Get to Know EVOC: Masters of Technical Backpacks and Transport Packaging

A renowned brand EVOCating safety, practicality, comfort and style when riding or transporting your bike. Such is the result of a serious back injury in the mountains, when an Austrian athlete and traveller realised the need for better protection in his favourite sports.

Finding yourself in an avalanche. Lack of equipment. Injury. The damage one avalanche shovel in a backpack can do... Instead of taking offence at the mountains, Holger Feist started thinking about how to prevent such consequences.

If he had been wearing a backpack with a spine protector back then in 1999 while filming a snowboard video in Arlberg, things might have turned out differently. Such was the beginning of the EVOC brand, albeit still without an official name, just with equipment for personal use.

Feist and his crew travelled all over the world for sports adventures, and since he also rode a bicycle in addition to snowboarding, that's where his ideas for equipment were headed. After all, what happened to him on a snowboard can happen while riding a bike.

No avalanche, of course, but the possibility of falling on your back at high speed was, is and always will be there. And since they were starting from scratch, they could tailor everything to their own needs and preferences - the highest quality, sophistication, protection and reliability.

Constant thinking, trying new things and testing on their own bore fruit in 2003. The first backpack with a spine protector made its bike debut on the trails of Bolivia and fulfilled everything Feist and co. had hoped for. But the expedition encountered another problem, namely moving the bike over such a long distance.

There was no packaging yet in which to transport the bike as a whole. At the airport, they were presented with the now humorous, but at the time quite common sight of a bicycle travelling through the luggage belt, disassembled into its parts. The idea of a travel bag for the bike was born.

That's still not an EVOC, but an equipment for the needs of a few individuals. And will be until the 2008 Hong Kong-Austria call. "Are you there Holger? This is Bernard Stucke. I'm in the legendary Flying Ball bike shop right now... Yeah, yeah, I brought my bike in one of our travel bags to Mr. Lee's for servicing. And guess what?! He's so excited, he wants 50 of them immediately".

This could have been the conversation that brought EVOC from the underground to the attention of the wider public.

Many years have passed since that phone call and EVOC - EVOlutionary Concepts - is still building its name on the same principles as in the early days - quality, functionality and durability.

Today, it offers more than 150 different products for sports, transporting equipment or just commuting.

In our range of EVOC gear you will find backpacks with spine protector, bike seat and hip bags, transport cases, travel bags and large backpacks for transporting all your bike and snow equipment.