BOTCHED BIKES from Melbourne🇦🇺
Hello! This is Ming from Blue Lug Hatagaya shop.
One day at the end of May, some people I had been chatting with on Instagram stopped by the shop.
James, on the right, runs the brand together with Oliver, along with another member of the team. Callum, on the left, is a close friend of theirs.
They had been traveling and riding around Asia, including South Korea, before making their way through Japan. After visiting places like Osaka and Nagoya, they finally arrived in Tokyo.
The person who connected us was Luca from @unknown.route. While he was staying in Melbourne, he told me, “There are these really cool guys making a brand over here. They might be coming to Japan, so please look after them!”
By the way, the day before they visited us, there was a fire at OFF COURSE BIKE SHOP, also in Melbourne.
It was a sad coincidence. Please keep supporting them and the Melbourne bike community.
Anyway, after meeting the BOTCHED crew, we decided to start carrying their products.
We had actually already started selling them, but I wanted to properly introduce the brand. Our first shipment sold out surprisingly quickly, and we’ve just received another shipment along with some new products.
We also had the chance to interview Oliver and James, so you’ll find that interview below. It’s a good one, so please give it a read too.
*BOTCHED BIKES* Dragonfly
At first glance, it might be a little hard to figure out what this is actually for.
This is probably the product that best represents them.
It’s a super clever little piece that allows you to mount two bottle cages using a single bottle-cage mount.
The guy in the photo is Oliver, who runs BOTCHED BIKES together with James from the first photo.
The Dragonfly is also mounted on Callum’s bike on the left. One of its main uses is to make room for bottles when you have a full-frame bag taking up the space.
You might be thinking, “Won’t my legs hit that?”
That was my first thought too.
But, thanks to the carefully designed offset shape, it stays nicely out of the way. I think it can work with pretty much any frame.
And you don’t need a full-frame bag to make good use of it.
For example, my Evasion Trail 140 only has bottle mounts on the seat tube except the large size. So normally, I can only fit one bottle in the most convenient position. But with the Dragonfly, I can fit two.
It can also be useful on smaller frames, or whenever a frame bag makes it difficult to get your bottle in and out. By moving the bottle slightly to the side, it gives you more room to access it.
There are similar products from brands like Wolf Tooth Components, but there’s something especially appealing about the construction and originality of the Dragonfly.
It just looks cool.
There are three different bolt colors to choose from.
And, perhaps even more importantly, it comes in both stainless steel and titanium. I’m sure that will get some of you excited.
The designs are actually slightly different too. The one below is titanium, with “TITANIUM” letters on the plate.
There will naturally be some differences between individual pieces, but the stainless version weighs around 145g, while the titanium version is around 80g.
Whether you think that difference is big or small is up to you.
I’m running the titanium version myself.
It’s one of those products that you might not think you need until one day you really, really need it.
Having one in your parts box could save you someday.
And of course, there’s nothing stopping you from running three bottles instead of two.
A small cork pad is included for installation.
Please stick it onto the areas where the Dragonfly comes into contact with your frame.
*BOTCHED BIKES* Caterpillar
Next up is the Caterpillar, a cargo cage named after, as you guessed it, a caterpillar.
There are so many cargo cages out there, and we carry quite a few of them ourselves.
When choosing one, I think most people end up looking at the color and design.
Of course, once you get into the details, there are differences in how each one works with a particular setup.
But honestly, most of them will get the job done.
For me, I simply chose the Caterpillar because it looks cool. I thought it would suit the frame.
It also comes in both stainless steel and titanium, and both versions have their own really nice details cut into the design.
Most cargo cages are made from aluminum. At least, the ones we carry at BLUE LUG are.
The Caterpillar uses highly corrosion-resistant materials and is extremely durable, so it gives you a little more confidence that it can take a beating compared with a typical aluminum cage.
Titanium is especially difficult to machine, so seeing how much material has been removed to make it this light is another detail that I really appreciate.
The stainless version weighs 100g, while the titanium version is just 59g.
And there’s more…
If you’re going to run the Caterpillar, we recommend pairing it with their original Voile Strap.
The straps feature a custom BOTCHED design and work perfectly with the cage.
They also have their own stickers, so grab some while you’re at it.
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More recently, BOTCHED BIKES has been collaborating and holding events with KNOG, another Melbourne-based brand.
We really like seeing how actively they’re involved in and connected to their local bike community.
Now, let’s move on to the interview.
We hope you’ll take some time to read through them.
Blue Lug Interview / Botched Bikes
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**Q: Who are you guys? Where are you from and what do you do?**
We’re Oliver and James from Botched Bikes.
Oliver – During the day I’m an Industrial Designer working in a local Melbourne design consultancy. By night I’m one half of Botcho.
James- I work in landcare as my main profession, working all over Melbourne along the creeks & rivers. Doing Botched Bikes with Oliver is a passion project born from a love of Bikes.
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**Q: What kind of bikes do you ride?**
Oliver – As for most in the bike biz, I’ve probably got too many bikes. That’s not to say I don’t ride them all – one for each kind of riding. My number 1 is an On One Huntsman hard tail which I use for bikepacking and MTB’ing. My daily commuter is an old pink colnago decor with flat bars and a basket, a blue and pink 2017 SpeedVagen all road bike, a carbon focus mares cx with canti’s for the CX season, a bling green omnium mini max and lastly a Bianchi steel 26er.
James – Much like Oli, I’m a firm believer of the that you can never own too many bikes! I rotate bikes often as I enjoy building them up just as much as I do riding them, my longest standing bike is my 1995 Kona Lava Dome, it’s built up in classic blinged out ATB fashion with crazy wide swept back bars & lots of bits & pieces from all my favourite bike makers around the world.
I bikepack on my crust evasion / on one huntsman & ride my dad’s old 80’s Dawes galaxy touring bike set up with crust towel racks & a basket for around town use & for riding to the pub.
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**Q: How did you get into bikes / what’s your history with bikes?**
Oliver – I had a MTB phase when I was a teenager but died off because I preferred skateboarding. However, during the COVID lockdown my housemate and I got really cheaper 26ers from marketplace to ride to and from the skatepark. I then needed a front rack to strap my board on, which then turned into a full rebuild. From there I ended up meeting James at a group ride which started at our now friend Tom’s cafe.
James – My first job was delivering medicine for my local chemist, I found an old repco superlight on the side of the road & got it running with the help of my friend who got a job assisting at a local bike shop, we tinkered after school & began attempting to customise our bikes as much as we could! I always rode casually after that, but when I met Oliver, found bikepacking & started tinkering more seriously, it became an integral part of my life.
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**Q: I was really stoked to have you guys come to Japan. We met through Luca, right? What did you enjoy in Japan? Anything you really liked or thought was cool?**
Oliver – sadly I was only able to do Korea and couldn’t make it to Japan but the rest of the crew did. You would have met James, Callum, Jack and Gidget. I’ll be back tho! And yes, when Luca lived in Melbourne he had just come back from Japan and told us we should message you.
James – We were so stoked to visit! It was awesome to have bluelug as our final destination, definitely kept us motivated & provided a really fun & satisfying experience to see off our trip, yes we met through Luca! When he found out we were visiting Japan he mentioned we should reach out, & we’re super glad he did, it has been an awesome connection to make, definitely a big moment for us having our products on the shelves at the bluelug stores.
I really loved how welcoming & accessible Japan felt to tour around, the convenience stores really are super helpful, with all of the mod cons you could ever ask for while touring a country by bike. We rode around Lake Biwa too, the scenery up there was beautiful, the food & people were a huge plus too, & so many awesome bike stores like bluelug, crumbworks, movement, humhumhug & circles! 🙂
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**Q: What parts of the touring were your favorite?**
James – We also toured through South Korea! That was equally as awesome, we rode the four rivers route & then caught the ferry over to Osaka. I was so amazed at how safe it all felt & it seems like bike theft is much less of a concern than in Australia! It was beautiful travelling through some of the smaller towns in both countries too, we had some of our favourite meals at small shops that we stopped at on our way through. My favourite day on the bike was riding from Lake Biwa to Nagoya, we rode along some beautiful & quite mountain highways, through farmland & rice fields & for a lot of the day there was a train line alongside us with Shinkansen shooting by every so often, it was incredible to experience!
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**Q: What are you into these days? Doesn’t have to be bike-related.**
Oliver – I’m pretty into bikes at the moment. Most of my free time is spent riding lol. The cx season just wrapped up in Melbourne – it was super fun racing with friends. But when I’m not riding I’m probably at the pub playing pool with friends or doing the quiz in the park with my Girlfriend.
James – Mostly bikes ahah, I run our weekly group ride here in Melbourne & we have a great community who love to ride, bikepack & do everything bike, there’s a lot more community events popping up & I suspect it’s only on the rise! I do also really love music, Melbourne has a very incredible & diverse music community, there’s always so many fun shows on. My favourite Melbourne bands at the moment are Blue Communications, Kisses & Piggietails, check them out!
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**Q: Tell me a little about the products you make.**
Oliver – the first thing you’ll notice about our products is that they’re inspired by insects. Our bikepacking adapters and cargo cages are called the Dragonfly, Butterfly and Catterpillar. They’re made in Melbourne out of Titanium and Stainless Steel. The dragonfly was our first product we made, it’s a dual bottle cage adapter for when the regular bottle mounts are covered by a framebag. The butterfly is essentially the same as the dragonfly but without the tail, which is used to create a second set of screw points and typically used on the fork. Our caterpillar is a cargo cage :—) which comes with matching caterpillar voile straps.
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**Q: Who does the design?**
Oliver – Both James and I share the design. I designed and now manage the dragonfly’s, butterfly’s, caterpillars, tee’s and voiles.
James supports on the merch and stickers.
We recently had our friends at tweezer – a local Melbourne graphic design studio, design our water bottle graphics. Which is pretty cool to be able to have friends work on some projects.
James- We both love to doodle & draw, Oliver is the professional, & does most of our designs! But I have done a lot of various types of art throughout my life so I try to sneak some creative time in there with some stickers & designs from time to time.
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**Q: You guys have a lot of unique engravings and designs. Is there anything that inspires them? Even the Voile straps and stickers have such a distinct style lol.**
Oliver – thanks! I feel like we’ve really found our style and brand language. I get inspired by things I see while out riding; Insects, graff and interesting structures. My favourite font is the “titanium” word on the dragonfly’s – I did it on the plane back from Europe while looking through my camera role of photos i had taken on that trip. The caterpillar character was inspired by a furious frank album cover, the Wizard was a bootleg version of a local car wash figure that James re-drew, and the Botcho font took clues from Andre Piguet’s book “selected watermarks”. There’s so many fresh designs and designers to be inspired by.
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**Q: Are there any projects you’re working on right now that you can talk about?**
Oliver – Yes we do! James and I just finished a bikepacking trip through the goldfields with friends to test out a prototype rear rack. It uses an extended version of the caterpillar which we’ve called the “millipede”. It’s very much a work in progress but we were able to validate that it works. Stay tuned for a quick release rear rack that will suit every bike 😉
And if you have any photos of your workshop, or some cool shots of you guys using your products, please send those over too!
Thanks guys💚
Thanks again to Oliver and James!
When I asked them about their hobbies — and even specifically said, “It doesn’t have to be bikes” — they somehow only talked about bikes.
I was also surprised to learn that they’re the kind of riders who actually enter races. That was a pretty unexpected side of them, and honestly, I loved the contrast.
They’re stylish and cool, but at the same time, they take their products seriously. What I really like about BOTCHED is that they don’t just make well-made products — their designs have a strong personality that you don’t really see anywhere else.
I also found a video of Oliver and James explaining their products, so we’ll leave that here too if you’d like to see them in action.
They’re a pretty great pair, aren’t they? 🙂
See ya!
