SARATOGA SPRINGS — Ben Serotta says his staff of craftsmen and managers are the key to the success of his internationally acclaimed company.

“People are the backbone of our product,” said Serotta.

“It’s the people who do it. I have the best people,” he said.

Serotta Competition Bicycles are made by hand using some of the most durable, flexible and expensive materials on the planet.

The highly computerized bicycle assembly plant on Geyser Road in Saratoga Springs produces about 3,000 hand-crafted, carbon fiber, custom-fitted bicycles each year.

Every year at least one of Serotta’s bicycle models wins a national or international award for excellence.

Looking back on nearly 40 years in the bike business, Serotta said there was no single big moment that led to his company’s stature today. A key turning point was when he bought back control of the company 10 years ago, but much of its success has been a slow and steady evolution based on expertise and love for the sport of bicycling.

He started off selling European-built bicycles as a teenager, then started making his own bikes out of steel, and now makes frames out of space-age carbon and titanium. At $3,500 to $15,000, his bikes can cost 100 times as much as the basic two-wheeler on sale at the big box stores across town, but he has no shortage of buyers.

“You have to have an overwhelming optimistic streak,” Serotta said about embarking on the frame-building business.

The precision-made, lightweight frames and forks are made by Serotta but the gears and other components come from other sources.

Serotta’s staff of 42 now includes those craftsmen working in a composites production facility in Poway, Calif., near San Diego.

Ten years ago, Serotta said, he purchased the titanium or carbon-fiber tubing and other materials from manufacturers in other parts of the United States.

“We were pain-in-the-neck customers because we had high standards and a low quantity [of orders],” Serotta said.

More and more of these companies started to outsource their products to Asia, Serotta said.

In January 2006, Serotta and his staff made the decision to take the company as “vertical” as possible. This is when he acquired the small composites production facility in California for an undisclosed price.

The composites operation provides the company with unlimited access to the highest quality carbon fiber in the world, he said.

The carbon fiber is used to make Serotta bicycle frames that are almost magically light as well as durable and flexible.

“We made the fundamental commitment to be American-made more than ever,” Serotta said.

This same initiative spawned another large capital investment in highly accurate, computer-controlled production equipment at the Geyser Road bike facility. Each of these six milling and cutting machines costs between $30,000 and $120,000, he said.

“We’ve invested a lot in infrastructure,” Serotta said about his privately held company. He wouldn’t say how much he spent.

With the additional expenditures came a goal of producing more than 3,000 bike frames each year.

“We would like to settle in at a 10 percent to 15 percent growth rate each year,” Serotta said.

NEW HIRE

In order to keep up with the manufacturing changes, Serotta hired Russ Howe of Ballston Spa as chief operating officer this past summer.

Howe, a bicycle enthusiast, had worked for Serotta Competition Bicycles as a regional sales manager in the late 1990s but had spent the past eight years with GE Energy in Schenectady mentoring employees on ways to improve manufacturing processes and reduce costs.

Serotta is also focusing his business much more on European markets.

A dozen years ago, Serotta said, the company was doing a fair amount of business in Europe but let much of that business go as the value of the U.S. dollar increased.

“Now with the dollar so weak and getting weaker by the day, we are rebuilding our business in Europe,” Serotta said during an interview in his office.

Serotta said “we have a man on the ground” in Germany and the company has a German language Web site.

The bicycle market in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is very large, Serotta said. The German market alone may be worth 60 percent of the entire market for high-end bicycles in the United States.

Serotta said the company’s second-largest dealer, Cyclefit is in London. It was where Serotta launched his new 2008 models.

“They have a flair for marketing,” he said about this major dealer.

Ten years ago, Serotta had about 300 dealers in the United States. The company has reduced that number to just 100 dealers.

The reason for this is to provide the best possible service to the Serotta customers. Each dealer must have a patented Serotta “Size Cycle,” used to custom-fit the bicycle to the rider.

One of the U.S. dealers is Blue Sky Bicycles at 71 Church St. in Saratoga Springs.

Jeff Cimino, manager at Blue Sky, said the average Serotta customer is hard to pinpoint.

He said the best description of a customer for the expensive bicycle is a “serious enthusiast.”

He said the customers, who usually spend between $4,000 and $12,000 for a custom-fitted bicycle, are professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

But Cimino said not every Serotta rider is a doctor who owns a BMW.

“Some people save up for years to buy a Serotta,” Cimino said.

He said the typical customer is a man or woman in their mid-40s or early 50s with “expendable income” and “want to treat themselves to something.”

THOROUGH FITTING

Cimino said buying a Serotta is a major experience for people. The shop staff must be experienced in fitting the bicycles to the customer.

“It’s very, very thorough,” he said. He said the customer chooses everything, including the color of the bike, the decals on the bike and how stiff or flexible the bike is.

“Usually they are custom ordered,” Cimino said, and the customer waits four to six weeks for delivery.

“It’s a big commitment to sell Serottas,” Cimino said, noting the space and the staff expertise required to fit the bicycles.

Ben Serotta, 53, started in the bicycle business when he was still in Saratoga Springs High School in the late 1960s.

He sold French factory-made 10-speed bicycles out of the back of his father’s Farmer’s Hardware store, then located at 492 Broadway.

After he graduated from high school, Serotta went to England, where he worked under master bicycle builders to learn the trade.

Upon his return in the mid-1970s, Serotta started custom building bicycles out of steel on the second floor of a tiny bike shop on Maple Avenue behind City Hall.

From there he moved the bike-making business to an old farm in Greenfield. In the early 1990s, the growing business moved to the former Chase Bag factory in the town of Moreau.

In 1997, Serotta repurchased the company, which he was still running but had sold to a larger entity. Since then he has been the owner and chief executive officer of the company, a change that he views as a crucial moment in the company’s evolution.

Today it’s the only leading bicycle company “wholly owned and operated by its founder, which means there are no conflicting business objectives,” says the history portion of the company’s Web site: www.serotta.com.

Serotta has his office, company offices, and a conference room in an 1850s-era farmhouse on Geyser Road in front of the modern 12,000-square-foot plant that he built in 2002.

At least one Serotta bicycle has been in every Olympics for the past 20 years.

The bicycles have gained a world-class international reputation, according to cycling publications, and have been used by top-level racing teams in Switzerland, Norway, Austria, Canada, Columbia, New Zealand and the United States.

“Serotta is a company of cyclists,” says a statement on the back of Serotta’s 2008 calendar. “It matters to us that we ride and we believe it should matter to you.”

“How can a non-cyclist appreciate the forces at play when a rider brakes and corners hard at speeds up to 100 [kilometers per hour]?” the statement asks.

“How can a non-cyclist appreciate how we sweat every detail so that each Serotta performs flawlessly mile after mile, year after year, delivering unequalled performance while looking like an heirloom piece,” the statement says.

“Everything we do is dedicated to delivering the ultimate cycling experience,” says the statement signed by Ben Serotta.