company outside of
Shimano. == Project Rwanda ==