Building a brand is one thing. Building a brand with a story that spans generations takes something else. Making a brand a profitable business is an entirely different challenge.
It takes a unique blend of skills and experience to take the helm of storied brands, steering them toward a future that simultaneously honours the past whilst writing a rich, business-successful, forward-looking future.
Welcome to the world of Lydia Park Luis, CEO of Cinelli and Columbus.
Lydia, let’s start by exploring your professional background. Fair to say it’s not typical of the cycling industry, but very much makes sense with Cinelli and Columbus.
We – my husband, Victor, and I – come from a fashion background, focusing on brand building. My background in fashion is with brands including Swarovski and Tory Burch. Victor’s experience comes from LVMH, Baccarat, and Coach. We saw a synergy in applying global brand building and business best practices to the cycling world.
We loved everything that we did when working in fashion, and think that there’s a great opportunity to bring some of those business best practices into the cycling world.
Obviously, there’s a lot that we have to learn within the cycling industry. It’s hardware. It’s a lot of components. It’s a much longer supply chain. We love learning new things. And, especially for us, blending our passion.
Having been an employee in companies for many decades – working internationally and responsible for building teams and delivering performance – we can now do that with our own company, with two incredible, storied brands. One’s been around for 76 plus years, another for over a hundred years, with only two prior owners. We are the third owners, and see ourselves as stewards of the brands to ensure their continuity and longevity. We take this chapter seriously, and we’ve made it our life’s work.
Yes, while we have official job titles, me as CEO and Victor as Chairman, we work closely together and see ourselves as stewards of the brands.
“Making it our life” – let’s expand on that. What does this mean for you?
The short version: We moved to Milan. We aren’t owners who are managing from a distance. With brands like Cinelli and Columbus, I don’t see how it would work any other way. We live the brands. We live the business. We live the life. We’re living in Milan.
Outside of work, our kids are grown. You know, we told them, ‘Hey, we’re moving to Milan. ’ They’re like, “What!? What are you doing?” We’re like, “Well, you guys are adults now. You can take care of yourselves. We’re going to do this project.” One of them has joined us here at Cinelli.
With an ‘in it for the long haul’ outlook, we’re learning about the industry, but also bringing in some best practices on brand building, being global, but speaking locally, you know, bringing the fashion piece into it, bringing it all together.
We’re invested. Committed. We want to make sure that these brands are here for the next hundred years. Being in this position, we really do feel honoured.
Given your professional background, you’ve likely first-hand experience of the way in which brands successfully modernise and actually do so as a successful business, not just as a successful brand – important to differentiate because there are brands that have been successful but not been successful businesses.
For us, when we looked at these two companies, they are great brands in cycling and in culture. It’s very hard to build a brand. So why not start with really great brand equity and build sales on top of that? It’s easier – these things are all hard, just some are much harder – than building a brand with sales.
Critically, I want to highlight here that our first investments in the business have been back-end focused, systems and processes related. Absolutely essential fundamentals for enabling and supporting future growth. This may not sound very exciting, but nobody builds anything that lasts, that has impact, without supporting and enabling great business practices.
How do you balance heritage and modern performance? Steel Vs Carbon Fibre. Making sales with performance bikes often needs the marketing umph that comes from sponsoring teams.
We look at it more from the viewpoint of who we want as a customer, knowing they will be a blend of people, riding carbon or steel on road and/or gravel, heading out on adventures, no matter the terrain, includingour urban riders and the Fixie. Cinelli has an incredible history in road, gravel and track / fixed gear.
It’s so important to understand and clearly convey that you can’t be for everyone. And, as a result, show with clarity who you really are for.
When we talk about bike types, as a business, we’re actually not heavily segmented. Cinelli customers are rarely only about road and carbon, or just about gravel. How we see it is more like, ‘ Do you appreciate design, art, and culture? Right? Do you also ride bikes? Well, we’re here for you.’ And we extend this to include lifestyle products – caps and t-shirts – and other things that fit with the Cinelli culture and history?
The artist collaborations that we do, the brand collaborations, they make sense with Cinelli, but likely wouldn’t with some other bike brands, those that are purely about performance and the metrics and the stats.
The world of performance is very scientific and clinical, and I admire what these businesses do. It’s amazing. But, we’re a little bit more than that. We have a storied history that brings with it more emotion, evokes feelings, that kind of connection, and we want to preserve this.
It’s important to say, here, that we are also learning from these performance-focused brands. See the Aeroscoop and the Pressure II: Team bikes for racers and those wanting to experience the technology-driven benefits which elite performers demand.
We clearly can’t make this kind of bike without investing in R&D capabilities. It’s also why we sponsor teams, knowing that this is seen by some as a key verification of performance-driven innovation.
For us, while we’re adding to our performance bikes, we also want to preserve the creative and artistic part of who we are. Take the MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort Pro Team bikes we shared last week. The story of the paint scheme. Cinelli to its core. Make no mistake. Even in a high-performance world, we are artists. This blend of performance, design and heritage is what makes Cinelli and Columbus truly unique.
Switching gears a little here, what does business innovation look like for you as the captain of the ship?
If we think about where you want to take the brand, time frame in mind, you’ve landmarks that you want to see, checkpoints that you want to reach.
Firstly, I’d rather do this than be an employee at this stage…. And I say that as someone investing family money. We have real skin in the game and interest in protecting and developing these brands for future generations.
Now, when we talk about culture and history, if it were exclusively a performance company or bike brand, we wouldn’t be here. We’d be like, “Oh, great. There are many smarter, better people, engineers, R&D people doing that.”
For us, we really do see this as an intersection between outdoor, health, cycling, which is all a part of that, which is what we want our life to be, what we enjoy. Plus, there’s a business aspect and acumen that I think could be helped by having some outsiders come in, look at things differently.
Obviously, there are things we have to learn, too, and we’re very humble about that. And then, you know, I think what we don’t talk about enough is actually building teams.
So, for me, I want us to one day be where the next generation of leaders come from. I want to build that next generation. And if there are things from our background that we can train people in while we learn about the bike industry, you know, I think that’s a win-win situation.
Mentorship and future leaders: I’d love to say you know, 20 years from now, ‘oh my god, that person worked at Cinelli, and now he or she is, you know, heading up X, Y, and Z’. An aspiration we have. Part of our journey.
Keeping that culture element in view, and thinking about Cinelli out in the wild, talk to us about sponsoring teams and how you’ve decided which teams to partner with.
Let’s take a step back to give a bigger picture answer that will make more sense.
We’ve talked about my professional experience. Here I want to add some personal context. I’m from a very vibrant and diverse world, which has presented me with many amazing opportunities.
I grew up in Hawaii, and it’s a melting pot. I remember standing up when I was 10 years old, and you had to say your nationality. My best friend had four nationalities. She was Hawaiian, British, French, and Chinese. And I got up, and I said, “I’m Korean.” And I sat down. I was like, “Oh my god, that’s so lame.” I’m only one nationality. Our school plays would have a rich collection of ethnicities, playing a family. No one thought twice about the fact that we didn’t all look alike.
I grew up in this culture where it was normal to look different, have different backgrounds. It was celebrated. So I just take that everywhere with me. We’ve lived as global people, lived internationally. Victor spent over a decade in Japan. I’ve lived in Switzerland for seven years, and we’ve both built businesses in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. For us, it is quite natural not to think about race or sex, more like ‘Okay, is this a good business partner for us? Do we like them? Are they ethical?’
Naturally enough, this life experience influences business decisions we make, having more human conversations, including sponsorship of the Bike Aid Continental team, established specifically to support athletes from Africa.
The Bike Aid Continental Team aims to make cycling a real experience for the wider public – regardless of social and cultural backgrounds. In addition to this, for riders, Bike Aid also seeks to offer educational and internship offers as well as intercultural exchange.
When Victor initially suggested supporting two teams in 2026, I questioned whether this was viable. He is adamant that it is a great thing to be able to do, and very much in keeping with our personal and professional values.
With Cinelli and Columbus, we’ve set out to build on the legacy, to shape a place of work that offers opportunities, that has a positive and inclusive culture. We want to enjoy working, to work hard, to feel part of building something which we look back on with pride.
