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I hope Kona makes it, but the old-new ownership needs to bring in some fresh energy. They weren't exactly killing it after Mandell left. Kona, WTF Happened?
Kona should revive the spirit of the Process 111 in a 127. Norco weirdly sold out the Optic to the high pivot gods, so there's a wide open opportunity. Bring back a legend.
I love that its a TeamRobot article
I would kill to have my name tangibly attached to the Process, Honzo, Operator, and Entourage models. What a legendary impact on a company. Def not gonna say Kona nosedived in 2016 and on but interesting to see where things went and how they changed after Chris' departure.
Bring the stab back, dump that hideous rocker on the operator. Get Barel an MZ on board, and it wont matter if you win any race. You'll have SOME attention.
Bourdon wouldnt hurt either!
Are you me? For real I'd line up for a 111 if they brought it back.
Overall this is awesome news. They did a lot of rad things locally and internationally. Glad to see them back under good management again. Hope it works out!
That's just the thing, innit? If somebody wants a mid travel 29er trail bike with 435mm chainstays and 65 degree headtube and yada yada they are SPOILED for choice. So I don't see why they should go to battle in that market so hard, particularly if their bikes have little to no innovation.
So may as well double down on the 'fun' aspect of Kona and pump out solid 275er and MX builds with 425-430mm chainstays and slightly shorter wheelbases with conservative geo. Or in other words, whatever the rest of the industry isn't doing. Cuz I don't think it's a good idea to go to battle with YT or Polygon or Santa Cruz or Specialized.
And of course awesome bikes like the Element and Spur only come in pricey carbon builds. So yeah, no better time imo to bring back a well specced alloy 111 type build. Maybe it kinda replaces the alloy Hei Hei build but... That thing kinda needs replacing anyway tbh.
Seriosly, I broke a head tube off on trestle dh nothing….no support what so ever. Kona should have died ages ago. Long live YT and all the good consumer direct brands. the lbs can kick rocks. After you manage work at and live the lbs it’s really not that cool. A bunch of 20 something’s who think there so cool… and always the old creepy culty leader guy who is a supposed local pro until you find out it’s all lies lol. Do your own work save your money. A lot of weird people out there still sipping the Kona koolaid. A broken back and a real messed up summer was all I needed to never buy one Again.
Most people don't have the space, tools, knowledge and will to work on their own stuff. Hell, it took me from December to early May to put together my old frame to put it up for sale besides all the other things happening in life.
Dear Kona-
120mm rear travel, with a long stroke (50+mm) shock.
130mm fork.
Normal reach lengths (450 medium, 470 large).
64 head angle with flippable cup for 63 or 65.
Chain stays longer than 435, please!
77ish seat tube angle.
Mixed wheel compatibility.
Plenty of post insertion depth.
External cable routing for brake.
Linkage driven single pivot.
Thank you.
Who shit in your Wheaties this morning?
Hear me out, what if it's a fire hose full of mojitos?!?!?!
I do agree though. Spent a good while on Kona's and things fell off hard near the end of the teens. Their geo got real weird, specs got bad and they stopped working on the operator. I feel like if they can hit the 2014-2016 kona lineup again they have a good shot.
I feel attacked as the older cult guy
But seriously, the amount of direct to consumer stuff that I deal with in the shop because they have zero support is wild and the people who buy the d2C stuff are always scrambling to figure out how to get their stuff fixed during the busiest part of the season at shops hoping one doesn't have a 3 week wait for service in May, while my shops customers get get slid into our schedule as soon as we can fit them, even if I have to stay late to get them on the road.
I know you are getting some hate with the downvotes however, some people need to take a serious look at what companies/LBS are offering - Personally 1 outta 3 local shops is damn good, if you buy a bike off them They will ensure to always make right and those instances jump you infront of the casual 'service que' - it's just a shame they only really sell scott but after some discussion they are looking to sell trek.
Some brands like Canyon have their service centre's For e.g Australia is Aus & NZ, They are a phone call away and will do right, Live stock of warranty frames or parts directly from germany to your door step AND will pay to put the bike back together.(this is 1 way canyon still work with LBS's)
Canyon is painful though, their CS for us is so good but every frame ive owned of their's has needed replaced atleast once.
Giant NZ who only support through LBS is Horrendous, You submit a claim Through the LBS, Giant take a week to find any and every reason to deny warranty(like swapping from Centrelock to 6 bolt wheels, yes this is a real thing)
then when you threaten using the consumers Act NZ they act like They are the best and say warranty accepted BUUUT then they say "sorry, Warranty frames could be 4-8 months when anther production run is"
I had a similar experience when a reign frame was built wrong, argued, finaly accepted, waited 7 months, frame turned up damaged(looked like frame had been ridden)
Merida NZ has been good to me despite selling through LBS, can contact them on FB/insta and get stuff resolved.
P.s Merida bikes are the nicest Quality stuff i've come across and ive had pretty much everything.
Wiggle bought for pennies.
https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com/general/news/wiggle-was-sold-for-p…
CRC/Wiggle bought for only 3 million!!
In 2011, Wiggle was purchased by Bridgepoint, a private equity firm, for £180 million.
Wiggle merged with Chain Reaction Cycles in 2016 under the new company of Wiggle CRC, which was sold to German conglomerate Signa Sports United, in an acquisition valued at $645 million.
Wiggle was sold for £3 million to Frasers Group in February.
This makes me wonder if the original Kona owners were able to buy back Kona for less than $1 million. I would assume that CRC is worth more and it seemed like Kent was trying to fire sale Kona off
to be fair, 3m pounds is $3.8m USD, so not THAT cheap (sarcasm).
next brand to to go under, do we all commit to a crowd-fund to buy it? (also sarcasm, but wow from from 180m to 3m is incredible.
I think the latest purchase was just IP – so just the brand names, domains, etc. Whereas earlier purchases were for the whole business.
But yeah, I think Signa bought it for an ungodly amount of money, operated at a loss for the last few years, and sold it for pennies.
I was looking online at used Sprinter vans recently and had a chuckle when the Vitus demo van popped up.
Wiggle Bought CRC from the Watson family for £62million, about $90million at the time. The people at Signa must have been smoking everything to pay that much for Chiggle. No wonder they went bust in 12 months.
Hahah - can you imagine a crowd funded buyout from here - we can't even agree on damping vs dampening...
(Joking - I know we can really...)
Roskopp joins Special Ed.
Who had that on their bike industry apocalypse bingo card?
Other strange news, Sinyard was spotted at the local Norco factory store here on the Shore. Specialized to buy Norco?
Pinkbike? The site from which the full news was learned??
Sure - Specialized is buying Norco. ...more than likely - if anything just for teh interwebz - (insert last-name-only) from Norco may have peered over the fence at how Specialized / Merida concept functions for what it is - something off of mainland China and away from compaction of Chinese grey-market goodies.
...but nah... tossing around strangers last names w/ half baked ideas seems much more plausible.
The Sinyard Norco thing was a joke. The Norco North Shore shop posted a photo of Sinyard visiting the shop. Kinda odd that Sinyard would be out visiting local shops here on the Shore, but who knows.
My Cat's name is Mittens.
Not one I would have seen coming, but it makes sense for Specialized.. Hire him and he doesn't end up with the competition..
I remember hearing him talk of some “new ebike technology” a year or so ago after he left SC. Hmm 🧐
Edit: found it. “As far as bike-related things, yeah, there are a few projects I'm working on. I can't say anything at this point but if we get what we need to get done in the next few months, it'll be a few years, or it should be a little less than that before it would come out but it's a game changer. I'll leave it at that.” -Rob
https://m.pinkbike.com/news/rob-roskopp-on-skateboarding-the-syndicate-…
A Levy interview 😢
I wonder if the (seemingly) acrimonious split from Pon played into it in any way...
My speculation would be the ebike thing may have stalled out.. I'm don't know if how things ended with Pon played into this, but with other things in that interview, I'm guessing that he wasn't ready to just retire and when this opportunity came up to still be involved, but not necessarily on a day to day level, he took it..
Yall he is in an advisory role... aka get's to ride all the stuff, tell folks they dumb for XYZ, all while taking home a check. This is what people do once they sell their company. Both Big S and Rob are smart and this makes a ton of sense.
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