At 9th Wave Cycling we often get the question where our name comes from and what it means. Time to answer it.
The name comes from the Irish myth of the Ninth Wave. In the legend, the ninth wave is the largest in a series of nine, and it marks a boundary: the line between the ordinary world and the Otherworld, a place inhabited by powerful deities and supernatural beings. The Ninth Wave is both a physical and a spiritual border between the two.
Our founders chose it as a symbol for pushing further than what is obvious. Most people turn back at that boundary; the idea is to carry on. For a wheel builder that means asking of every wheel whether it can be lighter, stiffer or more durable, and not accepting that a trade-off is final.
You can see the name in the range. Our in-house hub line, Onda, is Spanish for wave. The 4-Shore, launched in 2017 as a carbon wheelset made for beach racing, is a play on words: for shore. And the name stands for the same thing across gravel, road and mountain bike wheels: building the wheel for the rider who goes beyond the obvious route.
9th Wave was founded in 2014 and is based in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. Read more about how we build in our about page, or see where our technology starts with the ART asymmetric rim design.
