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Markus Storck
Photo: Markus Storck, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons8

Markus Storck

German bicycle designer and developer

Markus Storck is a German bicycle designer and developer, known for creating the lightest racing bike fork in the world, made of carbon fiber, and the first ever carbon fiber bicycle crank. He is the managing director and founder of Storck Bicycle, designer, and innovator, and his current developments hold the world record lightness and stiffness to weight ratios.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Markus Storck (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1964.1

Companies

Early life and education

Storck was born in 1964 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he worked in his parents' bicycle shop, and the first German retailer of Cannondale bicycles. Storck comes from a long lineage of bicyclists and bike racers. His great, great-grandfather joined a cycling club in 1876 and was a member for over 25 years. His grandfather, Willi Muller, and granduncle were professional racers on the Opel professional racing team, with his grandfather winning several track and road races. Most of his extended family either competed in races or was heavily involved in cycling.

Storck started biking at an early age and competed in his first road race at six. His grandparents and parents owned several bicycle shops and Storck was involved in the shops at a young age. As a teenager, his parents opened another shop which Storck ran after school.

His family interest in bicycles led him to complete a business course in the bicycle trade, followed by launching his first business, Bike-tech, in 1986. He founded Storck Bike-tech GmbH in 1989 and Storck Bike-tech, Inc. in the US in 1992, and in 1995 rebranded the company under the name "Storck Bicycle".

From Wikipedia’s article on Markus Storck (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: designer.4

Storck Bike-tech

Early in Storck's career, his focus was on the import and trade of bicycles from Klein, Merlin, Fat Chance, Ritchey, Crank Brothers, as well as bike frames from Taiwan and Japan he rebranded under the Storck name.

In 1990, Storck traveled to Japan to study under bicycle master frame-builder and founder of Toyo, Yoshiaki Ishigaki. He learned to work with steel, titanium, aluminum, and magnesium to build custom bike frames, which later led to his carbon fiber innovations.

Storck went on to engineer and develop the world's first ever carbon fiber bicycle crank in 1992, which started selling in 1993. Weighing at 280g they were the lightest cranks ever built and the innovative use of carbon fiber founded the standard Storck would follow in future bicycles, components, and accessories.

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Storck Bicycle

A contract termination with Klein bicycles in 1990 due to its acquisition by Trek bicycles led to the rebranding of Storck Bike-tech and Markus Storck's renewed design and development of his own bicycle and component production.

In 1995, Storck began the design and manufacturing of aluminum frame bicycles in Portland, Oregon with the assistance of Kinesis USA, a subsidiary of Kinesis Industry, and in 1996, Dutch mountain bicyclist Bart Brentjens won the gold medal at the first cross-country mountain bike race of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, on a mountain bike of Storck's design collaboration with Hercules, Schauff, and American Eagle.

Markus Storck's innovations using Vacuum Void Controlled production technology allowed him to reduce the resin content of the high-grade carbon bicycle frames by a third, allowing his future designs to have lighter, stiffer frames, while maintaining comfort and stability.

Between 1997 and 2017, Storck has designed and produced over 100 bicycles, including road bikes, cross- and triathlon bikes, mountain bikes, and hybrids.

In 2008, Storck opened up the first Storck brand store in Korea followed by stores in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, UK, Switzerland.

Storck Bicycle was last reported to have earnings in 2007 of €3.9 million.

Other ventures

In 1990, together with his friend Erich Reiss, Storck founded the Eurobike show, a bicycle trade fair which has grown from 268 international exhibitors to over 1,000. Eurobike is considered the world's largest bicycle trade show.

In 2003, he was a jury member of the iF Industrial Design forum in Hanover, for their international design competition.

In 2005, Storck was a jury member of the Materialica Design Awards in Munich.

In 2008, Storck, along with Energy SüwagSupplier under a German government funded project to explore electromobility in the Rhine-Main region, designed and manufactured 200 custom battery-powered eBikes (pedelec) and solar charging stations.

In 2015, Storck partnered with Rehau to design a new eBike concept for the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, called nam:e: In 2016, he received the JEC Innovation Award and in 2017, the German Design Award for nam:e:

From Wikipedia’s article on Markus Storck (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • Born1964, Frankfurt5
  • CitizenshipGermany6

Markus Storck has been married to his wife Helena for twenty years. He speaks fluent English.

From Wikipedia’s article on Markus Storck (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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