DARCY SACCUCCI PROFILE

September 04, 2008 @ 4:30 PM - Brian

I contributed the following to The Industry BMX Mag #2, just wanted everyone to get a chance to read it....

INDUSTRY PROFILE: Darcy Saccucci

If you’ve ever ridden a Pivotal seat/post design and thought, “Wow, this is a great idea,” then you owe MacNeil’s Darcy Saccucci a huge thank you. As product designer for MacNeil since the brand’s inception, Darcy’s design expertise has played a hand in nearly everything the company has produced, including their patented Pivotal seat design. And though he’s not currently spending the majority of his time on Pivotal technology anymore (due to the fact that MacNeil has licensed the technology to factories in Taiwan), Darcy continues to develop innovative new products from behind his computer at the MacNeil offices in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Most recently, Darcy’s design skills produced MacNeil’s Conjoined crank set, a lightweight, incredibly strong crank set that utilizes two tapered tubes that are joined together as arms. As a crank design, it’s unprecedented and revolutionary, just like the rest of Darcy’s design portfolio. In between trips to Taiwan and weekend jaunts to the BMX track with his daughter, Darcy was kind enough to fill The Industry in on his responsibilities with MacNeil, his approach to design and where he’d like to see the BMX industry go. Read on and get to know the guy that changed seat technology for the better…

Name: Darcy Saccucci
Age: 34
Hometown: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Job title: Product Designer

Employment history in BMX:
Started in the late ‘80s making number plates in my parent’s garage and then graduated to bigger things by founding Basic Bikes in the early ‘90s. Sold my part of Basic and from there, I started working at the then new, Ten Pack Distribution. MacNeil was eventually spawned, and out of that Pivotal Technology emerged. So right now, the majority of my time is spent between both MacNeil and Pivotal.

Can you explain your current title at MacNeil?
We’re not really into titles around here. Between doing Ten Pack and the Metro Jams, Elevation, MacNeil and Pivotal, we all just do what needs to be done. But I mainly concentrate on designing new products for the MacNeil line.
 
What products are you responsible for in the MacNeil line?
All of them. The only thing we sell that I don’t put a lot of effort into is DVDs. I don’t have the skills or time so I don’t bother when some of the other guys around here are so talented at it.

What approach do you take to designing new products for MacNeil?
I like to keep things simple, so I start with the basic idea that necessity is the mother of all invention. What do we as bike riders need? Lighter bikes? Okay, how do I make bikes lighter. Stronger cranks? How do I make that happen. It’s pretty straight forward. I never stop thinking about it, I mean never stop. I only sleep a few hours a night and the rest of the time I’m thinking bike parts.

And more in depth, can you explain the process for designing A) the Pivotal seat and post and B) the Conjoined cranks?
As for the Pivotal technology like I mentioned, necessity plays a major roll for me. So whenever I wasted my rails and had to replace my seat, I would get frustrated with way the seat joined the post. I found it awkward to work on and it ended up slipping, so I just sat down at my computer with a traditional seat and post and came up with the idea for Pivotal. I did a bunch of drawings to get the idea down and from there, it’s the same process for most products; make a rough prototype, open some molds, get some samples, test the samples, reject the samples, get new samples, retest the samples, okay the samples, run the production and finally ship the stuff off to the shops so riders can get it in their hands.
With the Conjoined cranks, I set a goal for myself. To make stronger lighter cranks. The problem quickly becomes obvious. How can you make things stronger? More material. How can you make things lighter? Less material. So to get both stronger and lighter cranks, I needed to try something a little different. The more I thought about it, the use of thinner dual tubes was the best way to add strength while keeping the weight to a minimum. The conjoined cranks were a really simple idea that ended up turning out nice.

How does it feel knowing that the Pivotal seat design has transcended BMX and additionally become popular in other bike-related areas?
I just designed it for BMX, but since other areas of cycling have been picking up on it, I guess it’s cool. If it helps in a small way to shift the way that BMX is perceived by the rest of the bike industry, I’d say that is a good thing.

What steps does a company take to license the Pivotal seat design?
It’s pretty straight forward for a brand to do their own seats with Pivotal technology now. All they have to do is have their agent contact the seat factory, Velo and they will get all of the information that they need directly from them. By licensing it to the factories, we have streamlined the process, allowing me to focus on other things.

How difficult is it to take a part from the design stage to the manufacturing stage?
It really varies depending on the complexity of the product. A lot of companies will pull something out of the Taiwan catalog, slap a logo on it and then start selling their new “design.” All of the MacNeil products have always been straight from either my head or the team suggestions. We have never been ones to do the catalog product range, so our difficulty level is always way up there. It is getting easier though. When I first started trying to get the factories to do different things than they were used to doing, it took a lot of convincing. But now that we have had some winners, they’re down to try new things for us.

And did you additionally move to Taiwan for a period to make that transition easier?
Yeah I ended up moving to Taiwan for a little over a year to help speed up some of the projects that we had on the go.

What’s next from MacNeil?
More innovation. I’m have so many ideas I want to make happen.

Where do you see BMX in five years? And where would you like to see it go?
Everyone is talking about BMX in the Olympics, I hope it can live up to even ten percent of what everyone is predicting. If it stays the same, I’m just as happy. I have seen BMX at its hugest and at its smallest and I liked it both ways, so I’m okay with whatever happens down the road.

And finally, where do you see both yourself and MacNeil in five years?
MacNeil will continue along the same path of putting out quality bikes for five years and well beyond that. As for me, I’ll be sitting in the stands at the local BMX track screaming at my daughter, Bella, to pedal the whole last straight just like my dad screamed at me when I was a kid.