New custom build program from Fizik offers “your saddle, made personal.”
It lets you choose cover material, color, base material, rail material and the color of the accent pieces. And, they make it all available to do online in a configurator that works on desktop or mobile. Yep, it’s a great way to kill time a work making your next saddle match your bike and kit perfectly…
With typical Italian flair, it goes well beyond just choosing between blue or red or green. No, you have multiple shades, tones and shines to choose from within each hue’s range.
The process walks you through each step, and on some models you can choose a different color and material for each panel of the saddle. It’s available for the Arione, Antares, Aliante, Gobi, Tundra, Vesta, Donna and Arione Tri. Expect about a 20-30% upcharge over normal retail.
The base material can be a fiberglass blend (more flexible) or straight carbon fiber (stiffer). The only thing you can’t pick is the type of foam, as they specify different density and type based on the saddle shape. Add in Ki:um (chromoly) or carbon rails and then it gets put together in Fizik’s Italian factory.
When they first started testing the program, lead times were pretty short, but they’re growing a bit as popularity grows…which is why they really haven’t announced it until now. They didn’t want to promise two week turnarounds if it would take longer than that, and it’s looking like it’ll take a bit longer than that…since, you know, everything’s made by hand in Italy. Like all that excess material on the saddle cover above – it’ll get trimmed with a blade once the glue has fully cured. That’s the main reason why they aren’t likely to offer this customization on their shoes, since those are made elsewhere.
Shop owners: They’ve recently revamped their handlebar tape’s retail packaging to be more shelf friendly and better present the products’ color and texture. As of this post, if you’re ordering through a distributor other than Highway Two in the U.S., you may get old packaging until they’ve sold through.