Staff Email Directory
Phone (800) 345-3918 during open hours (PST):
Monday - Friday: 9am - 3pm (Off Saturday and Sunday)
For Sales and general questions email James, Antonio, Will, Roman, or Vince
Please pick one person to email, otherwise confusion will reign.
For Mechanical questions about Rivendell bikes, contact Mark .
Availability and inventory questions go to Spencer.
Also, there's always Grant, who can answer most things OK, some things excellently, but this doesn't overrule the suggestions above.
No solicitations!
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Roman Mardoyan Clark • Production Manager • roman@rivbike.com
Roman helps develop new products and coordinates when stuff comes in, including frames, bags, and other Riv exclusives. Roman, like Mark, is one of those frustratingly talented people that can figure out elegant, tidy solutions to problems that would have the rest of us pulling out our hair. If you call and get him on the phone, you're in good hands; he's super bike knowledgeable and more organized than most of us.
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Mark Abele • Head Mechanic • mark@rivbike.com
Mark is our Head Mechanic.
Mark has been with us since 2002, and his duties include customer service, coordinating the custom orders, assembling bikes, designing an developing new products.
Mark's our head mechanic, so certainly anything mechanical having to do with the compatibility of parts, ask him. If it's electronic or internal gear, wrong tree. Mark's favorite kind of riding is one-to-three hour mixed road and trail rides with lots of climbing. He rides the lightest bikes and parts of any of us here, dividing the time between a Legolas, Quickbeam, Roadeo, '76er and his couple of customs. All of his bikes have cantilevers, and he may be the best cantilever brake adjuster in the land.
Mark trivia: He attended Santa Clara University, where he was the only freshman starter on the varsity soccer team. By the time he was a senior, he was team captain, MVP, an after graduation, was drafted by the San Jose Earthquakes. He dislocated his shoulder in a skiing accident, and that was it for pro soccer.
"These days he's just as athletic as he was then, and is the most meticulous, clever, problem-solving bike mechanic I've known," says Grant.
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Spencer T. Ciangèle• Buyer • spencer@rivbike.com
Does the bulk of the buying and the receiving and some of the pics and some of the website. Check with the Spencer if you want to know when the something will be back in stock.
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Antonio • Bikepacker and customer service • antonio@rivbike.com
Antonio, hired in Spring of '21, ships out most of the bikes and frames nowadays and is, at the time of this writing, getting used to taking phone calls and helping people with orders. Feel free to email Antonio with questions - he's new enough that his email load is still pretty light so he'll get back to you more quickly than the bogged down ol' timers.
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Harry H. Hugel IV • Saturday Manager
Our Head Saturday Guy. Latest in long line of like-named Harry H. Hugels. Works odd hours at a bank (not ours) doing technical stuff we don't understand. He might just be the happiest person you will ever meet. A Navy and Carnegie Mellon man to boot!
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Will Keating • General Manager • will@rivbike.com
Here since September of 2012 and now the general manager but still occasionally feels like the new guy. He writes the email updates every week and gets a lot of copy and photos up on the site too. He's a good catch-all for all types of emails, from builds to technical questions, but he does get a ton of them - if you don't hear back within a biz day or two, send it again, he'll appreciate it.
For sales and general questions, ask Will. Dealer? Contact Will.
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Food: Hard to choose but maybe Sausages with extra sauerkraut, Filipino Barbecue, or Hawaiian Pizza.
Ride: My favorite rides are ones that start and end at home. Usually some hilly Oakland/Berkeley route.
Artist: Stevie Wonder or Prince.
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Our full time shipper since November of 2019, Sergio is as efficient and as friendly as they come. If you've got shipping questions about components and parts, feel free to ask Sergio. Here are his favorites:
Food: Mediterranean lately.
Movie: Barry Lyndon? Sure.
Book: Knut Hamsun - Growth of the Soil. Or Henry Miller - Big Sur.
Ride: Old Railroad Grade to any trail thereafter is a great day.
Song or artist: Dinosaur Jr. All of Green Mind rules.
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Rich Lesnik • Wheel Builder / Sax • rich@rivbike.com
Rich's Specialty is Wheels!
At Riv headquarters: Mondays and Tuesdays 10-2:45.
Jazz musician (clarinet and saxophone) and former UA mechanic. Our wheel builder, and maybe the best one in the world, seriously. Also has a side business called Hands on Wheels. Here since 2002.
He likes touring and wheels. Every year he plans some kind of a longer tour than any of the rest of us do. Sometimes solo, sometimes with a group. He has a Riv custom touring bike, a Quickbeam, a Saluki, and A. Homer Hilsen, and an XtraCycle that he uses to haul wheels.
Rich is the most prolific wheel builder we know, an builds about 2.5 wheels each day, He owns and uses some really complicated wheel-building tools ultra-gadgets from the Swiss maker DT, generally, an really gets into them, figures them out, and in general just enjoys to high heaven every aspect of building a wheel.
The whole world of wheel building is Rich's. But his knowledge is vaster than that, so you can ask him anything. But if you have a wheel question, be sure to ask Rich.
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John Bennett • Social Media | Employee At Large john@rivbike.com
John, our former GM, now runs our Instagram, and does virtual odd jobs.
He's been RBW-affiliated since September 2000; and he knows us better than anybody. You can spot him riding around Portland, Oregon on his Clem L with the Brooks saddle pointed towards the sky and a Voigtländer rangefinder slung over his shoulder.
Questions about a social media post? Ask John.
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Vince • Production Manager • Customer Service Manager • vince@rivbike.com
Whenever we can't find something, we ask Vince. Mental inventory, photographic memory, call it what you will. You'll find him helping out customers in the showroom, taking phone orders, stocking shelves, and entering look-a-like contests in his spare time. He had a 60cm Saluki, sold it for a 60cm Betty Foy with a big ol' basket and marathons, now the spokesman for Clem Smith Jr., scratch that, now has a 55cm Appaloosa. Known for his catch phrases: "Alright!" and "Right on!" and is Grant's go-to-guy for most things. Raised right here in the Diablo foothills, Vince knows the local bike shop circuit better than any of us.
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Grant Petersen • President / Designer / Writer
Here since the start. Main jobs are writing the Reader and catalogues and designing/developing the bikes and picking the stuff we offer. Disorganized, well-intentioned, clean but personally and organizationally on the disheveled side of things. Good for general and technical questions, but tends to let things related to following up slip through the cracks. Tries hard, but tends to give confusing, complicated, overly detailed answers to simple questions, all under the banner of "helping." Loses sight of the big picture when he focuses on minor "now!"-type details.