As the Tour de France ended its 12th day Thursday, the 27-year-old widely regarded as the greatest living cyclist has held on to the lead — riding on wheels handmade more than 5,000 miles away in Ogden.

UAE Team Emirates XRG, and its Slovenian star Tadej Pogačar, have partnered with ENVE Composites to make the strong and light carbon composite wheels that have led Pogačar to successive Tour de France victories in 2024 and 2025.

On the eve of the Utah company’s 20th anniversary, demand for its products is so great the company can’t keep up, CEO Michael Stimola said. He’s eyeing adding 3,000 square feet of manufacturing space to their Ogden headquarters, and playing Tetris with product in the meantime.

All while Pogačar keeps winning.

The partnership with UAE Team Emirates has drawn attention to the brand, at the same time the company has purchased distributors in Europe and Asia and increased their reach there, said Neil Shirley, ENVE’s vice president of marketing.

ENVE operates in an 80,000 square-foot facility alongside the Weber River. It’s one of the few U.S. cycling companies that manufacturers its own carbon composite parts. The material has grown in popularity in the cycling world over the last 20 years, replacing the heavier aluminum and steel.

“When carbon took over, the U.S. was not set up for the manufacturing,” Shirley explained.

Most companies outsourced manufacturing to Taiwan and China. ENVE took a different route and built here in Utah.

“We were able to start 20 years ago and build a foundation that we’re able to just continue with, and we’ve been dedicated to it,” Shirley said.

The company employs about 240 people, from machinists and carbon technicians to engineers and finance and sales staff, all under one roof. The same people who work with carbon composites in northern Utah’s large aerospace industry could easily qualify, Shirley said, to build bike components at ENVE.

The company makes about 200 to 300 wheels a day, and 300 custom bike frames annually. Those frames, which are built to a buyers’ specifications, range from $15,000 to $17,000. ENVE also sells off-the-shelf bike framesets, stamped with a Utah-shaped sticker, proclaiming, “Made in Ogden.”

The price to build with carbon composites means ENVE only makes “high end” bikes to serve professional and amateur cyclists, Shirley said. There are no entry level bikes or parts here.

“We make the best stuff,” Shirley said, “and we charge what we need to charge.”

The process

Products start in the company’s machine shop, where workers build wheel and frame molds.

In another area, workers bend over long tables to slice sheets of resin-laden carbon fiber according to a pattern. Another worker will take those sets and arrange them into the molds. They are then fused together with heat and pressure, and further polished to become bike parts.

ENVE’s top-selling wheel is the SES 4.5 Pro. Used by and created with Pogačar, it accounts for about 20% of the company’s revenue. A wheelset costs about $4,000.

The company also makes the ENVE SES 6.7 Pro, a new wheel that Pogačar has raced on, set to launch to consumers after the Tour de France, Shirley said.

Shirley said the partnership with Pogačar and the UAE team started when the team reached out to the company after conducting its own research, putting wheels through wind tunnel testing to find the best set. ENVE’s stood out.

Since then, Shirley said ENVE has pushed to get better.

“As a small Utah company,” he said, “it makes us incredibly proud to see the products winning and being used at the highest level of sport.”