It was a little bit of trepidation and a good dose of excitement when Andy from OPEN announced over the phone 'well if you can design and spec. an OPEN + OMATA LTD Edition U.P frame in 7 days, we can get it ready to launch at Eurobike'. So that was that, nothing like a deadline.
We've been fans of OPEN since the start, I'm also a customer of their ONE + 'super racey' XC mountain bikes, which I love. Their approach to product development, focus on customers and scale is source of inspiration to us here at OMATA. We feel a kindred connection with little companies that punch above their weight.
So the inspiration for the LTD Edition frame design is obvious, it's the face of our OMATA One. The reason to be so literal in applying it to a frame, was down to the inspiration and time it had taken us to design the face in the first place. We had been inspired by some of the greatest Swiss Watches, Swiss typography and instruments. In our conversations with Andy, we felt it would be a refreshing approach for a frame design, to take that strong typographic sensibility and literally apply it to the frame.
I was really exciting to see the frame in person for the first time on Day 2 of Eurobike, the quality was stunning! And even more so, when we found out that all 20 had been take. Thanks to everyone for either the kind comments, the orders and support. Thanks also to Andy and Gerard at OPEN for making it happen.