November 2024

RAAW Inside Out - Jo Engwicht

Inside Out is a series of stories showing the people behind RAAW. Over the past eight years, the team has grown from a one-man band to an eclectic collection of individuals that handles everything from the development of the bikes to getting those bikes out to you wherever you are in the world.

Each person contributes to the unique RAAW vibe, and we’re incredibly proud to have them be a part of the business. So proud that we’d like to tell you more about them, what they do at RAAW, and show you their personal bikes and the reasons why they built them the way they did.

First up, Jo Engwicht, or Germany’s fastest logistics guy.

Jo, originally from Hannover, Germany, spent a few of his younger years living over the pond in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was over there that he first got into riding bikes when he’d swing by his friends to borrow his 20” bike and they’d build jumps in and out of the ditches in the neighbourhood.

One day, they got wind of the infamous Rays Indoor Bike Park just a short drive down the road and after one visit, Jo was hooked. With a pretty reasonable season pass, he spent every moment of free time there that winter, getting acquainted with bikes and especially dirt jumping. Something you can see today when he boosts three times higher than anyone in the office. A few years later, trail riding followed when he saved up enough for a full-suspension bike.

It's through full suspension that Jo got to RAAW. One day, while hunting for shock settings on his own bike, Jo stumbled across the job advert. At that point, he had been riding a Madonna for a while and was over the moon with it. By his own admission, he couldn’t believe the idea of working for RAAW and pushed it away for six months before plucking up the courage to send an email in. Thankfully, Jo now sends packages much faster than he did that first email. But we’re damn glad he did send it.

The Lenzerheide World Cup in 2023 was a particular highlight of being at RAAW so far. Getting to experience all the racing madness with the work team and the riders at that race has vividly stuck in his mind. It was a big week for RAAW - We’d launched the Privateer Program that year, it was the first race of the season for those guys and we were all just so stoked to see them out on track and sending it. Having the growing RAAW team there to experience it was memorable for everyone, as with a little step back it was heartwarming to see how RAAW had become such a cool group of people.

Day to day Jo handles the logistics at RAAW, the packing and shipping of all the orders, as well as purchasing and some after-sales customer support. But no two days are the same, and he relishes the environment at RAAW and simply being on the same page as everyone else, who are all just as big geeks about bikes.

As for bikes, Jo still loves his Madonna, now in V3 guise. It’s the bike that lets him do everything he wants on a bike, from nibbling away at off-camber loamers to collecting air miles. He’s spent a lot of time on the Jibb and Yalla! too, but consistently gravitates back to his Madonna for his simple love of riding it so much.

Jo’s build has come together over time. It marries a mix of up-to-date current parts, like the SRAM Maven brakes and RockShox Zeb and Vivid, with older more sentimental parts, like the stem and bars, which Jo picked up on a US trip. Those parts hold a lot of value, and connect this bike with fond memories of the past.

While Jo describes his bike in three words as “fairly over-weight”, a consistent theme in his Madonna is that of performance and longevity, with each part being on the bike only since it works like a dream for Jo’s demands and continues to do so, ride after ride with no worry.

There’s no downplaying it, Jo is an absolute animal on two wheels. Be it a lunch ride or a lengthy weekend epic, his speed is off the charts and it’s a white-knuckle ride trying to keep up with him. Always keen for another lap, he enjoys a session too, pushing back up sections of trail to hit them harder and harder until usually the ground gives up and admits defeat.

He gravitates towards trails with great turns, be them the infamous vert berms of Morgins, Switzerland or a sketchy off-camber turn that forces you to rely on your tyre’s side knobs. And it’s perhaps in the latter that he finds a lot of fun in building trails. Rake and rides with friends need minimal effort with the tools to get the maximum fun. With each ride, the ruts form and the trail speed increases making the turns better and better.

He’s also a Dad Cam fan and often documents the shenanigans in the woods. We’re all looking forward to his Dad Cam edit from Coast Gravity Park when he hopefully makes the trip to the Sunshine Coast to tick it off his bucket list.