Custom

Orbea is one of the oldest bicycle brands in the world, founded in 1840 in Eibar, in the Basque Country of Spain, by the Orbea brothers — originally a maker of firearms. Already expert at shaping and joining round steel tubing, the company pivoted to bicycles in 1930 and was racing the Tour de France by 1934. In 1969, facing financial trouble, the workers themselves took over ownership rather than selling to outside investors, and Orbea became a worker-owned cooperative within the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation — one of the world's largest federations of worker cooperatives. Today Orbea is based in Mallabia, Spain, and is the country's largest bicycle manufacturer. The MyO ('My Orbea') custom program is a modern expression of that heritage: rather than sell only fixed catalogue builds, Orbea lets buyers configure paint, components and personal text on carbon models at no premium — a made-to-order approach unusual at its price point and made possible by the cooperative's in-house manufacturing.