As an opening gambit now we have launched our Cero components mini site we thought it prudent to provide a little brand insight and backstory to how we got started and the road we have travelled over the last few years.

The birth of Cero came about organically with the development of Cycledivision as a new part of Motodirect’s business http://www.moto-direct.com/ the idea being to diversify the business into other market sectors and cycling was a natural fit due to the history of its founder and some key employees who have an extensive background in the Cycling world. Elite Rider Jonny Towers (Sales director of Motodirect) former Professional and prolific winner Chris Walker and Elite Rider Gareth Hewitt.

Jonny, having already built RST motorcycle clothing and motodirect into a globally recognized brand and business, wanted to use his passion for cycling to create an equally successful Cycle retail business with its own brands.

During 2011 we started looking at options for product categories for own brand and soon settled on wheels as a good entry point, delivering value and quality in wheels, obsessed with crafting the best products we can at real world prices was the goal from the outset.

On a personal level through my racing career I was always really keen to have a best set of wheels that were as light as could be without compromising stiffness and performance, for me the difference between swapping between training and race wheels provided a nice performance increase and psychological boost. The challenge was to provide a degree of that performance boost in a versatile wheelset that was affordable and could challenge the weight and performance of the big players for customers to use on a regular/daily basis.

After several months of sampling and testing various combinations of rim, spoke and hubs the AR30 was born, we received our first shipment of Cero AR30’s in spring 2012 at 1400g and £380 we were confident we had brought to market a performance wheelset at a hugely competitive price point.

Throughout late 2012 and early 2013 with a small but steady stream of sales we marketed and promoted the wheels in the mainstream cycling press and sent wheels for features and group tests confident in their ability to deliver. The real breakthrough moment came with a superb 10/10 review in Cycling weekly in Jan 2013 which pushed the Cero brand and wheels into the national cycling limelight, sales rocketed up and 2013 proved to be an inspiring year and encouraged us to continue to develop new models and build the brand by adding further wheelsets in areas we felt lacked performance and value, we are currently up to 5 wheelsets in the range with lots of exciting and boundary pushing projects in the pipeline.

In a nutshell that still defines the Cero brand today, we continue to strive to offer excellent value and performance from wheels that we are proud to ride and sell, we have all been on a huge learning curve from a technical and branding perspective, spending an increasing amount of time working closely with our manufacturing and assembly partners to develop new products to meet the ever changing landscape within bicycle wheels and meet the demands of our customers.

We look forward to helping you enjoy and enhance your cycling experience on your road ahead.