“I was working at the bike shop when this random guy walked in waving a mountain bike magazine. He was angry about an article that described how difficult titanium was to machine and weld. Turned out that Mark Zepeda was a welder at an aerospace company in Phoenix who knew nothing about bikes, but a lot about titanium. Zepeda came up with the name, “Titus” and we started making titanium stems and bar-ends in his garage. Next, we made some fixtures to build frames. We would build a frame, and then sell a frame. I think we had only built 3-4 frames when I met John Rader (the guy who invented the threadless headset) at a bike race.”

John had spoken with Chris about a novel rear suspension he had designed. Cocalis offered to build some prototypes but did not expect their conversation to bear fruit.  They built several prototypes for John Rader who used these initial examples to sell the design to Univega, a valued brand of that period.   

Surprisingly, Cocalis received a purchase order to produce 175 “Shockblok” titanium full suspension frames for the brand’s new high-end mountain bike line. It was a daunting proposition.  Cocalis admitted that the best the pair could manage was one frame a month. He was a senior, finishing up a degree in accounting, and was plying Fortune 500 firms for a desk job and a decent salary – and now this? Cocalis put together a business plan and then discussed his dilemma with his trusted mentor Hal Reneau, an accounting professor at Arizona State University. “Do it,” he said. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You can become an accountant anytime you want.” He then backed up his advice with a small loan to help Chris to get started.     

“Mark’s boss, Larry Richmond, also threw in some money. We had just enough to rent a building, buy materials, a milling machine, a lathe and some TIG welders. Once we got going, we hired some of Mark’s swing shift co-workers to help us deliver the frames on time. I coped [cut and fit] every tube for that entire production run.”   

Titus Cycles delivered the 175 frames to Univega as promised, but never received a follow-up order. The next move should have been to go into production with a name-brand Titus range, but Cocalis decided upon a more conservative business plan. They “soft launched” Titus frames to build up their name and contracted to build frames in greater numbers for more established brands to maintain their cash flow.  

“We made aluminum suspension downhill frames for the Diamondback team; titanium frames for Dean, Slingshot, Conejo, Hammerhead, and Speedgoat; rear triangles for Sycip; all the custom titanium road bike frames for the Lemond team, and even some titanium steerer tubes for Kestral.”  

Cocalis says that it wasn’t until 1996 that they really focused on Titus as their stand-alone business. By that time, Titus had produced frames from aluminum, titanium, steel and metal matrix – and had manufactured at least four different types of rear suspension designs. In retrospect, the experience must have been a postgraduate course in production frame building for Titus – which spurred an incredible period of innovation that would earn a place in history for the Titus brand.   

When Cocalis founded Titus he was 21 years old and had a hand in almost every aspect of the business. In the following decade, he had successfully steered Titus through the dual-suspension revolution and his modest production line was at full capacity producing frames that, in this man’s opinion, were unrivaled in both quality and technology. Titus was at a turning point.

After a couple of attempts to outsource frame construction to contractors in the USA, Chris successfully moved some of his aluminum models to Kinesis – a Taiwan owned builder in Portland, Oregon. To control the experiment, Titus manufactured the same bikes while Cocalis was helping the Portland factory get up to speed…

“We… started production in-house while working with Kinesis on the same model. This, combined with my previous learning experience, helped to make this a really successful project for us, and almost doubled the size of Titus that year.

Kinesis Taiwan then chose to shut down Kinesis USA and we had the option of pulling the project back in-house or transferring the project to Taiwan. We transferred it to Taiwan and this was really when Taiwan became my second home.”

Being separated from Titus for weeks at a time required some fundamental changes. Knowing Chris, I consider it a small miracle that this type-A creative genius, control freak managed to step out of his hands-on management role and seamlessly delegate the lion’s share of his skillsets to trusted employees – many of whom are still working with Cocalis today.

Stepping back from the minutia of the factory floor, and frequent travel to factories in Asia, afforded an opportunity for Chris to view Titus and the industry from a wider perspective. Perhaps more importantly, he gained access to new components and proposed standards much earlier in their development process.

Our trailside conversations changed dramatically from how a bike rides – frame geometry, suspension kinematics and handling issues – to discussions about future technology, like carbon vs aluminum, optimal tubing shapes, though-axle diameters, internal headset standards, how many cogs could fit on a cassette before we’ll need wider hubs, 29 inch wheels, and a slew of hydraulic disc brake woes. I would learn later that Chris was working on most of those issues in secret.

It didn’t take long for Cocalis to earn a place at the table when the industry’s key players were still in the planning stages. Whether this was intentional or not, Titus was poised to stay abreast of developing technology at the brink of the new millennium, which would see almost every mountain bike convention upended.

I was inspired to write this story while riding a prototype of the 2024 Switchblade near my home in Colorado. Once, I solemnly swore that my previous Switchblade was the perfect trail bike. In five years, it’s never let me down – not one component failure or a single flat tire. Today I caught myself uttering that same sentence about this new machine. Is “perfecter” an acceptable superlative?

Incredibly, I had aced a nasty technical rock feature for the first time this Summer. Recovering at the summit I took pause to admire the finer details of my new Pivot. My thoughts drifted to an earlier time when bikes rattled, when I brought tools to fix every moving part, when chains fell off and brakes faded, when suspension damping changed with intensity and temperature, when I checked my frame for cracks before each ride, when I thought, “this was the best bike ever.”

Beneath the Switchblade’s sparkling paint was the DNA of the Titus Moto Lite, and between them, a thousand layers of innovations and meticulous improvements. I realized that the man responsible for this carbon fiber and metal masterpiece also played a significant role in the refinement of almost every one of its components. Chris could have abandoned his quest to perfect his trail bike at a number of points along that timeline and called it good enough, but he never did.

I dropped my saddle, pointed the front tire downhill, released the brake levers and felt my left shoe click into the pedal, and in that moment of weightlessness before gravity sent us reeling toward home, I thought, “This is a story worth telling.”