FORAGER CYCLES was hatched from a list of ideas scribbled into notebooks by Dan Stranahan. Product ideas that surfaced while working as a bike mechanic in rural Alaska, and on tours in the off season. Things that would make cycling a little easier, more accessible, more enjoyable.
When travel ground to a halt in 2020, Dan pulled out the notebook. Simple and Small, it started with a Cable Cherry. He made the first one with a workbench and zero machine tools in a dirt floored barn stall - hardly precise- but it worked, and excitement grew. The Challenges of machining spheres, tiny threads, and tiny holes became apparent, and equally fascinating with a good reason to overcome them. After a lot of dead end calls, Dan found a manufacturer that was similarly young & eager and the first 1,000 pairs of Cable Cherries were made in Chicago, and shipped out of the 12x12’ barn stall.
That first run quickly sold out, Forager moved into a (slightly) larger commercial space, and everyone seemed to want our fruit! It was an exciting time until the shop in Chicago fell off the map - website closed, not returning emails or calls. Working with them had gone great until then, and it was a shock to our tiny operation. Spring had arrived and we had to find a more reliable shop, fast.
Despite how deflating that was for everyone, we carried on and brought manufacturing much closer to home. This time to a couple renowned CNC machine shops - Lichen Precision & Andersen Machine here on the Olympic Peninsula that made Cable Cherries from the later half of 2020 through the end of 2023. Today, we manufacture our own products here in our Port Townsend Washington, HQ and work with a few other shops in the Western U.S. to make what we can't in-house.To date, over 10,000 pairs of Cable Cherries have been made, assembled by hand and shipped around the world thanks to a colorful crew of dealers and customers - all of whom spur us on to create unique products that boost your mechanical confidence in the dirt.