With the millennium bug much ado about nothing, the year 2001 promised the dawning of a new era for the world. The world of competitive cycling marked the new millennium by looking back at its first century of tremendous popularity and record after new record. Apart from mountain bikes, throughout the twentieth century the premium bike sector was essentially dominated by handcrafted brands from either Italy or France, with the exception of Eddy Merckx bikes from Belgium.

Compared to other modes of transportation even inexpensive commuter bicycles are light, yet are still relatively large compared to such mass production items as electronic parts and devices. Consequently, bicycle production remained a labor-intensive field with a lower degree of automation applied in the production process, and through the late twentieth century, limitations on the ability to control the fine details of craftsmanship meant that high-tend racing bicycle production was practiced like an art form, with bicycles hand-crafted in Italy and France and exported around the world.

All this changed rapidly in the last five years of the century. First, the introduction of carbon fiber frame material posed the first challenge to conventional steel material. Next, the combined inexpensive cost and lightness of aluminum dealt another heavy blow to steel, essentially knocking it out of the mainstream.

Carbon fiber, offering the advantage of light weight, is also far more labor intensive than steel, yet more critically it demands far deeper technical know-how than metal alloys, making it difficult for smaller brands to make the jump to composites. So apart from such established veteran mass producers of carbon fiber as Giant and select manufacturers in the United States and Europe, who continually developed quality competition-level bicycle frames and components, carbon fiber did not emerge as a major offering in the product lines of classic cycle brands before the close of the twentieth century.

Although welding techniques never posed a problem for established makers, tricky heat treatment was essential to determining the quality of aluminum bicycles. By the late 1990s aluminum had become the main material used in high-end bicycles, yet in Asia we saw numerous cases where alloy frames from classic European brands cracked after only a short period of use due to problems related to the heat treatment process after welding of the aluminum tubes. This problem continued to persist as well in at the start of the new millennium.

A major shift took place in the situation in and around 2001. Taiwan had entered the bicycle contract manufacturing (OEM) field in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, under the direction of government planning, Taiwan steadily gained ground to become the world's biggest producers of bicycles. As globalization spread in the 1990s, many of Taiwan's bicycle manufacturers moved production facilities to China, where they focused on production of low-end and mid-range bikes and components. However, years of experience had fostered the development of a group of manufacturers and skilled craftsmen in Taiwan, leading to the formation of a complete upstream-midstream-downstream supply chain and comprehensively delineated division of labor structure. The heavy concentration of the OEM bicycle industry in Taiwan advanced the refinement of heat treatment techniques vital to the production of alloy bicycle components and frames, exceeding the capacity of conventional hand-crafted famous European boutique brands, which could simply not afford the heavy outlay for heat treatment with annual sales of fewer than 10,000 units. With this industry shift, today nearly all high-end aluminum or aluminum-carbon hybrid bike frames produced today are made in Taiwan, with a small quantity made in China.

Capitalizing on Taiwan's development into a bicycle industry leader and drawing on years of cycling and related retail experience, in 2004 Peloton set out to design and produce our ideal combination of bicycle geometry and sizing. After rigorous testing and refinement, the Peloton brand was unveiled to the cycling world in 2004.

For Peloton, the bicycle is a unique product that holds an appeal distinct from mass-produced consumer goods. As our brand name implies, Peloton is a team of cycling enthusiasts working together as a group. As current or former members of the racing peloton, each of us has extensive experience riding bicycles constructed of all the major materials, and ridden countless bicycles produced by the top European and American high-end brands. This means that Peloton's designers are experienced and knowledgeable regarding the ride characteristics of different materials and the impact of geometry and sizing on handling and performance. Drawing on these resources, we set out to design, produce and market high-performance bicycle frames and components for demanding cyclists.