Ian Thibodeau, and Louis Aguilar

Detroit-based bike company Detroit Bikes on Friday laid off more than half of its workforce.

Zak Pashak, owner of Detroit Bikes, confirmed Wednesday the company had to resort to layoffs heading into the slow winter season.

He said he hopes to bring those workers back in January.

“We had some really big orders this year,” Pashak said. “We had to increase our workforce for that. ... Now we need to catch up to those numbers. It’s just a process of steadying.”

It’s unclear how many employees were let go after a company meeting Friday.

Pashak told The Detroit News 50 people worked at Detroit Bikes at the company’s peak not long ago, but he started letting some of those employees go after big orders had been filled earlier this year.

He said “maybe 15 people” were retained after the layoffs.

Steven Sprankle, who was the company’s senior powdercoat technician, said Pashak called a company meeting Friday afternoon to tell those assembled that “there wasn’t a need for us to come in anymore and they were laying off a majority of the company.”

Sprankle said all but eight employees were laid off. At the time of the layoffs, around 45 people worked for Detroit Bikes.

Sprankle, 27, said he wasn’t expecting the layoff.

“Nobody was prepared for this,” he said. “You see stuff like that, but you don't ever expect that to happen. It just made me angry.”

The Wayne State University student has worked for Detroit Bikes since April 2015.

He managed four other employees, he said.

“If you knew this was coming, you could’ve said something sooner,” Sprankle said. “I could have worked with less hours ... but to pull the rug out from everybody, it hurt.”

He’s not sure he’ll return to the company if demand returns in January.

“It would be really hard to (go back) because of that sense of betrayal and the taste it leaves in your mouth,” he said.

Pashak said the company isn’t closing, just slimming down for a period of time.

Detroit Bikes was founded in 2011 by Pashak, a Calgary transplant who moved to Detroit on a whim and who has confessed to knowing very little about manufacturing or bikes.

The startup spent two years on designing the three-speed bike that came only in black — an homage to Henry Ford’s Model T.

The bikes range in price from $699 to $850 and are assembled in a 50,000 square-foot factory on the city’s west side.

Detroit Bikes has always pedaled against the trend of bike manufacturing, which has virtually vanished from the U.S. In 2015, only 2.5 percent of the 2.6 million adult bikes sold in the nation were made in this country, according to the National Bike Dealers Association

Detroit Bikes opened its facility on the west side of the city last year with the aim of making up to 10,000 bikes a year.

Detroit Bikes took a major step this year by starting work on a 3,000-bike contract with Motivate, America’s largest bike-share company.

But the contract also meant it outsourced some of its work.

For the Motivate contract, Detroit Bikes has sourced and purchased parts for bike wheels and assembles those wheels. It buy parts in bulk for the rest of the bike and take frames to a subcontractor for painting.

The company also landed a deal in 2015 with Colorado-based brewing company New Belgium Brewing last year that called for over 2,000 Fat Tire bicycles.

Pashak said he expects New Belgium might place another order in 2017, which could bring some of the laid-off employees back to work.

On Wednesday, the owner expressed some disdain for bid processes for the city of Detroit’s bikeshare program, which he felt didn’t give his Detroit-based company much consideration.

That could have been a good contract for the company, he said.

“We were hopeful,” Pashak said. “Certainly some things are disappointing.”

ithibodeau@detroitnews.com

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Twitter: @Ian_Thibodeau