Craig Turner: I’m Craig Turner, founder and President of XLAB. XLAB is the premier range of hydration and storage products for road, mountain and triathlon bikes. The single thread that goes through everything that I’ve done is speed.

"The single thread that goes through everything that I’ve done is speed." - Craig Turner, President XLAB

Starting with rockets, and then going into aircraft, and then yachts – and finally into bicycles; I felt that bike manufacturers were just concentrated on designing bikes irrespective of the real needs of the rider – particularly triathletes. There wasn’t room in the triangle for water bottles, so we came up with the idea of putting them on the back. Then we became the major producer of dual rear carriers, and then, continued to develop XLAB products since.

XLAB is a family-owned company. My wife Sue and I have worked together on a daily basis for over twenty years. The greatest thing is that we have a daughter [Candice] who has been connected into the triathlon business for over twenty years.

Candice Turner: Well, I started when I was eight. I was the fastest price-tagger. In 2011, I became full-time.

Craig: As a unit, we are extremely strong as a family, and the combined knowledge is immense.

Candice: One thing that is really great about XLAB is the quality we produce.

Craig: We take these things very seriously as though they are going to fly. We do life testing, destructive testing, road testing, wind tunnel testing, Velodrome testing…I don’t know anybody else that does as much testing as we do

We take these things very seriously as though they are going to fly." - Craig Turner, President XLAB

Our mission is to make products light, aerodynamic, durable and ergonomic. Those factors we look at every single time.

Our competitors have the products built overseas, they come in a package, and they go immediately out to customers. They cant check the quality that way. They can’t ensure all of the parts are there, or that everything is as it’s supposed to be.

Candice: We focus on the details. All the way down to the little screws. This ensures all product that goes out the door is up to XLAB standards – which is perfection.

Craig: We supply a lot of pros. We cannot afford – ever- to have a failure in a race. We’ve been covering pros for over 25 years. We’ve never had a failure in a race yet. And we now have 29 world championships. I think this attests to the quality of the product.

Candice: Going into the World Championships every year and being number one in the Gear Count – it reassures us that we are doing something right.

Craig: When you are a triathlete and you are going to be out there for so many hours, you’ve got a lot of extra stuff you’ll need to carry. Once you start putting it all on the bike, you’ve got to have places for it. And if you can put it on in a way that makes the bike faster – that’s the secret. That’s what we do at XLAB.