Longtime NxRev customer Santa Cruz Bicycles has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1993. Founded in a garage with nothing but inspiration and a desire to create world-class mountain bikes, they’ve transformed into a company with 19 renowned bike designs (and have upgraded their office space, too). Since 2007, they’ve nearly doubled their revenue.

How does a company with a highly specialized product manage to increase its revenue so significantly during an economic downturn? Director of Engineering, Joe Graney, credits the PTC Creo suite with helping them stay ahead of the curve. Implementing PTC Creo has allowed them to increase their output from 1-2 new models to 6 new models per year.

With their old software, Santa Cruz Bicycles needed up to seven hours to run a single design’s simulation. Today, those simulations have been cut to five minutes or less. The switch to PTC Creo allows them to test hundreds of new design elements and run dozens of simulations every day.

PTC’s design suite has also helped Santa Cruz adapt to evolving trends in the new millennium:

  • In 2001, they used PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER for the first time to develop a superior full suspension bike.
  • In 2008, they used Pro/ENGINEER to incorporate carbon fiber into their bike frames, leading to a period of unprecedented growth.
  • In 2009, the industry standard shifted from 26-inch wheels to 29-inch wheels. Using PTC helped Santa Cruz evolve more quickly and with better products than their competitors.


With each PTC-enabled design, Santa Cruz continues to increase its sales and its reputation. “We keep getting better by using PTC Creo,” says Graney. “It’s not just the time to market, but also the number of models we are able to create with that additional time.”

“The lion’s share of our growth over the last three years comes from the fact we have great new models,” Graney continued. “Our innovative products, designed with PTC Creo, let us compete with companies that are 50 times our size.”

Santa Cruz Bikes is just one of the companies NxRev supports in using the PTC design suite to its full potential. We offer a variety of seminars, tutorials, and customer service to help users get the most out of the PTC suite. Give us a call at 408-986-0200 to find out more.

For more information on Santa Cruz Bicycles, read their profile on PTC’s website. You can also see their customer perspective on PTC’s YouTube channel.