The Manhattan Project: how SAS built a brand and a brigade.

When Search and State announced a ride across the US in 2017, it was with no set format. Not much by way of plans at all, really. Just an unstructured ride for strangers. A chance for SAS super-fans and cyclists to ride a bunch of b-roads. Looking back on the initial planning, Daniel Golden - owner and founder of SAS - describes it as a gamble.

While interest was growing in gravel riding, and bikepacking became a sub-segment in the cycling industry, SAS wasn’t sure people would show up. It wasn’t a European-style brevet, but then again, it wasn’t meant to be. The vision was to put together a cross-country ride with no set format powered by blind courage in an effort to grow a cycling community closely associated with riding, just because. “We thought that if we set this thing in motion that some people would be inspired to jump in with us and give it a go,“ he explains.

Golden has been inspired by the people who have since turned up for the different iterations of the Search Brigade. Some have said the challenge of riding a multi-day event forever changed their lives. Meanwhile, “the Brigade” as it’s come to be known, has grown in numbers and notoriety, as has the SAS community and the company itself. Rides rolled through Tasmania in 2019; new US routes are expected in 2020.

Interest in the kit coming out of NYC has never been bigger. Seven years after they started, SAS has found footing in a community looking for quality kit, local manufacture and a bit of irreverence. In the mid-town Manhattan-based kit company, most cyclists find all three.

Search and State’s S1 riding jersey in grey: a perfectly built, five-pocket jersey that IMHO stands-up to repeated abuse.

I got my hands on my first bit of SAS kit 2015. At the time, the company was growing but not well-known. A couple guys wore it on local club rides, but that was it. It embodied a race persona sometimes, a clean, singular aesthetic always, and a version of cycling that didn’t take itself too seriously. They made simple, monochrome kit, sewing all of it in New York’s garment district - a rarity in an industry centered around Italian and Chinese manufacturing. The S1 bibs and jersey reeked of quality and the durability was legendary. (I came down in their S1 riding jacket; I’m convinced the jacket’s construction saved a lot of my skin.)

In the four years since, the company has grown steadily, focusing on sustainability, small-batch kit production and expanding their kit collection (which now includes staples like their S1 riding jacket and gilet - probably the best quality packables you can take with you into the mountains). They’ve continually invested in cycling through the Brigade and the ensuing interactions that have come from it.

Before SAS, Golden did a degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology, then built a 20-year career apprenticing for some “serious New York design houses.” In 2013, the kit biz called and he started Search and State.

Today, (rightly or wrongly) Golden says a lot kit and brands can be built without ever setting foot in a sewing room. All you need is to drop colors into a template and some good credit. Kit comes a couple weeks later, ready to sell. SAS however doesn’t do it that way. They make their own patterns, develop their own fabrics (when they can't find what they want), and manage a transparent supply chain. There is no substitute for being able to manage and control production.

“You have to have great sewers, suppliers and mills to work with. And you have to stand there and watch it being sewn to preserve kit quality.” Anyone who has ridden in SAS kit will corroborate that ethos; the craftsmanship of their garments is meticulous.

“It would be hard for me to have a personal design aesthetic if I were looking around all the time and reacting to the market,” he says about a market that has become highly saturated by choice, colorways, fabrics and brands. “I make what I want when I want and that alone has inherently set me apart.

A Field Shirt - just released in September in limited numbers - is good example of where the apparel company sits currently and perhaps wants to head next. It is part of an expanding cross-over collection, an homage to the many diverging directions cycling itself is headed. The flannel is a nice-to-have in the pack to wear at night or whatever on multi-day rides.

(I’m waiting on a bit of kit from SAS including the Field shirt and will post something on that separately.)

As for other bits of kit the company is releasing in Autumn, it would be tough to iterate on a near-perfect batch of kit, save for perhaps more for deep winter. SAS hopes cycling kit will continue to evolve in a meaningful way - more design, better quality and more sustainable operations from manufacturers who value quality over quantity and build things to last.

“I keep pushing our community initiatives and our sustainability ethos and I just hope to keep the whole thing moving forward.”

Ironically, despite being sold on Cycling Tip’s Emporium and other niche third-parties, Golden says he still feels the brand is a relative unknown. They don’t do much advertising or marketing; most of their growth is organic. Similarly they don’t value scale much, just working to make gear better, plan more rides, meet more people, and just do more. “That's the goal pretty much. To just keep on keeping on.”

Much like the ride it has started, SAS will wake up every morning, as planned, and keep moving forward. The people who ride in their kit will be pretty happy about that.

For 2020, SAS will be doing the full cross-country Brigade again after taking a year off to see some other parts of the world. Route will be announced soon.