About Us – Our Story
We started in 2001 with some simple ideas to make kit we wanted to buy but couldn’t find in the shops. Since then those simple ideas evolved and Lab-Gear has become more of a way of life and an expression of beliefs as much as it is about the kit itself.
Lab-Gear is not about being the cheapest or most price competitive, but about designing and making products that have an intrinsic value to not only ourselves but to you, our customer. Buying Lab-Gear is more than just hitting the ‘Buy Now’ button and waiting for your order to be stuffed in a bag and turn up, it’s about involving you in a bespoke process. We give you the base but you decide what it looks like, the cut, colours and threads. We can tweak where needed, do things we don’t advertise, and each and every order is cut by us and sewn by expert (and highly valued) local tailors and seamstresses here in Sydney Australia, 15 minutes, not hours away.
We are ‘intentionally old school’ and would not have it any other way.
From Lab-Gear to Lab-Gear ‘Meccanica’:
Our history so far…
About G..
G, the main conspirator behind Lab-Gear wears many hats, and now that Lab-Gear’s making hats, he can wear Lab-Gear ones!
Trained as a product designer and having worked in a vast range of fields, from moto to web design, he splits his time these days between designing for and running Lab-Gear, Twenty Six Inches Events and working for Mountain Cycle, where he gets to do cool things (like design mountain bikes) for a legendary brand.
He lives by the motto of ‘design only things that you would buy’, a key ingredient to Lab-Gear, where he will not design and offer something he doesn’t value.
With Thanks…
There’s a longer than long list of people who’ve encouraged, wore, bought and supported Lab-Gear over the years. Many have become loyal customers and pop up on the radar whenever we drop something new on the scene. To you all, a huge thank you.
And a special, big thanks to:
- McD, for being McD and always there when we needed him to be – you’re a leg-end!
- To Tony aka Wigie, the source of much thinking that resulted in what you now see.
- Stevo and B-Rad who helped get the first batch of GTO (now Meccanica) off the ground.
- To those that bought the first ever pre-order of GTO kit in the summer of ‘07, you proved to us it can work.
- To John Domeny and Dave Lee for their fantastic photography contributions.
- Hark Design for their wonderful work.
- To our superb sewers.
- To our suppliers around the globe that provide us our raw materials.
- To those on mountain bikes for all the right reasons.
- To the urban riders and messengers out there who are ‘keepin’ it real’.
- To lessons learned from the past.