A look behind Decathlon’s assembly line, testing and R&D facilities

By Ashley Quinlan

Published: Monday, 03 June 2024 at 14:00 PM

---

Van Rysel has been making waves in 2024, there’s no doubt about it.

Decathlon, which owns the brand, began a three-year contract with WorldTour racing team AG2R La Mondiale (becoming Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale in the process) at the start of 2024.

The partnership has already yielded considerable success – at the time of writing, the team has racked up 23 wins this season, including two stages at the Giro d’Italia (and a fourth place overall), and sits second in the UCI World Rankings.

Each one of those wins has been aboard a Van Rysel RCR Pro, the brand’s all-rounder road racing bike. Although no win is down solely to the prowess of a bike, some credit is due to the brand, which hails from northern France, for supplying the tools the team needs to achieve success.

This, of course, is against the backdrop of Decathlon’s position in the cycling (and wider sports) industry. 

Most prominent in continental Europe, the retail giant has a well-earned reputation for selling bikes and other sports equipment at competitive prices.

The Van Rysel RCR Pro in its full pro team incarnation, for example, costs £9,000 / $10,999 / €9,000, which compares favourably to an equivalently specced Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8 (£12,000 / $14,000 / €14,000) or Cannondale Supersix Evo Lab71 (£12,500 / $15,000 / €14,999). The trend continues with lower-specced models, too.

In fact, of the mainstream brands, only Canyon matches Van Rysel for price competitiveness – but the German brand benefits from its direct-sales business model, while Van Rysel is sold through parent company Decathlon’s stores (and in select specialist stores).

With the overheads involved in operating physical shops, it’s common to equate cheaper prices with cutting corners – the general assumption that a brand can select a frame design from a catalogue then have it assembled and shipped over for sale is a tempting one.

I recently accepted an invitation to tour Decathlon’s BTwin Village in Lille, France, to see how Van Rysel builds and designs its bikes. 

I discovered that – far from a stack-high, sell-cheap ethos – the brand is putting the building blocks in place for a sustained challenge to the status quo.

Van Rysel assembly line

The Van Rysel assembly line sits within a cavernous Decathlon building, which in turn is inside Decathlon’s BTwin Village – a campus of buildings that house the brand’s administrative and design offices, a Decathlon superstore, plus a suite of R&D and testing facilities.

Van Rysel testing

The brand’s product testing, and research and development facilities are housed within the same complex. 

The notable exception is an aerodynamics facility, but Van Rysel has partnered with ONERA (Office National d’Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales) – the French Aerospace Lab – which is situated across the road from its Lille headquarters. 

All told, 35 people are employed in the Lille testing lab, where they’re tasked with assessing product quality and ISO compliance. There’s also a sister lab in Sallanches, which specialises in MTB and snowsports testing.

Van Rysel R&D facilities

Perhaps understandably, given the high-tech nature of some of the equipment, plus ongoing behind-closed-doors prototyping processes, Decathlon chooses to keep some of its secrets… secret.

On our tour, I came face to face for the first time with industrial-sized 3D printers, which are capable of printing whole bike framesets for aerodynamic testing in the nearby ONERA wind tunnel, as well as creating products with a 72-hour turnaround. 

Drawing boards of new products and their first prototype models are also present, alongside weather-simulation chambers, body and biomechanical mapping labs, plus alloy and textile manufacturing zones for product testing and development.

---