Tiger Martin has been tinkering with bicycles nearly his entire life. “I grew up on a college campus in Virginia,” he says. “At the end of every year, college police would collect all the bicycles left on campus, put them in a dump truck and take them to the dump. So I asked if I could have them.” Martin was eight years old at the time. The campus police obliged. At the end of the semester, the dump truck would take the bikes to Martin’s house and let him select ones to keep. “I had nothing invested so I could fiddle. The game was always what happens if I take this wheel and put it on this bike, or take this gear and put it over here. Bicycles are just a collection of very simple machines – cables, cranks and bearings. So I just kind of figured it all out.”
After decades of working for various bicycle companies like American Bicycle Group and Trek Bike Corporation, Martin, now in his 40s, recently decided, it was time to take the leap. “I was like the kid that walks to the end of the high dive, looks down and doesn’t want to jump. I’d done that so many times. I have wanted to start my own bike company since 2004,” he says. In May of 2013, Martin finally started his own Chattanooga-based company named Moccasin Bend Bicycle Company. Perhaps you have seen him driving about town in his Subaru Outback pulling a trailer which displays his demo fleet. “It’s free advertising,” Martin says. It also helps him stay prepared for interested parties. “The company is still small enough, I can do things on a one-on-one basis. People will contact me, interested about the bikes and I’ll say, ‘let’s go riding out at Stringer’s.'”
Martin receives the carbon bike frames raw or “naked” as he says. He then builds them up-paints them, brands them, names them and puts the parts on them. Moccasin Bend Bicycles are crash and strength tested according to EU standards, meaning they are held to a stricter standard. The prices range from $3,000- $5,000. Currently, there are five models, each named with local significance.
“I need to name one Raccoon,” Martin says, referring to Raccoon Mountain and the popular trail system that encircles it. “They’re going to put in a 9-mile lower loop around the bottom of the mountain,” he says. “This trail is going to have 1,000 feet of vertical. So you’re going to basically drive to the top of the mountain and within just a mile or so, you’ll fall off the side all the way down to river level.”
When riding an extreme trail like that, Martin says “Booker T” would be best due to its climbing power. Though, he names his personal favorite bike to ride as “Five Points.” “It’s light and comfortable,” he says, but ultimately, “the best bike is the one that gets you motivated to get out and ride.”