Craig Calfee

Founder
Calfee Design

Raised in New England, Craig Calfee graduated from Tabor Academy with Honors. He went on to attend Pratt Institute, majoring in Sculpture.  After three years of intensive art education, Calfee embarked on a year-long journey through Europe to Greece, where he hopped sailboats to Kenya in East Africa.  He made his way on trucks through Central Africa to Cameroon in West Africa. There he obtained passage on a freighter to Brazil and eventually returned to the US.  Calfee started building bicycles in 1987.  Working in carbon fiber on Olympic Gold medal-winning kayaks, he was one of the first to build a bicycle frame with the new material.  In 1991, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond ordered 18 bikes for his team.  LeMond went on to license Calfee's patented carbon fiber technology for LeMond Bicycles. Calfee continued building high-tech carbon fiber bicycle frames and is currently a leading supplier of custom-made bicycles.  Calfee started building bamboo bicycles in 1995 as a publicity stunt for a trade show.  The bike proved to be worthy of further development, so Craig worked on it in his spare time for 10 years before releasing a production version to the general public. The bamboo bicycles are now a significant part of Calfee's business. Craig's efforts in Ghana are his way of helping solve some of the problems that he witnessed back in 1984 during his youthful wanderings.