Back in 2003, Cy Turner started Cotic to build his dream steel bike. One that blended the latest design thinking with the timeless beauty and gorgeous ride feel of handmade steel. That bike was the iconic Cotic Soul, a genre defining, multi-award winning steel hardtail mountain bike.

Over 20 years later Cy still owns Cotic 100%, and continues to design the bikes and find that feel, that soul, that can't be defined with just numbers and calculation. He is one of the most respected bicycle engineers in the industry, and his passion still drives us today, as we continue to create our dream bikes in beautiful steel and share them riders around the world.

Handbuilt in the UK. Ridden Everywhere.

Cotic stands for building the best steel mountain and gravel bikes out of steel. We strongly believe that steel is the best material to build a bicycle from.

Our use of traditional materials and building methods does not mean a Cotic is retro or old fashioned. Far from it. Cotic was founded on the desire to fuse the latest geometry and handling ideas with the beauty of steel tubing. We use premium steels from the best makers for the highest performance. We push the limits of geometry and lead the way on what people consider is possible when building in steel.

Steel is beautiful, tough, long lasting, and exhibits a gorgeous, soulful ride feel that simply cannot be found using other materials. It builds amazing bikes, and a Cotic builds a connection to you as a rider that other bikes simply won't. They stand out in a sea of carbon copy.

Every Cotic frame is handbuilt in small batches across trusted workshops in Scotland, Nottinghamshire, Portugal, Czechia, and Taiwan.

Each frame is then assembled and carefully tested by our team here in the UK, ensuring every bike meets our exacting standards.

We don’t build for volume or shortcuts. We build for care, detail, and a ride that feels truly personal, because it is.

2002: Cy starts looking for a steel hardtail to be his main mountain bike. He's tried aluminium bikes, but doesn't like the harsh ride feel and chunky looks. Steel is falling out of favour at the time and all the steel hardtails available are retro, and not very good bikes. Being a degree qualified engineer, and the hubris of youth, he decides to design his dream steel hardtail. Coming out of downhill racing, he's used to decent suspension, good tyres and disc brakes. None of these things are readily available on frames available at the time.

Inspired by the fabulous bikes like the Roberts DOGS BOLX and Bontrager frames of the mid-90s, he sets about designing a frame that uses long (a whole 100mm!) travel suspension, disc brakes from and rear, plenty of space for big tyres, and designed around the responsive, shorter stems and risers bars he is keen on from his downhill bike. Leveraging the massive strength and weld-hardening properties of Reynolds 853 steel, the frame he designed is light, lively, has great handling and wonderful ride feel.

He commissions a framebuilder to make one, but after a chance introduction to someone doing a direct to consumer bike brand made in Taiwan, he is offered the chance to get a batch made once a couple of sample frames have been tested. He decides to roll the dice and get the samples. They are handed around friends to try out and it becomes clear quite quickly that this new bike is very special.

On the basis of this feedback, he finds some finance, orders 100 and goes for doing a bike brand. One of his friends can do a website. Another can design frame decals. He decides to sell the bikes mail order, direct to consumer and doesn't have to give up his day job in the rail industry to do it. That means even if no one buys any, he can still afford to pay back the finance, and he and his mates get some cool bikes that rode beautifully and would last ages. That was the extent of the business plan.

2003: That frame described above is the Cotic Soul. Cotic is launched in early 2003, and the sample bikes garner rave reviews. This was a steel hardtail mountain bike built with Reynolds 853 premium steel and the latest geometry and design thinking. It won multiple awards and become an instant classic.

The first 100 frames arrive in June, and they're all barbie pink. Seems the grey they were supposed to be was colour code 817. Pink is 718. We can look back and laugh now. Kind of.

At this point the warehouse is Cy's garage and the decals are applied on the kitchen table. Humble beginnings.

2005: Our second model, the Cotic BFe, is introduced. It is based on rider feedback from people who love how hard they can ride the Soul with it's amazing handling, but want something burlier for longer travel forks. The BFe is still in the range to this day, albeit 7 generations iterated!

Our third model, the Soda, is also introduced. This is basically a Soul, but in titanium. It was much loved, and was last produced in SodaMAX 29er form in 2018. We no longer make titanium frames because we found out how damaging to the environment titanium is.

2006: Our fourth model, the Roadrat, goes on sale. Based around the fact that Cy mostly hates full on road bikes, it was a flat bar, disc braked, big clearance road bike based around Soul handling. Was a staple of the Cotic range for over a decade, and defined a genre of flat bar road bikes. The roots of the Escapade are in this bike too.

The other bike news from 2006 is that this is the year that Cotic becomes Cy's full time job.

2007: Our first employee! Paul joined us November to help out as things got bigger. We also moved to Sheffield and thus began our love affair with the Peak District, now it was on our doorstep. We introduce our first full suspension bike, the Hemlock.

2008: Cotic gets its first premises! We finally move out of Cy's garage and into our little office and warehouse in Calver in the middle of the Peak District.

2009: The Soul and BFe get their first major updates, and our team rider Kate Potter takes her Cotic Soda to race at the World Championships in Canberra. Having a Cotic race at Worlds was not on our bingo card, but it's unbelievably cool.

2012: Things built nicely over the next couple of years, but 2012 was the next 'big year' for Cotic. The Soul and BFe were updated again for modern things like dropper posts and taper steerer forks. Always keeping the bikes up-to-date and on the ball. However, there were two really big launches in 2012 for us:

The Cotic Rocket, the first production steel full suspension bike. After our Hemlock (which was a rather conventional, aluminium frame that didn't really look like a Cotic), Cy did a lot of thinking about what made a Cotic a Cotic, and out of this work come the bike that would come to define Cotic for the next decade - premium Reynolds 853 steel, cutting edge geometry, and using steel for performance as well as that signature beautiful look and ride feel. It was like nothing else on the market, and yet was easily as good if not better than other full suspension bikes. The proliferation of steel full suspension bikes from small builders today can be trace back to our bold move at this time. It also generated one of our greatest ever promo videos, What would Rocketman Ride?.

The other significant step in 2012 was the introduction of the Cotic Solaris, our first 29er hardtail, designed as a 29" wheel counterpart to the Soul. Another bike that would define the following decade or more....

2013: 2013 brought about a further growth in the team, as well as adding an Enduro Race Team to promote the Rocket. It also saw our first - unfortunately abortive - attempt to re-shore some of our manufacturing to the UK. It has long been important to us to support homegrown industry, but this didn't quite work out.

On a more positive note, with the industry jumping on the 27.5" wheel bandwagon, we railed against it with our iconic 26 Ain't Dead video. Turns out it was dead, but it's a great film! It's also the only day any of us have worn a suit to work. For the fake funeral of a wheelsize.

2014: Ironic given the above, but the 27.5" wheeled versions of our Soul and BFe hardtails are introduced. They are an immediate sales hit!

Also in 2014, another very significant product for Cotic. After a couple of previous drop bar models, we developed something new based on the Roadrat. Disc brakes, confident handling, big clearances for big tyres, beautiful ride feel, clean lines. The very first Cotic Escapade. We didn't know it at the time, but this was gravel before it was gravel, and we were really onto something....

2015: We re-introduce the Rocket in Gen 2 form with 27.5" wheels for the first time, and the Solaris is updated to Gen2 as well, with 27.5Plus compatibility. Remember those?

2016: A big bang year. Cy got himself some advice and a business plan, and that resulted in a bunch of milestones. We recruited a full time mechanic (Will), and inaugurated the Cotic Demo Tour with Sam joining us to take Cotic to the people. We also did our 'big bang' launch of the entire range of droplink bikes, with Flare, FlareMAX and RocketMAX launching for the first time, joining the Rocket to round out a 4 bike steel full suspension range. Unheard of for a small brand.

2017: The future is now. After over 2 years of research and development, we introduce Longshot Geometry for the first time on the BFe Gen5 and Soul Gen5. Way, way before most of the industry, we stretched frames, shortened stems and slackened head angles and quite simply made mountain bikes better. Much, much better.

2018: We are on a roll now. This year sees Longshot geometry roll out across the rest of the range, making Cotic bikes quite simply some of the best bikes anywhere. Rocket Gen3 and FlareMAX Gen2 lead the way early in the year, but the biggest watershed moment is in September, when RocketMAX Gen2 is launched. Not only is it one of the most progressive bikes ever made, it's also our very first Cotic made in the UK. Our long standing partnership with Five Land Bikes starts here.

Other highlights include the race team doing some Enduro World Series races and we had an amazing trip to Finale Ligure for the last round.

2019: The whole mountain bike range now has Cotic Longshot geometry. The Escapade Gen4 is launched. The inaugural Cotic Beat The Winter Blues ride happens in the snow in January, with 25 hardy Cotic owners joining us to keep the stoke high in the darkest month. We also launch our Cotic Women of Steel group for the promotion and inclusion of women in cycling.

On a slightly sad note, our founding model - the Cotic Soul - is retired. With the takeover of 29" wheels, there simply wasn't the demand for a beautiful trail hardtail with 27.5" wheels. The Solaris carried forward the mantle of being our flagship hardtail mountain bike.

2020: Weird year to say the least! Due to our UK manufacturing we still managed to update both the Rocket and the RocketMAX, and by the end of the year we had also launched the Jeht, our 'goldilocks' 140mm trail bike. The Escapade is voted in the Top 10 Gravel Bikes by road.cc.

2021: Still pretty odd! Continual refinements to the range include FlareMAX Gen 4 and Escapade Gen5. We also announce our nascent ebike project, that eventually grew into the new Rocket. The Ardrock Enduro festival was the first since Covid and we all got a bit giddy. Party shirts went hard.

2022: In January we launch the Cotic Cascade, our drop bar adventure bike. It's a huge hit, and continues to be very popular. The launch video involves surfing in December. It was COLD.

The highlight of the year is that, as a thanks for hanging together through Covid, Cy takes the whole company to Les Gets for the MTB World Champs. It was an amazing trip.

2023: We move into our current premises. Much more space, showroom, proper dispatch. Very nice.

An amazing thing that happened in 2023 was that, in collaboration with Neko Mulally's Frameworks Racing, Cy designed a Reynolds 853 steel front triangle for Neko's downhill bike. He wanted to test if the ride feel characteristics of steel could be advantageous to his racing. He raced it at Fort William Worlds. The second Cotic in a World Champs. So, so cool.

2023 also marked 20 years of Cotic, which is a hell of a milestone.