Every bike shop is really just the people behind the counter. That doesn't change because the counter is a website.
So before you spend any money with us, it's worth knowing who's actually choosing the kit, who's testing it, and who's making sure it turns up. There are three of us at the start of this. Here's what each one does, and why it matters to what lands on your doorstep.
Ben Marks — Product
Ben owns MB Cyclery, and he's spent years in the trade doing one thing: putting the right kit under the right rider.
That sounds simple. It isn't. It means knowing which fork suits a 65kg rider on Peak grit and which one doesn't. It means telling someone the £180 shoe is the right call and the £280 one isn't, and being willing to lose the sale. It means understanding that the best product on paper and the best product for you are frequently not the same thing.
Every product on this site goes past Ben first. Not always the newest. Not always the loudest. The one that suits your trails, your riding, your budget.
He's also the reason the Outpost programme exists. Ben is a local bike shop man to his bones, and the idea that an online retailer has to come at the expense of the shop down the road is one he flatly rejects. More on that below.
Brendan Fairclough — Testing
Brendan has spent his career finding out exactly what bikes and kit can take.
There's a particular kind of knowledge that only comes from riding things past the point where they're comfortable — repeatedly, for years, on terrain most of us would walk. What holds up. What flexes when you don't want it to. What's a genuine performance gain and what's a graphic on a box.
That's what Brendan brings here. Not endorsement — assessment. If a product makes it onto ROVIKA with his input, it's because it did what it claimed under someone who was properly leaning on it.
The useful thing for you isn't that a pro rides it. It's that a pro has told us honestly when something isn't worth your money. ROVIKA curates by omission.
Conor Whelan — Supply Chain
Nobody ever wrote a mountain bike article about supply chain - or did so voluntarily. It is, however, the difference between a pretty website and a shop that works.
Conor's job is stock in the right place, orders out the door, and the thing you paid for arriving when we said it would. He's the reason we can put "In stock" on a product page and mean it, the reason full bikes get hand-delivered and set up with you in person, and the reason our pre-order dates are dates rather than hopes.
It's unglamorous work that everybody notices the moment it goes wrong. Which is why we made it a founder's job rather than an afterthought. He also loves bikes and seeing people ride - which helps at 1am.
Why Three, and Why This Way
The three roles aren't decoration — they're the whole model.
Curation only works if someone with real product knowledge is doing the choosing (Ben), someone with real riding credibility is doing the checking (Brendan), and someone with real operational discipline is doing the delivering (Conor). Take any one of those away and you've got either a catalogue with a nice font, or a warehouse with no point of view.
Trusted gear. Tested where it counts. That line on our homepage is a description of a process, not a slogan.
The Outpost Programme
Launching 2026.
Outpost is how we bring local bike shops into ROVIKA rather than competing with them. Order online, collect and get set up at your local Outpost — with the shop earning from it. The mechanic you can actually talk to stays in business, and you get the convenience of buying online without losing the bit that makes a bike shop worth having.
If you run a shop and that sounds like your kind of thing, get in touch at basecamp@rovika.co.uk.
The UK network is launching imminently. International shops are also encouraged to register their interest, but the role is slightly different.
The Bottom Line
We're not going to pretend a new website is a revolution. But we do think the standard model — endless choice, no opinion, and a courier who leaves your fork in the bin store — deserves better.
Watch Brendan explain ROVIKA here, on his special episode of The Ride Companion with Olly Wilkins, filmed at ROVIKA HQ:
Three riders. One picks it, one tests it, one gets it to you. That's ROVIKA.
See you up the hill.
ROVIKA Field Notes are written to help you make better decisions about the gear you ride. We don't score, we don't rank — we give you the information you need and let you decide.
