Campy Ergolevers or Shimano STIs seldom work for folks with small hands, and we've given up trying to properly fit women with small hands of shorter stature onto bikes with drop bars and brifters. We just no longer do it. When a customer insists we direct them to look at custom geometry. Just not interested in fit outcomes where we don't feel we can properly make the customer comfortable on the bike.

Our favorite components to use, instead of drop/brifters in this situation, were Campagnolo Flat bar shifters, though the good stuff like Chorus with carbon fiber levers can be impossible to find in 10-speed anymore and I'm not sure Campy ever made FB shifters in 11 speed. Otherwise we like to fit using Bar-end shifters on something like a Nitto Albatross if the bike isn't for an aggressive road race build.

Most bikes have too long of a top-tube for many women anyway, and many cyclists who communicate they want a drop bar build really just want the aggressive "look" of a road drop bar setup, but actually don't like riding in those positions. When we actually schedule them for a fitting, and start working through different setups/positions using the Purely Custom Sizing stem and the Ergostem, it doesn't take long to realize most of them want to be in a more upright position, but to have the "look" of an aggressive road geometry. We usually don't charge for the fitting session in those instances, but recommend that they take a long hard look at what it is they really want from the build. Believe it or not a surprising number of cyclists will actually allow us to work with them on a more comfortable upright or flat bar build. Disappointingly, a good number of cyclists just go out and buy an aggressive road bike anyway and ask us to make it fit. Always fun to try to tell the customer that regardless of what they see on Venus de Miles, that they really don't want what the bike looks like to dictate how it feels to ride the bike. We actually started avoiding fittings and passing everything through to a female fitter, who had much better luck having that conversation with our women customers. She gets away with being more aggressive in the fitting, and insists that the customers position in the drops, and succeeds in quickly moving most of them away from a drop bar build. When we email her we pass the customers contact information on for a "Pivot fitting," to the point that the fitting will more than likely pivot the customer away from a road build with drop bars. Not surprisingly, our male customers with very small hands andy who are shorter in stature almost never allow us to fit them to a build that isn't a drop bar road race setup. Even when they can't actually actuate the shifters effectively from the hoods or brake safely, in our estimation. We've lost customers refusing to position them on those builds when they wanted interrupter cyclocross brake levers to brake with and the traditional Ergolevers/STIs for show, and shifting. Which is okay with us.

The joke around the shop is that we call those guys "orthodontists" even though I'm not sure all of them really are. They just see their Dentist or Orthodontist colleague friends have those bikes and want that type as well. Its more of a funny archetype, I don't know why we picked Orthodontists to pick on, when we could have probably called them any doctor's medical specialty, or just lawyers.