“Enjoy the moment.”

Though Zurich’s Butzenstrasse is only about a mile from the flatland ringing the large lake that takes its name from the city straddling its northern end, the street runs on a respectable uphill grade all the way to the headquarters of Gorilla Bicycles. “A lot of the young guys on their fixies complain about it,” says company head Thomas Schreier in reference to the hill, adding with a chuckle, “but no pain no gain, right?” Butzenstrasse doesn’t pose much of a challenge for Schreier, who lives around the corner with his two children and wife Lisa, and rides a geared bike.

A friendly but always on-task entrepreneur in his early forties, Schreier can consider proximity as one of the few perks nested within the otherwise endless regimen of production scheduling, media relations, technical troubleshooting, investor management and wrench duty that consumes his days at the helm of a small bike company. From handling the lease agreement on the large office-cum-showroom-cum-bike shop at the top of the hill, which Gorilla moved into last summer after spending a few years drifting between temporary spaces, to shuttling between the brand’s fabricators in Italy and various cycling-related events from New York to Japan, Schreier is always on the move.

At its core Gorilla is imbued with a deep and unflinching love of the bike that, according to Schreier, is focused on "linking the Italian frame-building tradition to the new world of urban cycling." Thus far the company seems to have struck a smart balance between past and present; though much of the buzz around the brand’s name can be attributed in large part to the burgeoning urban fixed-gear trend, their flagship Lago frame shows they’re equally versed in the velo craftsmanship of yore.

According to Schreier, the company officially began in the summer of 2007 when his two partners, Stéphane and Wälde Lemech, joined the company that he had briefly envisioned as a manufacturer of quality children’s bikes. "Before that start, I traded Italian vintage bicycles and parts, traveled around Italy and visited many frame builders there, and had frames made with some of them.” It was during that time when the plan for Gorilla came into focus. “I felt it was time to do my own thing, in Italy,” Schreier recalls.

“Look at the tradition, process it, innovate it.”

Though Gorilla’s operation is run from Zurich, the company’s branding is decidedly Italian, a situation sprung less from aesthetic concerns than from logistics and a love of cycling’s vibrant history. His native Alpine land is great, but “a productive frame building industry, as we still find it in Italy, does not exist in Switzerland anymore,” Schreier laments. Plus, “sourcing in Italy is more fun, and also more difficult; they are unreliable on a very professional level,” he jokingly adds in reference to the country’s labor laws, which ascend to a level of unionization and bureaucracy that would make American and Asian manufacturers’ heads spin.

Of course in the bicycle business, when forced to outsource production there are far worse places to end up than Switzerland’s southern neighbor. “There were a couple, and still are a few, really good frame builders in Italy, with a lot of experience and expertise, and with a no-bullshit approach to the frame and the bicycle,” Schreier says. “The frame building is their craft and their trade [and is] connected to these personalities; the experience is real, it is this person in front of you that knows how to do this, not some representative or technician. Some of these guys are monuments, legends, and there is a lot of cycling history connected to their names; victories, defeat.”

Gorilla's pursuit of the Italian mystique has to date given the company license to legends. The first few years in operation Schreier worked with the likes of Tommasini and Giovanni Pelizzoli, the latter also known as Ciöcc, the subject of Cinecycle filmmaker Daniel Leeb's 2009 documentary, "Anima D’Acciaio (Soul of Steel)," and Gorilla is currently manufacturing with the facility in charge of Cinelli's XLR frames, which Schreier unflinchingly considers "the best TIG welder in Italy." Knowing that "welding stainless steel tubes is top level craft, very difficult," he appreciates the collaboration with builders. "These guys come to understand that we seriously want them to become more than just suppliers of frames," Schreier says. "We involve them in every step of the production: from discussing the design, construction details, sourcing, work flows."

It is that classic level of craftsmanship that Gorilla hopes to bring into cycling’s current urban renaissance. Though the more clinical, streamlined process of sourcing frames in Asia has proven lucrative for the escalating number of big box brands to embrace the Steel Is Real renaissance, for Schreier quality and reputation trump automation and margins. “It has got nothing to do with who we are, with what we care for, with what we like and regard as desirable,” he says of the massive overseas factories. Schreier also notes that while they aren’t made there, his frames are actually imported into Taiwan.

“Fall down, Stand up.”

Schreier is quick to point out that Gorilla concepts often take their sweet time developing into full production because, as he puts it, “we want to prove our capabilities in a professional sports environment and test our material under professional conditions.” To that end Gorilla has been a primary sponsor of track racer Barry Forde for a number of years, a relationship in which company and rider maintain a feedback loop oriented toward constant improvement. “His legs crack every frame if he wants to,” Schreier marvels, adding that “the main goal” of the company’s relationship with the Pan American- and World Championship medalist from Barbados “is to make the stiffest possible frame for his track sprints.”

Schreier takes pride in knowing that the strength demanded by Forde ultimately benefits Gorilla riders of all stripes, who may be less competitive but no less demanding of their bikes. Bike messengers were a natural extension for the company from the outset, and in fact it was through their sponsorship of the X-Days, a courier-oriented counterpart to Zurich’s storied Six Days races, that I first caught wind of the company. A year later they were sponsoring the Cycle Messenger World Championships in Toronto. Gorilla has also thrown their stock behind the Paris-based DTGP (Dans ta gueule, Puceau en Francais) team, who dutifully put their signature red, white and blue frames through the paces of bike polo’s mallet-cracking rigors. That relationship in turn has led to Gorilla’s investment in a line of wheelsets, developed specifically for urban freestyle and bike polo, lacing 48-hole Miche Primato hubs to stiff Le Lama mountain bike rims that accommodate up to a 700x47 tire.

In December of 2009 the company officially launched the Kilroy, an urban freestyle frame that Schreier considers to be the most emblematic embodiment of the company’s reverence for cycling's tradition and dedication to its evolution. The Kilroy is also testament to the notion of product testing. The project began more than a year ago and went through a long process of design and redesign--primarily via the snap, crackle and pop of prototype frames at the hands of Staten Island-based street rider Edward “Wonka” LaForte--before making it to market.

"We broke a lot of frames," Schreier recalls of the Kilroy's R&D phase. "We could not test the strength of the frame in the laboratory, because there is no machine that does what these guys do on those bikes. The tests that Wonka ran lead to the conclusion that we had to manufacture a tube set just for this frame, with particular reinforced parts to absorb and handle the stress of the jumps."

For Schreier, trial and error is integral to the process that he hopes ensures Gorilla's association with quality and durability. All aspects of the company’s development have been paced and thorough, from the “field research” of the brand’s startup days finding the right fabrication partner (what he sums up as “thousands of kilometers on Italian highways, nights in motels, and bad meals along the road”) to LaForte’s product testing. Since Gorilla frames come with a 10-year repair or replacement warranty, there is no shame in a broken frame during the research phase; the first Kilroy prototype proudly adorns the wall of the company's offices, the cracked headtube joint highlighted by a heart drawn in Sharpie.

After consulting with the engineers at the Columbus plant outside of Milan, what Gorilla ultimately settled on, “in order to avoid very thick and heavy tubes and gain in strength nevertheless,” was a new geometry of curved seat- and downtubes, made from an entirely different alloy. “We are proud to present the first freestyle frame in Niobium steel,” Schreier beams about the Kilroy tubeset, which Gorilla describes as a special blend of manganese, chrome, nickel, molybdenum and niobium “designed to provide superior mechanical properties.”

“GOrilla or Go Home.”

“Look at the tradition, process it, innovate it. Fall down, stand up. Enjoy the moment.” Those are the sentiments that Schreier considers to lie at the company's core. When talking business models, without hesitation he points to the iconic Ricola lozenge company as a source of inspiration for Gorilla. “They are authorized to claim that they make the best lollies in Switzerland,” he explains, adding that “they do sustainable business without big furore.”

Another like-minded company from around the way is Freitag, the respected Zurich-based bag maker that Schreier considers to “bake the same cultural cake” as Gorilla and the tight-knit crew from Veloblitz, the city’s largest courier company. One aspect they all share has been a slow but methodical development that eschews the gamble of unpredictable fluctuation for steady evolution. After first connecting with shops and showrooms throughout Switzerland, Gorilla’s reach was extended throughout Europe and then to Asia before beginning to make inroads in the United States through boutique shops in New York, Los Angeles and Florida.

Slow and steady may win the race, but a bit of glamour can still go a long way to accent the grit of tradition. To that end, when Tokyo Fixed Gear opened their new store in London last fall, one of their first projects was to set film star and adventure buff Ewan McGregor up with one of Gorilla's Hattara framesets.

Celebrity cameos aside, Schreier is content to nurse his brand with healthy and sustainable growth. Thus far Gorilla has been a compact enterprise, but expansion looms, a prospect that is especially daunting for a small company considering the current economic climate. While to date Gorilla has focused on frames, Schreier has begun reaching out to investors to further develop the brand; the company will begin inching into the complete bike market this year, and has separately also been working on a beautiful, traditionally-styled city bike designed for women. Gorilla’s grassroots support for cycling in all its forms, from the track to the street, should help ease any growing pains they encounter. In the meantime Schreier plans to take his own advice and enjoy the ride.