The Signal Cycles story

Signal Cycles started in the fall of 2007 in a small garage in North Portland. Matt Cardinal and Nate Meschke met while working as bike mechanics at Bike Gallery. Both had earned undergraduate painting degrees: Nate at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and Matt at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. Signal debuted at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in February of 2008 and began filling orders immediately.

Signal was included in a book called Custom Bicycles: A Passionate Pursuit, alongside established builders like Richard Sachs, Dario Pegoretti, and Vanilla Bicycles, with a foreword by cycling legend Phil Liggett.

Over the next decade Signal built steel bicycles, one at a time, to the highest standard that Matt and Nate could manage. Bikes shipped all over the US, and to Europe, China, and Japan. Signal was featured in the magazine ReadyMade, built a bike for the 7-foot Portland Trail Blazers center Joel Przybilla, and built custom picnic bicycles for the Anthropologie clothing store. Signal won Best City Bike at the 2011 NAHBS show, supported a cyclocross team with competitive men's and women's racers, and was selected to work with Ziba design studio on the Oregon Manifest creative collaborations. All the while, Nate and Matt kept getting better at indoor nerf basketball.

These were very good years, full of creativity, friendships, and learning.

In the spring of 2013 Matt left to pursue a master's degree in industrial design in Savannah, Georgia. Nate kept building and eventually stopped in 2018.

This site is a record of what Signal built: the beautiful bicycles and amazing relationships that were created and crafted in North Portland, one at a time.