Made in Italy: a tour of the Sarto bike factory
by Corey Sar Fox
If you haven't seen a bike bearing the Sarto logo before you would almost certainly have seen one that was made by Sarto on behalf of another brand. In this piece, Corey Sar Fox takes a tour of the Sarto factory and meets some of the people behind this quintessentially Italian family business.
In a country where it is a challenge to travel more than a few kilometers without seeing a UNESCO World Heritage site, there is little reason to stop in Mellaredo, Italy. It is a small, unattractive town. However, it is conveniently located in the Veneto region, just east of Padua, not far from Vicenza and Treviso – an area that’s home to some of cycling’s most recognisable brands like Campagnolo and Pinarello.
And it is difficult to imagine that something as beautiful as Sarto’s bikes are being made inside the non-descript, beige building at the end of a dead-end street in the industrial zone of Mellaredo. The only indication that some of the finest, custom carbon fibre frames are made here is a license plate-sized sign over the door that reads “Sarto Antonio” in faded typography, embellished with a bicycle-like squiggle.
Though visitors are more than welcome, there is no showroom, only a cramped reception area with just enough space for two plastic chairs and a small coffee table with a stack of cycling magazines and a product catalogue.
The family is blessed with an appropriate name — “sarto” means tailor. Not only do they tailor the size of their frames, but Sarto offers customers the option to customise the shape, structure and most importantly, the brand.
The Sarto brand has been around since just after World War II when Antonio Sarto created the “terzista” — a company that assembles another company’s products according to specific instructions — with his brothers.
“Every week, me and my two brothers would ride our bikes with trailers to the Atala and Torpado factories. They’d give us frames to take back and file, you know, to clean up after they’d been brazed,” says Antonio who was 14 at the time.