It all started with
my first bike tour.

Back in 2006, I set off on my first big bicycle journey, from Budapest to Istanbul. I rode 2,700 km through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria on the old mountain bike I’d had since my teenage years, with one working brake, eight dodgy gears and a completely inadequate sleeping bag. I had no idea what landscapes I’d ride through or how much kindness and hospitality I’d find along the way. That trip changed the course of my life.

While I was still working as a designer in the car industry, I got deeper and deeper into the theory of framebuilding. Also I was bike touring more and more but the bikes I wanted simply didn’t exist. In 2011, I finally had the chance to take over a framebuilding workshop. I bought all the tools and so I started making frames.

After a steep learning curve, two ChaCha prototypes were ready for their first big test ride in late summer 2012. We rode 3,500 km around the Black Sea to see if they did what I’d built them to do. We made it to Istanbul on those first two FERN bicycles, and the dream of starting my own framebuilding company became a reality.

In 2013, my friend Kristin Heil joined forces with me and started her own company, GRAMM Tourpacking. She makes custom bikepacking and touring bags by hand. That was the missing link. We could finally offer our riders a bicycle and bags made to work together on a trip around the world.

After a few years of building frames, I started making more of the parts and accessories I’d developed for my own bikes. That became ALLYGN, my framebuilder-owned component company. It’s a way to share what I’ve learned with more riders and builders. I put the same care into a small part as I do into a complete FERN.