X-LAB: The bike brand no one saw coming, and the secret manufacturing powerhouse behind it

It produces 20,000 bikes a day, eight million bikes a year, and there’s a chance that your bike was made in this mega-factory that you’ve probably never heard of.

The factory in question belongs to XDS, a brand that has recently crashed the WorldTour party with XDS-Astana, and a few weeks ago I got the chance to go to China and get behind-the-scenes access to a bike brand that intends on changing cycling forever…

No Western media has seen this before!

China, the place where roughly 63% of the world’s bikes start their lives, is a country known for its eye-watering scale – something I got a sense of flying while over it for several hours before touching down on the south coast in Shenzhen.

Shenzhen is China's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ), is home to some 18 million people and is best known for its electronics and tech giants such as smartphone maker Huawei, drone-specialists DJI and electric vehicle manufacturer BYD.

It's also a hot-spot for carbon fibre manufacturing, so it's the perfect setting for a cutting edge bike brand.

XDS might be new to cyclists in the USA and UK, but that's certainly not the case. Bikes from XDS are extremely popular in China's domestic market, it's been making bikes for some very well-known brands for over two decades and has cemented itself as one of the biggest, most influential, and fastest-growing players in the entire cycling industry.

The New Flagship

XDS knows that if it's going to conquer Western markets and be a genuine competitor to the established brands then it needs a special bike...enter the X-LAB AD9.

Along with the insanely lightweight RT9, the X-LAB AD9 is the bike of the XDS-Astana team and XDS was keen to show me how it's made.

Normally when a brand tells me this, it hurries me past its warehouse lined with boxes fresh from the docks and towards a paint shop or assembly line – this time was different.

How A Carbon Road Bike Is Made

One of the reasons that Far Eastern direct-to-consumer brands can be so agile and quick to develop new products despite their scale, is that they own and therefore control every part of the manufacturing process. In the case of an X-LAB AD9 there is a nine part manufacturing process (although that isn't where the name comes from!)

1. Tooling
2. Prepreg
3. Cutting & Kitting
4. Layup
5. Curing
6. CNC Machining
7. Sanding
8. Painting & Decal
9. Testing

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For nearly all brands, at least some of these processes are outsourced, for example it's rare that a bike manufacturer makes its own tooling and it was easy to see why when I saw the 400kg blocks of metal being twirled around by four and five axis CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines like they were nothing.

In the vast majority of cases performance bikes are made from carbon fibre pre-preg sheets which basically means that the carbon fibres have been pre-impregnated with the epoxy resin. This is another area that is often outsourced, XDS meanwhile has been refining its epoxy recipe and developing new machines to create their own sheets for the past three decades.

Throughout the process I was blown away not just by the scale at which precision tasks were being handled, but also by the seamless combination of automation and manual processes.

One minute all 304 individual pieces of carbon fibre were being laid up with millimetre precision by hand, and the next the bike was being drilled by a multi-million dollar CNC machine.

After following the AD9 through its production, a task that takes just two days from raw fibres to fully built bike, we were shown to the testing labs, AKA a torture chamber for bikes.

Nearly every part was being subjected to thousands of cycles, the rear brake mounts, the front fork, the seatpost, the wheels, you name it it was being tested.

In fact, after curing, every single frame is measured using infrared sensors to ensure the perfect alignment of the bottom bracket, dropouts and other key areas, one in every 200 is then pulled from the production line for a more thorough seeing to.

One thing that is for certain is that XDS is not short of machines! There were high frequency welding machines, huge 1,200 ton hydro-forming presses, I saw more than 128 CNC machines in one room alone and then there are the machines just for testing.

A 3D scanner was being used to check that the manufactured frames perfectly match the original CAD designs, a 3D ultra depth of field microscope was checking the six layers of carbon and a CT scanner was being used to see through frames to check for any defects.

None of this comes cheap, but when you're producing frames not just with an X-LAB logo on but also some very well known WorldTour competitors safety is not optional.

More Than Just A Bike Manufacturer

XDS wants to position itself as more than just another bike manufacturer and after stealing a bike off the production line, the Vice-Chairman Li Chuqiao offered to take me on a short bicycle tour of Shenzhen to show me what this means.

Seeing the huge roads, semi-autonomous traffic and abundance of scooters, made this a daunting prospect but luckily Shenzhen has more than 1000 kilometres of purpose built cycle ways.

And they're not just a sign stuck on a pavement – they're proper roads through some beautiful scenery.

The bike I rode had an X-LAB AD9 carbon frame and integrated cockpit in the 'Hawk Eye' colourway, carbon wheels and cranks from in-house brand Branta and a Shimano Dura-Ace groupset.

This isn't a review of the bike but I did enjoy some sprints and climbs on the freshly made machine before getting overtaken by a farmer's 6ft wide drone – Shenzhen really is bonkers!

The ride culminated at XDS's Global Flagship Cycling Station, one of more than 50 XDS stations around China where you can not only look at the extensive range but also learn bike maintenance and even get racing and/or training advice.

XDS is already sponsoring the Chinese National MTB Team but its efforts to support racing worldwide don't stop there – ,guidance on talent pathways to the WorldTour are being provided in more and more cities across China.

While bike racing has its roots in Europe, China currently has the hype; from the XDS staff that I met (One had Mark Cavendish's autograph on the back seat of his car) to the locals on the street, the level of excitement for cycling in China is on another level – whether that's on the road or MTB it has an earnest, 'new frontier' spirit that was quite frankly infectious.

Motivated or not, how can it be possible for a 'new' brand to turn up to the WorldTour and immediately be competitive? After a week in China with the chance to speak with the founder and people behind the brand I think the answer is two fold:

Firstly, X-LAB and XDS are far more established than people realise, the company has recently celebrated its 30th anniversary and has been producing carbon and aluminium bikes for some of the brands we know and love for more than two decades.

Second is the company structure, Chairman Tan calls this vertical integration which basically means that XDS owns and controls multiple stages of its supply chain, from tooling to final assembly and distribution, rather than relying on external suppliers.

In fact, XDS has been so successful at streamlining it's production process that it can develop an entirely new carbon bike platform in around 270 days, or twice as quickly as many other brands.

What's Next?

Before going to China it's fair to say that I had some preconceived ideas of what I was going see, some of which couldn't be further from the truth...

I'd have never of thought that the factories would have trees that are over 600 years old and hand selected by the Chairman; I wouldn't have expected to see quite so many familiar frames rolling off the production line and I wouldn't have expected the people I met to be so passionate about being more than 'just' a bike manufacturer.

The cycling landscape is changing and the status quo is being challenged. The good news is that the brand that no one saw coming has a secret manufacturing powerhouse behind it and is responsible for far more of the bikes we ride than many people will ever know.

The X-LAB AD9 is the perfect example of the brand's capability and yet it only feels like the start of the story.