Changes at Starling!

• Posted on 18 December 2025
• 0

As you may have seen teased over the last few months, Starling Cycles have been working on some fairly major improvements this year, which are all coming to fruition now.

If you're not aware of Starling, they're a Bristol based mountain bike brand who mostly offer single pivot suspension models.  The mid travel Twist (Mixed wheel) and Murmur (29") offer great versatility - by fitting different stroke shocks you can build short or longer travel versions of the bikes, or play around depending on races, events, holiday, or just what you fancy riding at home.  It's fairly common for Starling owners to have a second shock, fork and big tyres to convert their bike into Alps holiday mode, for example.

Over the years, Starling have manufactured frames in house, as well as various third party factories supplying parts or doing the construction.  Most recently, their core range had Taiwanese rear triangles, with the front triangle brazed in house at their unit in Bristol.  That could mean a bit of a wait while a frame was cut, brazed, powder coated and then assembled.  Starling were keen to improve on this, so have switched things up a bit heading into 2026.

For the Core range (Twist, Mega Twist, Mini Murmur, Murmur and Mega Murmur) the rear triangles are the same taiwanese manufacture and paint, but the front ends are now brazed and painted at Fort in Czechia.  Here's a video tour showing exactly the same process as in-house manufacture at Starling, but on a somewhat larger scale!  

What this means is that Starling will now be aiming to keep stock of the Core range, ready to assemble and ship within a few days, rather than several weeks.  They're keen to grow the brand, adding bike shop stockists such as our good selves.  Demo a bike with us, choose a colour, shock - along with a build kit if we're looking at a full build - then get it within a week!  You can see the Core range on our website here

So what about the Bristol workshop?   That's not closing, far from it.  Medium+ and XXL sizes of the Core range will continue to be made there, but the move will also free up time and capacity for Bristol to focus on Starling's Rare range.  This is their more unusual models, produced in small batches - the Beady Little Eye and Sturn, plus others - you can see those here.

We have a lovely demo Starling Murmur, in Large.  That's here at the shop to take for a demo ride - please give us a shout if you'd like to arrange that, or just chat about anything Starling!