I love seeing frame builders gain notoriety through supporting grassroots cycling teams. Not to say that Aaron Stinner wouldn’t be as popular today without building the Mudfoot racing cyclocross frames, but it certainly helped.

During my visit to Santa Barbara during the ATOC, Jeremy Dunn and I spent the afternoon with Aaron, riding bikes, photographing bikes and making a mess at his house.

Aaron is lucky enough to have a decent sized workspace set up in his garage and he’s even luckier to have a great ride just seconds from his front door. As his queue stacks up, Aaron continues to crank out road, cross and MTB frames for customers, who happen to be mostly from California. Many of which are looking to race on a steel frame, made in their home state, rather than buy overseas production.

Stinner Frameworks is still new in the grand scheme of things, but if Aaron continues at the current momentum, he could vary well be the next big thing…