Utah-made wheels help power Tadej Pogačar’s Tour de France dominance

Tadej Pogačar won the Tour de France in 2020 and 2021. After finishing second behind Jonas Vingegaard in 2022, the Slovenian bike racer felt his equipment had let him down.

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His team, UAE Team Emirates, decided to make a change, including the wheels on their bikes. Riders tested wheels of various brands in a wind tunnel, including and unbeknownst to a Utah manufacturer named ENVE Composites. ENVE wheels came out on top.

UAE contacted the Ogden-based company — which was struggling at the time — to gauge its interest in becoming a team sponsor and wheel supplier. “It really landed in our lap,” marketing director Neil Shirley during in an interview last week.

It was a big moment for ENVE, which seized the opportunity.

“I gotta say that validated everything we were thinking about the company. Great product, great people, just a lousy business model. When they came to us with that, it just validated the whole thing. Like, wow, we really do have a great product,” said CEO Mike Stimola.

“Wrote a big check to them when we were losing money. So it was a big push to be able to do that. But they’ve given us a lot of visibility.”

Pogačar won the Tour de France in 2024 and 2025, and is on course to win his third in a row and fifth overall when he rolls into Paris wearing the yellow jersey this Sunday with the distinctive ENVE logo spinning around his Utah-made carbon fiber rims. Standing atop the podium again would solidify his place as the greatest road cyclist of his era and, perhaps, of all time.

Having a high-profile athlete like the 27-year-old Pogačar and his UAE team using its products, including handle bars for road bikes and extension bars for time trial bikes, has boosted ENVE’s sales and elevated its profile internationally. A pair of wheels like the ones he rides run $3,750.

“From a marketing, a branding standpoint, we punch above our weight. I think people think ENVE’s a lot bigger company than it was when we first started this journey. And it’s only been compounded by a lot of the sports marketing that we’ve done,” Stimola said.

ENVE and UAE signed a second three-year deal in 2025, and plan to maintain the partnership for as long as it’s good for both.

Gaining an edge

ENVE — originally named Edge Components until it received a cease-and-desist letter from Europe — basically started in a garage about 20 years ago with a group of avid mountain bikers who had experience with composites. They wanted to make cycling products that didn’t exist on the market, especially rim technology and material for mountain bikes.

In 2016, the owners sold the company to Amer Sports, a multibillion-dollar corporation whose brands include Salomon, Arc’teryx and Wilson. ENVE sales were flat for a decade and it started losing money as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the bicycle industry. Amer Sports considered closing it or selling it to companies that would have moved it outside Utah.

Stimola became CEO in 2023 over what “just wasn’t very well run as a business” and put principles in place to stabilize the company.

“We turned the business around. It’s really a great business. The product’s amazing. The employees are amazing. The brainpower in that building as it relates to carbon fiber composites is amazing,” he said.

In 2024, two wealthy Utah partners — one a cycling enthusiast — bought the company.

“Since then, we put together a business plan to grow the business aggressively, and they financially backed us to do that. We’ve increased the size of the business this year by probably close to 4x from when they bought it. And we think we can double it again from where we are,” Stimola said.

ENVE expects to be a $100 million company in the next three to five years, he said. It employs 230 people — a 50% increase over the past two years — in a 80,000 square-foot custom-built manufacturing plant. Its sales in the U.S. and Europe are split 40% each, with the remainder in the Asia-Pacific area. In addition to wheels, it makes road and gravel bikes and will soon introduce a mountain bike.

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How carbon wheels go round and round

The company is one of very few carbon wheel manufacturers that keeps the entire process domestic. And every rim is handmade. ENVE makes about 40 different models.

“It’s a very labor-intensive, challenging product to make,” said Shirley, a former pro bike racer who moved from California for his “dream job.”

The wheel-making process doesn’t start with carbon but with aluminum. The company machines all of its molds in-house. Sheets of unidirectional carbon fiber infused with resin are stored in a large freezer. The material is cut into precisely shaped pieces according to specs for a particular rim in a climate-controlled room.

The real craftsmanship comes in the “layup” operation where highly-trained technicians layer the pieces into the aluminum mold. Once the layup is complete, the mold is closed and the rim is cured under heat and pressure. An inflatable bladder inside the rim cavity applies internal pressure to compress the carbon layers against the mold while heat activates and hardens the resin.

The rim then undergoes finishing, quality control and testing. Spokes and ENVE decals are added along with a sticker with the name of the technician who made it before it’s shipped.

“With a bicycle, like the wheels that Tadej’s riding, you want them super light, super aerodynamic, but also durable. So if he hits a rock or hits a big hole in the road going 40 miles an hour, it doesn’t shatter,” Shirley said.

And when Pogačar wins a stage of the Tour de France or the race itself, Shirley can congratulate the layup technician who made the wheels he rode.

Bike riding is part of the culture at ENVE. Employees’ bicycles are scattered throughout the building. There’s a noon ride every day that Shirley, a king of the mountains winner at the now defunct Tour of Utah, calls a “hammerfest,” meaning they pedal as fast as they can.

Photos of Pogačar and some of his race jerseys, including the iconic yellow jersey signifying the Tour de France leader, adorn the walls. One of his yellow bikes — the one he held over his head on the podium after winning the 2024 Tour — is prominently on display.

For pros and average Joes

Pogačar is involved in the research and development that goes into improving the products, as are ENVE’s engineers. Pro cyclists can detect the slightest difference in their bike setups.

“We have a new prototype and we go test with him, take his feedback, and he’s great to work with, very appreciative of what we do, trying to make him better,” Shirley said. “He gives us honest feedback and we, if it’s not right, we tweak on it until it is right . . . It’s really important because without that feedback, the relationship isn’t nearly as strong.”

Shirley said it’s hard to put a number on what Pogačar brings to the company.

“It goes back to him being like, this is great, but what if we tried this? Or as athletes, they never get to a point where they’re like, all right, I’m fit enough, this is good. They’re always aspiring for more and more. They push themselves so hard, and that’s what they demand from us as an equipment provider,” he said. “And it’s uncomfortable sometimes because it is really resource intensive, but it’s what makes us our best when we’re pushed like that and we’re accountable. When the world’s best — potentially all-time best — asks for something, it kind of makes you want to step up.”

Because the company makes everything at its facility, it can design components in small quantities to meet pro riders’ needs.

But ENVE doesn’t make products specially for the team. The rims it supplies to UAE are the same one it sells to the recreational cyclist, though the team gets them before they hit the market.

“So there is no difference between what Tadej Pogačar is riding on for the UAE and what I might ride on the weekend,” Stimola said. “Big disparity in riders, but it’s the same exact product.”

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