Smanie: New Brand Name on the Market

The strategy behind the new brand name Smanie is to develop a high-end aftermarket saddle brand with a wide range of medium and high-level saddles. Smanie has its own R&D, production, marketing & sales team who partner with one of the biggest saddle manufacturers in Taiwan with a very long tradition in saddle manufacturing.

“Smanie is based on a long term project”, says Marco Capretta of Smanie. “We have already planned to invest for at least five year. This year we even started sponsoring two professional teams, one riding with Corratec Bikes, the MGK VIS Team and the Italian triathlon team DDS who is riding with Somec bikes.”

From the start Smanie was meant to be used for high quality and advanced sports items like saddles. In future this range will be stretched to include other bicycle components as well as accessories and soft goods.

“We aim to create light and comfortable technical saddles. Our main objective is to produce saddles that are not only unique, but also offer real added value,” said Capretta. “For this reason we pay a lot of attention to registering designs, either for aesthetic models or those that offer clear functional solutions. Our R&D is supported by important design studies that adopt parametric planning systems. The realisation of in-house mock ups makes it is possible to check each single product before it is put onto the market."

"Thanks to this approach, we have adopted a new production system called ‘ECO+’ which means we are able to obtain a lighter and more uniform padding material by injection that is not just a padding but puts comfort and design in the foreground. On top of that it is fully recyclable. This is the first step for our revolutionary environmental approach.”