Toivo Cycles (meaning Hope in Korean) are a new builder husband and wife team located near Seoul, South Korea. Yoo somang and Lee sangwoo worked as a florist and an architect, respectively, before moving to Tokyo to spend three years studying at the Tokyo College of Bicycle design, starting their own company just a year ago. The move into the business came from the combination of a love of bicycles & design.
From the clean design, beautiful fillets and hidden details, I was surprised to learn that this is only the couple’s second bike. There are some small but fantastic details that make this build truly delightful that you may overlook at a first glance – a custom design and fabricated 1” – 1 ⅛” tapered headtube, a T47 bottom bracket for additional stiffness on the track, and both fork and rear dropouts that the couple designed themselves and have machined locally.
Below, the logo on the head tube is a clever combination of T & V from the name Toivo – and if you look carefully, you can see that it is also a side profile of a rider wearing a helmet.
The wheelset they picked for the build is another great design choice with a hidden detail – it’s a NOS Campagnolo Seoul 88 tubular wheelset, a nod to the Olympics currently running in PyeongChang.
