EVIL BIKES

The tale of Evil Bike is a perfect storm of dream-team potential, best-intentioned over-hype, and manufacturing problems out of the company’s control. But what most people never realised was behind Evil’s beastly, cutting-edge image were just a few buddies with an idea and reluctant ambitions—who, as they’ve put it before, were never ready for what besieged them. Now, that cast is down to essentially one man: Walsh, owner, president and co-founder of Evil Bikes…and the sorcerer behind the brand’s Lazarus-esque, anti-hero success.

In 2006, despite having their bikes on Word Cup podiums, Iron Horse was in need of a non-box-store-reputation facelift and brought together Walsh, suspension legend Dave Weagle and marketing whiz Todd Seplavy to do so. Technically, the Evil brand was already in existence—it was one of Weagle’s many side projects—and the idea of using it for Iron Horse had already sparked doodles on napkins and excited talk during the company’s testing trips to Whistler, BC. And then, thanks to some dubious business practices, Iron Horse’s empire fell and left the dream-team trio with a half-formed idea and a lot of momentum.

Walsh says. “I was already doing all this artistic stuff for these other industries—why can’t mountain biking be like skateboarding or BMX? That really set a new tone for what I thought mountain biking could be.”