If you haven’t come across Mekk before, they’re the brainchild of Mark Edwards and Ken Knight. Edwards has been working in the bike industry for over 35 years, and was a key figure in some of the biggest brands like Specialized and GT coming over to British shores, while Knight brings combined experience of 15 year’s worth of designing, sourcing and manufacturing bikes as well as a racing career that encompassed some of the most prestigious amateur teams – like Paris’s ACBB – and the GB squad.

Needless to say they form a duo that know a thing or two about bikes, and one look at the Mekk range lets you know there’s no messing around from this Bristol-based brand.

The 2016 Mekk range includes a whopping 24 different bikes built around six framesets, with prices ranging from £500 all the way up to nearly £3,000. The central philosophy behind how Mekk build bikes is affordable performance and frame quality. Knight told me that they believe in investing in the frame, and if compromises have to be made to hit a price point, speccing the kit down slightly. It’s a forward thinking move, because it means when you buy a Mekk, you know that the frame more than justifies the kit it comes with, meaning a year or two down the line you can upgrade the components or groupset and still have a chassis that delivers a high ride quality.

One other important point is that every bike in the Mekk range comes with 25mm tyres and has been designed specifically to accept up to 28mm tyres. The one exception is the Primo, which can only take 25s.

With the model year switching from 2015 to 2016, we’ve been to check out Mekk’s latest ranger – here are some of the highlights across the range.

Website: Mekk Bikes