Tech Gallery: Behind the scenes at the Fi'zi:k saddles factory

This article originally appeared on Bikeradar

Fi'zi:k are the biggest producers of racing saddles in the world, making a staggering 500,000 saddles each year in their factory in Bressanvido, in the northern Italian province of Vicenza.

What's even more impressive is that they do it without using much in the way of mass production machinery, preferring to rely on their modestly sized workforce of 40-70 people, mostly women and shared with parent company Selle Royal, to carry out the delicate task of creating high performance racing saddles. This ensures that quality and aesthetics are top notch, even if it does add to the prices.

Fi'zi:k rotate their saddle production each day, so while today might be the Arione, tomorrow could be devoted to the Aliante or the Tundra. That's all dependent on demand and is carefully managed to keep efficiency high.

We followed the production of the Arione and Aliante saddles, which you can see in our image gallery on the right.

Click here for our gallery of behind the scenes images.

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