Quality Bicycle Products' "Frostbike"

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend one of my favorite bicycle industry events of the year. "Frostbike" is hosted by our good friends at Quality Bicycle Products. If you don't happen to know who Quality Bicycle Products is and if you didn't happen to click through to the Wikipedia page, QBP is the largest distributor of bicycle parts and accessories. Chances are fairly good that if the product you recently purchased at your local bike shop is one of the thousands that QBP carries, it passed through their hands. Established in 1981 in a small office in Saint Paul, Minnesota, QBP has grown exponentially over the last few decades. In addition to being a wholesaler of parts and accessories, Quality Bicycle Products also owns and manages several bicycle and accessory brands such as Surly, Salsa, All-City, 45North, Problem Solvers, Foundry, and others.

QBP's headquarters, located in Bloomington, MN. Photo courtesy of the StarTribune

This is how QBP describes Frostbike:

"Frostbike is more than a tradeshow. It's a product expo, QBP open house, and social event all rolled into one fun weekend. We provide a warm, inviting environment where bicycle industry professionals can connect, see emerging products, learn and share successful business strategies, and acquire the latest technical information.

Our goal is to create the future of the bike industry together, and have fun doing it.

Meaningful, memorable and fun. That's Frostbike."

(from the page source of QBP's "Frostbike" event website)

This was my third time attending Frostbike, and this year did not disappoint. True to Frostbike-weekend-fashion, the Midwest saw some nasty weather just days leading up to the event. Unfortunately, this resulted in my trip being postponed a day due to bad roads and interstate closures. I arrived in Minneapolis Saturday evening and was able to attend Forstbike the following morning.

It's going to take more than this to keep me from attending QBP's Frostbike!

After arriving at QBP headquarters, I headed directly to the Spokes Café, where we were treated to some nice breakfast items in the form of coffee, orange juice, breakfast sandwiches, and donuts. I was anxious to start my busy day and so I headed to the expo immediately following the completion of my meal.

I made it!

One of my favorite parts about Frostbike is the expo. It's such a cool thing to have so many vendors, industry professionals, and influential people in the industry all in a single location. The expo gives me, and many industry employees like myself, the ability to talk face-to-face with the owners, designers, customer service/sales representatives of the very products that we love, use, and recommend every day!

Other perks of the event come in the form of tours of the state-of-the-art environmentally-friendly building, tours of their massive warehouse and how order fulfillment works, demo a fatbike, seminars on helping your retail store grow, and one-on-one sessions with some of QBP's best and brightest.

Since I was at the event for a day less than I had planned, I was able to get around to doing the bare-minimum of what I wanted to accomplish. As a result, I didn't have a ton of time to snap photos of all the new and exciting products, but luckily for you, some of my friends were able to do just that.

For some additional news from Frostbike, be sure to check out this excellent photo gallery, as well a writeup from a coworker of mine on some of the exciting new things on display at Frostbike. Lastly, be sure to check out Quality Bicycle Product's YouTube page for some short videos highlighting some of the vendors' new products.

If you are curious about any of the specifics of any of the products on display, I may be able to give some input based on what I saw or heard. Be sure to ask in the comments section!

Until next year!


-Jonathan, PedalBound