This article was produced in collaboration with Posedla and featured in Rouleur issue 139
Jung might have said there was no light without shadow, that the “thorn in the flesh” was needed... the “suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent”. But Posedla, the makers of the world’s first full custom 3D-printed saddle, aren’t having any of that psychobabble. ‘No pressure, just joy’ is their mantra, and for them it’s more than that – it’s a product guarantee. In fact, the Czech company is so confident that its customers won’t ever need to endure any cycling equivalent of the thorn in the flesh – that would be the sores in the sensitive areas – that ‘No pressure, just joy’ is emblazoned in bright green lettering across the top of every cardboard box that contains one of its made-to-measure saddles.
Posedla’s process is unique. When you order one of its Joyseat saddles, a Smiling Butt Kit is sent out within a day. This contains a block of impression foam that you sit on, leaving an imprint of your sitbones. You photograph the imprint and upload the images into the configurator where you answer an online questionnaire about you, your bike, your riding style and the desired look of your saddle. Posedla’s algorithm creates a 3D model of your sit bones, generating the figures it needs for creating the saddle including the information from the configurator questionnaire, and the saddle is manufactured at Posedla’s factory in Varnsdorf in the north of the Czech Republic. Within two to four weeks the finished saddle is delivered and from that point on, there’s no pressure, just joy.
It has been five years since Posedla founders Jiri Duzar and Martin Ripa agreed that one saddle shouldn’t have to fit all and decided to do something about it. The two, who had been school friends and also went to the same university, reunited during the pandemic and spent a long time riding in the peaceful, wooded hills around Varnsdorf, their hometown, discussing how they might bring their idea to life. “We were looking at where to start, how to build the team of engi- neers, which materials, how to approach the design of the saddle,” remembers Ripa. “We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. In 2020 Prusa Research [a Czech and global pioneer in 3D printing] opened an accelerator programme for Czech hardware startups. We applied, we had a 12-page deck that described what we wanted to achieve: ‘Finding the right saddle is a trial-and-error process, a lot of customers are dissatisfied with the saddle they are riding, the total ad- dress of the market is quite big, we have no idea how to produce this product. But we think if you help us it can be big!’”
Out of 93 startups Posedla – (the name is a play on words that combines the Czech for position (posed), saddle (sedla) and obsession (posedlost) – was among the three selected for the programme, which gave them access for one year to the material en- gineers that worked for Prusa. During this year they met their computational designer, who designed the photogrammetry that would transform photos of the imprint into a 3D model. They met their first carbon-fibre specialist from the Technical University in Liberec. They connected with people involved in different elastomer printing technologies and discovered that TPU (thermo plastic polyurethane) was the most suitable for a saddle. Then, as a final boost, Josef Prusa himself invested in Posedla.
We’re sitting in the office at the Varnsdorf HQ, around a glass-topped coffee table that contains a pile of Czech newspapers and magazines. A closer look reveals that these all feature Duzar and Ripa. There are photographs of them lying on the factory floor surrounded by saddles or smiling through a saddle cutout that’s framing the shot. “Yes, here we are a household name,” they laugh. Of the 300-400 saddles manufactured and sent out from the factory here every month, the majority are still for Czech cyclists, but that’s all starting to change. Posedla are partnering with Thomas de Gendt’s Belgian pro gravel team, Classified x Rose, who are currently riding the brand’s Joyseat Ultra saddle, and will be involved in testing the next generation. Next season Posedla starts a new partnership with both a men’s and a women’s Continental team, and there are privateer ambassadors such as former Alpecin-Fenix rider Petr Vakoc, who is now a gravel pro. Do they see themselves in the WorldTour? Duzar answers: “Getting a full WorldTour team on board is definite- ly a plan for us. The earliest horizon we see is 2027. We already have ongoing discussions with three to four teams, we got connected to their heads of performance. It very often happens that they already know about us, which is quite nice. We just need to figure out two things – delivering the product and the other thing is the sponsorship package. It can sometimes be pretty steep. The indication from the mar- ket is that it’s often around 300,000 euro per season. But we’re not walking around with this amount of money in our pocket and seeing who will take it. We don’t want to buy our way into the WorldTour. We’re looking for a team who sees our product as a potential solution to a problem that some riders might have. We believe that comfort equals power and that could be a differentiator for a lot of pros.”
In order to meet the increased demand, Posedla are introducing more automation into what is currently a completely hand-made process with the exception of the padding, which is 3D-printed in Germany. The carbon-fibre rails are made one by one, by a worker who folds a sheet of pre-preg to be laid into the mould, which is then cured in an autoclave or oven. The excess is trimmed, sanded and polished and then the rail structure bonded to the shell. Finally the padding is added. In the next few months a new press-moulding machine will make the rail and shell production faster and more efficient, reducing the number of small parts and reducing waste without reducing the handmade element, which Duzar says has been crucial. Unlike competitor custom 3D-printed saddles, Posedla offers almost infinite customisability, offering widths from 130 millimetres up to 170mm. “At the beginning we wondered whether we should use an Asian supplier, but then we asked ourselves, what kind of product do we really want to make? If it’s custom, we need full control of the shapes, the sizes, everything. We had to learn to produce a saddle from scratch, look at saddles from other brands, reverse engi- neer it if you like, so that we could combine the best of everything we’d seen and enhance it with 3D-printed padding.”
There are no plans to move production to Asia in the future, either. “The biggest advantage of manufacturing in the Czech Republic is that we have the industrial hertage but also 60% of our industry is automotive – Skoda, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Toyota all manufacture here. There’s specialism in CNC, injection moulding, carbon layering, so it didn’t make any sense for us to look elsewhere. Even now, if we found a supplier in Taiwan or China, even if they were able to make it to the same quality with better pricing, we would have to ship it halfway around the world.”
Posedla has just launched a lower-priced version of the Joyseat that’s aimed at more recreational riders. It includes the same custom 3D-printed padding but has a more flexible injection moulded shell with 30 per cent glass fibre and stainless steel rails, which are bent into shape and fixed to the shells in the Varnsdorf factory.
In another room the Smiling Butt Kits are produced and sent to customers. In this case the raw material is an impression foam normally used for casting orthotics or prosthetics. A worker imprints a 5mm grid into each block of foam before packing it into a special box with QR codes around the edges. When the customer photographs their sit bone imprint, the 5mm grid and QR codes enable Posedla’s photogrammetry software to create the 3D model. “Photogrammetry is used for landscapes, aerial surveys,” explains Ripa. “For example a plane flies over a surface, takes a sequence of photographs and when you stitch it together you get a very plas- tic picture of the geomorphology below. We didn’t mention this, but Jiri and I studied geography at university. That’s how we knew this method was possible.”
Finally, because it’s not produced in Varnsdorf, Duzar has a presentation on his laptop showing the production of the 3D-printed padding by their partner in Germany. “These are multijet fusion printers that use raw TPU powder. Printing takes 16 hours for a batch of saddles. I would say this is the biggest intellectual property we have – how we transfer the data from every customer, the exact bone width and attachment points. Plus the in- formation from the configurator. How we transfer the parametric modelling into creating the padding.
In another slide the operator takes the saddle paddings out of the chamber, covered in white TPU powder. “This is the moment when the saddle is born,” he enthuses. “It’s quite emotional.”
The padding is cleaned and vapour smoothed, making it water and UV resistant, then sent to Varnsdorf to be attached to the shell and rails. Finally Posedla has a quality control testing protocol to check that each finished saddle corresponds with the original data.
On the bench in the middle of the factory are three rows of finished saddles sitting on their ‘birth certificates’ – a piece of paper containing all the information from the imprint scan and the configurator – all ready to be sent. There are a couple for well known riders, not yet announced, that are all part of Posedla’s increasing involvement in pro racing.
“If we’re not in the WorldTour in 2027, then 2028 is a must,” says Duzar. It is very likely that the Grand Départ of the Tour de France will be in Prague.” Earlier the two men had joked about making a gold Posedla saddle for a 2026 partnership with a team that will wear gold bib shorts. Making a yellow saddle will be an altogether more serious matter. No pressure.
North Bohemia on Repete
Posedla’s is quite the story of friendship, entrepreneurship, achievement and success. There’s a bit of luck and there’s even a suggestion of the hero’s journey to it. But there’s one more vital element that can’t be explained or experienced inside the Varnsdorf factory. And that’s what’s outside it. The only way to discover it is to ride bicycles, so Posedla have organised a gorgeous bright orange steel gravel bike from fellow Czech brand Repete, especially for me so that we can do it.
Once my Posedla saddle – which I’ve brought with me – is fitted to the bike and I’ve undertaken a Gebiomized pressure mapping session in Posedla’s bike-fitting studio next door to the factory to ensure it’s optimally positioned, we roll out of the factory door.
A small town with a population of 15,000, Varnsdorf is right on the German border – it’s actually surrounded on three sides by it. We’re heading back towards the Czech side as we cut up a track beside a field and descend to a fireroad, which soon starts going upwards again. All around us are hills covered in pine and spruce – the one directly above Varnsdorf has a small castle with a gold roof perched on top. It’s like riding through a fairytale.
Soon we’re freewheeling down a deep gorge with sand- stone crags either side and we stop so that photographer Tomas can get some shots. The light is incredible, the sun streaming through gaps in the tall trees onto rock walls which look as if they’ve been daubed with fluorescent yellow paint. This is in fact, as my hosts who both have degrees in geography inform me, natural iron oxidation. The area is known as Bohemian Switzerland and for such a stunningly picturesque place it’s bafflingly empty of both tourists and cyclists. We press on as I need to catch the train back to Prague for my flight, but I vow to myself – and the Posedla guys – that I’ll be back.
The return section is mostly on road and we pass derelict factories – huge, crumbling buildings with blank windows and long-dead chimneys. Unlikely as it now seems, this area was once an industrial powerhouse. From the 19th century it was a hub for textiles, machinery and engineering, glass and ceramics, wooden furniture production and so on. But after World War Two, the German-speaking population was expelled and Czech resettlement was unsuccessful, leaving a shortage of skilled workers, empty factories and empty houses. Even now, the population of Varnsdorf is about half what it was in 1930. Duzar tells me his maternal grandfather was German. The area was dealt a further blow after 1989, when the few factories that were still running couldn’t compete globally, killed by cheap Asian imports when the borders opened, and young people have migrated out ever since. Duzar explains that he wants Posedla to help the area come back, for entrepreneurs to start business here just as he and Ripa did. The two men, both aged 38, who both have families and pre-school- aged children, moved back to the area when they started their company, and they say they’re bringing back the brains and the skills one saddle at a time. “Realistically speaking I don’t think the same heavy industry can come back,” says Duzar, “and the factories are too ruined to be renovated, but small-scale manufacturing, tourism, cultural spaces, textiles and artisans can work, and we are proving that.”
As for its cycling, particularly gravel or adventure riding, North Bohemia is a hidden gem. I have the feeling that, navigating some of the small paths through remote fields, I’m the only British rider who has ever been here, who has ever seen this particular view. “It’s quite possible!” they laugh.
As we team-time-trial back into Varnsdorf, we pass a big, yellowish neo-Renaissance style building on a corner. “That’s our school,” they tell me, “and it’s still a school.”
This part of the story is arguably the most important part. Posedla are making the cycling world a better, more joyful and less pressured place with their custom saddles, but they’re also creating a pain-free future for their descendants in this beautiful but history-scarred place which is their home.
