Video: Juice Lubes - A Well Oiled Machine

Some of the guys from MTBcut recently headed down to the south of England to catch up with the guys from Juice Lubes and shoot a little behind the scenes film on the rider run company. Check out the video and a few words below from Will Miles from Juice Lubes on the continuing growth of one of another great UK brand!



The Juice Lubes brand was founded in 2009 when we spotted a gap in the market for a suspension lubricant and protector product. We suddenly realised that there was a crazy situation where ourselves and our friends were happy to spend time and effort looking after a £20 chain, but on the whole, completely ignored the suspension units on there bikes that, as we are sure you know, can cost thousands!

So the search was on for a manufacturing partner here in the UK who had the experience, expertise and attention to detail to help us create this product. Happily, the search didn't take as long as we feared it might and we found a company with decades of experience across all industries, including the highest levels of motor sport, who was willing to work with us. After several months of testing and refining we had our stiction-reducing, small-bump-sensitivity-improving, lubricating and protecting product... but no name for it!

To cut a long story short, everything we came up with for a week was utter crap and then in a moment of pure frustration Chaz suggested we go for "Forking Good Love Juice". Two minutes later this had been refined (for better or for worse) to the brand name of Juice Lubes with the product being Fork Juice - The Forking Good Suspension Lubricant and it has been raising smiles ever since!

Next job was a logo and can design - a brief was sent to a graphic designer friend from uni who was sat on a beach in Thailand at the time and three days later we got an email back with what is the design we still use today on all the products. The best bit is that he completely ignored what I had asked for and did his own thing. Nice one Mogli!


The newly christened Fork Juice was released to market the following month and within a few weeks it had found its way into the pit box of a certain UK and World number 1 at the time, DH racer (unfortunately current sponsorship considerations mean we can’t mention his name or use the image anymore) and a picture of Fork Juice being used on his and his team mates’ bikes was posted online. This was the kind of PR we couldn't even have dreamed of and instantly gave Fork Juice credibility as the high performance product we knew it to be. Sales rapidly took off back in the UK and we started getting enquiries from all over the world - which was nice!

You don't get many opportunities like this to fast track the growth of a brand off the back of some free, positive PR so we had to make the most of it. Over the next year we went into development overdrive, designing a range of products to go into the Juice Lubes brand, going through the testing procedure over and over again until we were happy that each product was good to go.

It’s very difficult to be totally objective when testing and comparing like for like is also very hard as there are so many variables involved that alter product performance, be it weather, terrain, temperature, type of riding, exact amount applied, state of the components product is applied to at the time and last but not least personal opinion and interpretation! Even when you think you are being objective, you probably aren't and this definitely resulted in a few tantrums! The ones that stick out the most surrounded the testing of Viking Juice and Chain Juice Dry as these are quite different to people's idea of what a chain oil should look like and how it should work. After a while innovation, development and great performance won everybody over, but it took time!


Fast forward to 2013 and Juice Lubes is used by tens of thousands of people all over the world and is now the most complete range of bicycle maintenance products available from one single brand today. We are very proud of the whole range and continue to refine, test and improve all items all the time with the help of our test pilots and, for 2013 onwards, our race teams - please do come over and say hello at any races you see us at and we will be more than happy to go give you a sample of our products to try out and give you a hand where we can.

Stay Oiled