The Bike Tailor Tour Down Under: Reinventing the Wheel With Partington
1st October, 2025 / Photos
The Land Down Under may be best known for barbecues, beers and the Great Barrier Reef, but we feel increasingly that there should be a fourth ‘B’ on the list: bikes. Here at The Bike Tailor, a number of our favourite makers are Australia born and bred. Top-flight custom-build mainstays like Baum, Bastion, and, more recently, Partington Wheels.
Operating out of a cutting-edge materials-research facility, this ultra high-end wheel brand can happily go toe-to-toe (or spoke-to-spoke) with the likes of Lightweight and Chris King. They’re simply the lightest and stiffest hoops in their class, and we were lucky enough to be invited from across the globe to see where the magic happens.
“We started selling Partington around August 2024,” says The Bike Tailor’s Stephen Roche. “I’m still blown away by them today. So, when the opportunity arose to go and check out the facility in Geelong, I jumped at the chance. It’s a long journey over, but with Bastion and my old friend Darren from Baum based nearby, it made sense to combine the visit.
“Partington’s international sales guy, Scott, met me and whisked me off to the Carbon Nexus facility at Deakin University where the brand is based. It’s a really slick operation. NASA-lab levels of cleanliness, and cutting-edge tech for manufacture and testing.
“This is where it all happens – every part of Partington’s process. Every single component is refined to the nth degree, and it’s all done right here. Spokes, rims, hubs – it’s all made in-house with meticulous attention to detail.
“The way Partington operate means they can have complete control over every element of each and every wheel, which means the quality control is second to none. It’s a difficult thing to find in this day and age.”
Head honcho Jon Partington is no stranger to making things that go fast. Before the Englishman moved his life over to Oz and started making bike wheels, he was a race-car engineer at British motorsport outfit Prodrive. He was also known to be pretty nippy on the UK road-race scene. A Cat 1 rider in his heyday, he’s put out his fair share of watts over the years, and, in the process, learned what it takes to save a few when it comes to designing the perfect wheel.
“The R-Series 39/44 was the main wheel on my radar to begin with,” Stephen explains. “They have brought a new version out – the R-Series 31/31 – but it’s the same incredible level of tech and detail that goes into all of them.
“It's great to see Partington leading the field in carbon-fibre wheel design, and all I can say is, look out for this company in the future – they’ve got a few projects up their sleeve and maybe some new wheels coming out in the near future too. Watch this space.
If you want to see for yourself whether the hype is justified, get in touch to organise a test ride. We have a demo set of R-Series 39/44 ready to go, and we’re confident you’ll love them as much as we do.
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