Contender Ten Best of 2021: A Lavender OPEN WIDE RTP

It might be hard to miss an OPEN gravel bike. After all, its tube shaping isn’t curvaceous like a Pinarello, nor do they have the name cachet of a Santa Cruz or Moots. What then is someone to do if they want the engineering and ride prowess of an OPEN but they also want to stand out? They choose custom paint, which is exactly what this OPEN WIDE RTP bike is.

OPEN’s choice to offer their gravel bike frames in an RTP (ready-to-paint) option was fairly uncommon at the time. There are a number of reasons as to why that might be, but one of the largest ones is that it is hard to sell a raw carbon frame to a customer. Carbon layup is often an imperfect process, one that sees cosmetic imperfections in its build-up. Most manufacturers can hide those imperfections underneath the paint, but OPEN has to go a step further to make sure that isn’t the case. As a result, the OPEN RTP frames we receive look phenomenal just in raw carbon and are great examples of what a quality carbon frame should look like.

The other reason OPEN offers RTP is for customization. Outside of a few occasions, OPEN doesn’t sell complete bikes, allowing riders to customize components and build their bike according to their needs. But a custom-painted bike allows people to work with local painters (like our in-house painter) to execute their vision better than any normal product planner. Rarely does a custom-painted OPEN bike look like another. The results are often surprising.

As for this OPEN RTP? This one isn’t as crazy as some of our other custom-painted bikes, but the lavender color is something you’d struggle to find on a bike you’d find from a bike shop (outside of maybe a Santa Cruz Stigmata). In fact, this one looks like something straight from the factory, down to the color-matched OPEN logo and OPEN colors at the bottom of the head tube. We think it's a sensible choice, but one that allows the bike to set itself apart from other bikes. 

The same sensibility can be said of the rest of the build. ENVE AG28 wheels pair nicely to the SRAM Force AXS mullet drivetrain, and the rest of the components are sensibly chosen as well.

Custom paint isn’t for everyone, and that is okay. But for those who want to stand out a bit and execute what they imagine their bike to be, 

See the rest of the build, as well as more photos, below.

See the Contender Ten Best Bikes of 2021