SRAM: A Bike Parts Tour de Force

Twenty years ago, Stanley Day Jr. was out of work, bumming around the ski slopes of Utah with his best friend, when he came up with an idea for what he might do with his MBA.

Day cycled to train for triathlons. What bugged him about road bikes was how they forced riders to reach from the handlebars to the frame to shift gears. Why not create shifters at the end of the handlebars? he proposed to his friend, Sam Patterson, as they rode the chairlift. Patterson, an engineer, agreed, went home, and made a prototype in his garage. Along with Patterson, Day teamed up with his younger brother, Frederick, and three other pals to launch SRAM—an acronym of the first and middle names of three of the founders—in 1987. They called their first product Grip Shift.