It started with a single request for a wooden bike stand. Now Millard Bautista Designs is quietly building an entire ecosystem of bike storage.
The Collingwood-based duo first made waves with their clean, CNC-cut wooden bike stands. Then a friend sent them a photo from an Airbnb, and everything shifted from floor to wall.
“Our friend Andrew Lansdale, he saw something on a wall and sent us the pictures like, ‘you guys should do something like this,’” says designer and co-owner Venecia Bautista. “And we thought how do you make it so modular so you can send it to market? It’s a great idea.”
The result is the Trail Grid Series, a modular storage system that takes the same Baltic birch and phenolic finish from their stands and turns it into a tidy, wall-mounted grid for bikes and gear.
“The Trail Grid is essentially a storage component system that’s modular,” Bautista says. “So all the components that you use are for mountain biking, road biking or any of the biking modalities that are out there.”
Baltic birch, French cleats and a lot of CNC
Like their stands, the Trail Grid panels are made from FSC-certified Baltic birch plywood with a black phenolic coating. It sounds nerdy until you actually live with one in a garage.
“The application of that material is great. Just the durability of it,” Bautista says.
The grids mount to the wall using a French cleat system. A cleat is screwed into the studs, then the panel hooks on.
“We thought, wouldn’t it be cool if the things were not set in place you could remove them and add whatever you want,” Bautista says. “So yeah, the idea came from a friend and then we just went with it and took it nuclear.”
Once the panel is up, the fun starts. Riders can add vertical or horizontal bike mounts, shelves, shallow shelves, cubbies and hooks in whatever configuration makes sense.
“We’re making two different attachments to hang your bike, one by the front tire and one by two tires. It’s more of a horizontal attachment,” she says. “We have four different sizes of shelves. We have small hooks and large hooks, shallow shelves as well. There’s a cubby.
Trail today, Snow and Summit tomorrow
Trail is just the start.
“By the way, we call it the Trail Grid Series because we also have a Snow (ski/ snowboard gear) and a Summit (climbing gear) Grid Series,” Bautista explains. “Once you have the grid, all components from the different series can be used on the same grid, depending on the season.”
In winter, the same wall that holds your bike can carry skis, boards and boots. When climbing season hits, you can swap in Summit hooks and cubbies for ropes and hardware. No new wall system, just different components.
“The Summit Series will be available this spring,” she adds.
Small shop, big details
Behind all of this is a small woodworking shop where Bautista and her partner Mike Millard still spend most days doing their “day job” cabinetry.
The Trail Grid panels currently sell for around $130. Hooks are the workhorses of the system.
“The hooks are great for pretty much everything. And they’re cheap. $15 a hook,” Bautista says. “You can use a hook for anything you want to hang, helmets, anything, right?”
Solving the shipping problem
If there is one thing holding the Trail Grid back from taking over garages across Canada, it is not the design. It is the size of the box.
“Our biggest problem is shipping because it’s pretty big, right?” Bautista says. “All the ones we’ve sold are local because people pick them up. We haven’t shipped any because shipping’s $150.”
The fix is already in the works. Instead of a big two-foot-by-four-foot style panel, the next evolution of the Trail Grid will be smaller, tile-like sections.
“In the new year we’re gonna try and make the panel smaller like a two-by-two,” she says. “And then you can get really creative. They’ll be less costly and less bulky and just like tile system.”
A new section of the website will let riders mock up their own wall.
“I’m working on the website so that you can build your own,” Bautista says.
A tidy future for messy gear
Right now, Millard Bautista Designs is still in that in-between stage. On site installing cabinets one day, cutting bike storage panels the next, trying to keep up with Christmas orders for their original stands.
“This just kind of took a life of its own. We were just having fun and so it’s really cool to see where it goes,” Bautista says.
The Trail Grid Series feels like the natural next step: a clean, modular way to get bikes and gear off the floor and onto the wall, without looking like you raided a hardware store.
Once they crack the shipping puzzle, it might not just be Collingwood garages and local shops getting the upgrade.