Wolf Tooth: Its Origins and Inventions
By Stan Portus – 11 February 2020
Wolf Tooth is renowned for developing products that resolve common issues on bikes and providing completely new storage and tooling solutions. And it’s no surprise that the company produces such high-quality products considering its history – something we look at here.
Founded in 2013, Wolf Tooth has quickly established itself as the go-to brand for previously unmet cycling needs. Wolf Tooth has created a collection of products that are either pure innovations or elevate the standards of existing components to whole new levels.
How it Began
Wolf Tooth was set up by three individuals: Mike Pfeiffer, Brendan Moore, and Dan Dittmer. All three were mechanical engineers in high tech industries before founding Wolf Tooth (Moore and Pfeiffer worked in automation engineering building robots). Between them have over 50 years’ experience riding bikes. Brendan Moore was a pro XC rider, Mike Pfeiffer rides XC and endurance race, and Dan Dittmer competes in ultra-endurance races such as Iditabike and La Ruta.
Wolf Tooth provided the three with a way to take their day jobs and mix them with their passion for cycling. When Wolf Tooth first set up shop, it was operating out of Pfeiffer’s house and Moore and Dittmer still pretty much had their own day jobs. But Wolf Tooth quickly moved from passion project to creating some of the most innovative and high-quality bike components out there.
1x Chain Rings
Based in Burnsville, Minnesota, Wolf Tooth bears the brunt of incredibly harsh winters. The three founders spend close to half the year riding fat bikes in icy weather. Because front derailleurs don’t deal well with icy weather, the three would run 1x systems, so the first thing they developed was Wolf Tooth’s narrow/wide chainring that ensures chains don’t slip off the front ring and does away with the need for chain guides too.
Part of the reason Wolf Tooth chainrings are such a success is that Wolf Tooth employ incredibly high-quality machinery and work with extremely tight tolerances while working with the best materials. This is an ethos they carry across all their products which are all designed, prototyped, tested and brought to market in-house.
Responding to the Bike Industry
Thanks to its ability to develop products quickly, and working with a small local supply chain, Wolf Tooth is able to respond to the quick changes in equipment that characterise the bike industry. This means that as bike technology shifts you can rely on Wolf Tooth developing and releasing solutions, whether that’s chain rings for the latest Shimano GRX drivetrain, dropper levers for SRAM, or the Boostinator which allows you to fit non-boost wheels in a boost spacing frame or fork.
Storage and Tool Systems
As well as finding solutions to specific components, over the last few years Wolf Tooth has developed several collections that look beyond the latest tech.
The B-Rad system allows you to expand and maximise the potential of a bike’s bottle mounts, perfect for mountain bikes where a bottle would interfere with the rear shock’s functionality or creating more storage options on a gravel bike.
Launched in 2019, the EnCase system allows you to store tools in the end of flat or drop bars, doing away with the need for bulky saddle bags and maintaining that minimal fuss aesthetic whatever bike your ride.
Saddleback staff have been using Wolf Tooth Components on their bikes for years. The company joined Saddleback in July 2019 fitting perfectly into our family of elite brands.
