About
You're most likely here to know a little more about what Rival is. This should give some clarity to who's behind the brand and why it exists in the first place.
Put simply, Rival makes affordable, easy-to-build DIY sim racing gear you can download and build yourself.
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Before we start, you should know that every bit of Rival is a one-man show. The product design, CAD, 3D work, building, branding, website, social media, and so on. This isn't a company, and I'm not pretending it is. My name's Geraint, and I'm a designer/VFX artist. I'm also a hopeless petrol head and the man behind Rival. I originally took up sim racing for practice before attending track days in my road car, and was hooked since. However, one thing that struck me was the unbelievable costs of the hardware.
On a positive note, I saw how welcoming the sim racing community was, especially the DIY community. It was great to see people build their own gear, but it was around this point that I noticed a large gap in the sim racing market.
There was little to no offering to those who have basic DIY skills to build something for the purpose of saving money, while still maintaining high functionality. It seemed that the DIY community mainly consisted of either replicating real-world wheels, creating simple devices for high prices on Etsy, or building elaborate DIY projects that amount to a substantial cost. Sim racing was still new to me at this point, so I didn't want to invest too much money into a hobby I wasn't sure I'd pursue. As I already had 3D modelling and design skills from my work, and as a fan of anything DIY, I went about making a wheel for myself. It was a simple button box with magnetic shifters for a cheap OMP wheel - I still have it. It was a success, and realising how affordable DIY hardware could be, I went ahead and started designing more hardware for myself.
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A few years on, it became somewhat of a passion project. I started to inject the missing elements absent in other DIY kits, and created a consistent design language throughout the products. It was only when I started calling them products did I realise I could probably make a venture out of this.
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For anyone who knows me, they'll know I'm nothing but honest. I'm not trying to pull the wool in front of anyone's eyes. There's no middle man and no artificial inflation of prices. This venture is simply a small side gig for myself based on something I love. After all, if I could create products that others would use and to make a small profit from them (buying a house, getting married and having kids is expensive - who knew), then it seems like a good opportunity for everybody.
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To summarise, Rival was created to rival - as the name suggests - the ever-increasing prices of sim racing hardware, and to give people an accessible and fully functional sim racing experience for a lot less than it would cost for an off-the-shelf product. That's hopefully why you're here.
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And here we are, with my products listed on a website for all to buy, use, and enjoy. It's been a very long time coming, but I hope it was worth the wait.
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Happy sim racing!
- Geraint