Tunk Times #10 October 2025
We are back home from Bespoked Dresden. The leaves are falling and frost is on the ground here in Helsinki.
The preparation, the exhibition and the trip in general was hard work but eventually a success: we had tons of positive response, friendly conversation, meeting many potential customers, friends, framebuilders and other bike industry professionals. Having worked on the show bikes making stems and racks and assembling the bikes, pondering the details and so on for 12+ hours per day the week before the show, we were happy to get on the boat to rest. Like last year, we took the Finnlines ferry, duration 36 hours, and drove 6 hours to Dresden, and returned the same route. The boat is starting to feel very familiar after taking it a total of five times in the last two years! The two show bikes were nonchalantly hung up on a Thule rack on the back of the car, and made the journey unharmed. Unlike last year we didn’t have the whole Tunk team on board, just Aki and Aleksi with our trusted companions Inka and Negin who got a Fun trip with Tunk, as our group chat was titled.
View of Dresden Altstadt
We signed up last minute to the show, which led to some confusion regarding our booth. When we arrived, the booth location had been moved about 4 times, and the ready made stand/wall structure was not where it should’ve been. But we weren’t in a hurry, we hung out at the show grounds, eyeing other peoples work, bantering amongst ourselves and some of the staff building the show and so on. Finally after 12 hours of moving stuff around, building our booth, taking it down, building it up again etc we got everything in place: the bikes, the test forks and the prototype frames and some tunkish real world bicycle touring paraphernalia were on show.
Cleaning the bikes right after arrival to Dresden airport
We were exhausted and excited to start with the actual exhibition! This would be the first proper public display of our bikes, and thus a culmination of years of work. And we were really happy how the bikes and the booth turned out. The show itself was just as you’d expect, crowded at times, slow at others, all the talk and encounters forming a happy and interesting blur with most details now forgotten and/or mixed up.
Most people of course encountered Tunk for the first time, but also surprisingly many had heard of us already and were happy to see the bikes and our persons in real life. We gave short interviews to bikepacking.com and also to the Path Less Pedaled youtube channel . Also the Fort factory manager Daniel was there and we had a good brief chat and were glad to be able to present our product, of which they were very curious about and seemed genuinely impressed! There’s always bad news mixed with all the good, and that is the delivery date is once again delayed for one more month, and we expect the frames to be ready in mid-November.
As for the other exhibitors, I (aki) personally enjoyed most the Dlouhy, Meerglas, La Fraise, Tim Tas + Rek and Upcycle Earth booths. We were too busy to take any pictures, but there is plenty of coverage on the event for example on the Radavist, bikepacking.com and on Path Less Pedaled as already mentioned.
I tried to chat with everyone a little bit and also enjoyed talking to the people at Clandestine, bikepacking.com, Brooks, Purple Dog, Hahn Rossman and others that I may forget. I was happy to see Frisch offering wool fleece and high quality cotton jackets, a rare sight in this modern world, though I'm more than content with my second hand outdoor gear and Ruskovilla stuff for now. My personal favourite after the Meerglas recumbent (best of Show award well deserved!) was Tore’s personal bike. All in all it was again a great inspiration to see so many people committed to the bicycle.
A lucky mistake was that we forgot the pedals of the other show bike at home, and right before the start managed to borrow some ethereal Aurora pedals from the nice people at MKS. We were also gifted a bell from Crane as a thanks for using their bells on our custom stem bell mounts. We also need to give a special mention to Jean Michel of Tim Tas + Rek for making our amazing custom bags on such short notice! People (including ourselves) really liked the rose+brown colorway, and we will seriously consider offering it as a Tunk special in collaboration with Tim Tas + Rek.
Outside the expo, we didn’t have much time or energy to do anything except eat late night falafels at the various Döner spots and maybe drink a beer or a glass of wine. We dragged our weary selves to the official afterparty for a bit but after Aleksi literally passed out due to overworking we decided it’s best to go rest and get ready for the final day of standing around, trying to look respectable despite the fatigue and explaining in detail the bikes to everyone interested. It was hard but it sure was fun too!
We are already looking forward to future events where we can show off the bikes and meet bike people, whether it is Bespoked again in London or Dresden or some completely other event, we shall see!
Until next time
Tunk