Trek Bicycle Corporation’s headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin is an impressive place to visit. The 205,000 sq ft facility houses 900 employees and is one of the only large-scale bicycle manufacturing factories left in the US. On the walls hang bikes and images that span the breadth of Trek's rich history, and in the offices and work spaces the bikes of the future are being developed.
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Comprising various offices, testing labs, training spaces, a gym, bike fit facilities, workshops and manufacturing areas — not to mention its very own private mountain bike trail network — the Trek HQ has pretty much everything covered. It's huge. But walk through the corridors and you get the sense that despite its size and standing, it's a company that takes as much care and consideration with its employees as it does the bikes it creates. Staff bikes line long corridors, and regular gym and fitness classes are timed to allow everyone to join in.
The employee roster breaks down roughly 50/50 when comparing white to blue collar workers, illustrating that Trek's domestic production is more than a token effort. The 400-or-so-strong white collar workforce makes up the vast majority of Trek’s engineering, product management, graphic, marketing and business support staff. However, Trek also maintains a three-person suspension development lab in Southern California, run by Jose Gonzales.
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Why buck the trend and manufacture in the US? Trek says that while it's admittedly costly, having the connectivity and communication between the engineering and manufacturing departments is an important element of the company's success and development. Designers, developers and engineers can talk to each other face to face.
There's also a significant female presence in the workforce, and while not quite a 50/50 gender split, there's good representation of women working at every level of the company, from the workshop floor to engineering and design, management and beyond.
While there's plenty to see, there are also areas that are hush-hush, and understandably so. Much as we'd love to have nosed around the prototype lab, for example, it was no go.
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