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pharma APIs are a fun topic. it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds.
The same short sighted policies are to blame. A family friend had his education paid for by the state of Ohio as long as he practiced there for a certain time period. He ultimately started a family there and spent his whole career practicing in Ohio. My brother in law has around a half a million in debt, couldn’t choose where he lived thru secondary school and residency despite being a pretty good student and doing well above average at his internship. Honestly with his families financial background it would be hard to imagine him being able to commit to that path had he not met and married my sister. She has kept their heads above water for the incredibly long and expensive path to his career. And now that he is there the payout is going to be worth it for them. But it’s hard to imagine someone with less privelage and luck to be able to pull off what my brother in law has even if he and my sister have normal lower middle class backgrounds. Certainly people pull it off but it’s easy to see why we need more doctors than we are producing.
And that’s the real issue. Instead of a system that’s that’s truly based on meritocracy and training the next generation of doctors it is instead a system which bars reasonable entry for the vast majority of Americans and provides cheap labor to medical facilities who are failing to hire the doctors they need. All while they are expected to take on a half a million in debt and barely be able to work around their nearly decade long studies. And of course unlike pretty much all other devoloped nations he will be paying a large portion of that debt in profits to lenders.
And to answer the poster who quoted me earlier I would leave a cushy service industry gig for the right amount of money. And I need people with spending money to grow my restaurant’s business, give raises, hire more local kids, etc. The service industry anywhere is entirely dependent on the industry around it. And while pharma is going to keep the service industry in my area fairly strong regardless of what else is going on in the economy. That can’t be said for the millions of Main Street vacancies in this country cause the local plant closed. We need a strong manufacturing sector to create those ideal jobs. As well as to employ those who aren’t privileged enough to get them. This will be even more true as ai replaces a lot of the jobs where you sit at a computer and use your brain. And I think once Americans and corporations are forced to reinvest in American manufacturing even if only for the stuff that is bought and used here. Then we will have far more robust communities and overall economy. And unfortunately as it stands it seems one party is pretty committed to the status quo so long as people have access to expensive health care and a few hundred a month in food. And the other party seems committed to the status quo, removing those services, while making false promises about an economy which serves non college educated people who were born here. A perfect example would be that no taxes on tips somehow didn’t make it into the bbb. But it certainly seems like a nice promise if every week instead of a paycheck you get a slip that says how much taxes you owe and you can barely pay rent and your 10 old watches himself on Sunday mornings cause you can’t afford a sitter and his grandma is spending her retirement at Wendy’s behind the counter.
education costs for med school are one aspect, but there are others. malpractice insurances premiums is another.
And the financial reward for hyper-specialization of fancy doctors vs. minimal payout for GP's and pediatricians. If we can make $600k a year on heart or vascular surgery that's great, but heaven forbid we provide good consistent health care to that same patient for the first 55 years of their life. How is a GP ever supposed to pay off $400k in high interest student debt when they make $93k a year? Not saying it's impossible to pay that off, but if you're smart enough to be a GP you're damn sure smart enough to make 3x that money with 1/10 the debt working for the bros in Silicon Valley or Wall Street. It's crazy here.
There was a comment someone else made earlier in the thread that these fiscal policies seem to "bar reasonable entry for the vast majority of Americans." Almost like that's the point... hmmm... I wonder...
The energy race is about to get very interesting. China's scale in something to behold.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/30/climate/china-clean-energy-power.html
Sadly our aging leadership in the US seems to be doubling down on the last century's energy products rather than going after the next century's.
I, too, am ready for our future nuclear fusion overlords.
I can't recall if/when Alchemy Bikes was discussed in this thread, but apparently the company's owner is looking to sell:
https://bikerumor.com/want-to-own-a-bike-brand-alchemy-bikes-is-for-sale/
Wonder what will become of the brand.
I was in Golden this spring and stopped by their storefront, the sign was still in the window but it was empty inside. I dont think they've been doing much for the last several months.
This isn't throwing support behind the latest initiatives in the US, but who's to say that what's good for one country is good for the other. Both China and the US are playing to their strengths when it comes to energy supply and dependance. China relies on oil supplies outside its borders whereas the US does not. China is diversifying away from oil and gas because they need to, not because it's best for the world. The electrification of the western world is being driven by climate initiatives but it's recently been shown in North American politics that climate topics have dramatically fallen out of public discourse, driven by pressures of daily affordability to which the local energy industry can help with in a short term play.
There's lots broken in the western ways of doing things, but it's naive to think that turning off the oil and gas taps overnight is the best approach.
Curious if anyone has read Ezra Klein's new book Abundance. It has an interesting perspective on future of manufacturing, urban planning, green energy, etc..
Who's arguing to turn it off overnight? I have not seen anyone arguing for that. Many of the initiatives the current admin is dismantling were/are to move away from fossil fuels with long term investments in renewables or long term policy goals that incentivize a shift in energy policy and reliance.
It's more a response to the opinion in that NYT article. I agree that more needed to be done to diversify our energy sources, for both national security and environmental reasons. The current administration is rooted in the good ol'ways of things and it's concerning as a neighbor to watch it unfold.
O-chain is working out of the SRAM pits in La Thuile. Does this verify that SRAM did indeed buy them?
Yes
Doesn't happen overnight, but can happen in about 10 years when everything is done right. Qed France.
Just came here to publicly thank @jeff.brines for his analysis on Fox a few pages back. That post led me to doing some additional research and due diligence, which then led me to execute a sizable Buy order and realizing an 18% gain in very short time.
I would have never looked at Fox stock otherwise.
Cheers Jeff!
Bionicon is Bioni-gone
https://radmarkt.de/msa-strukturiert-um-aus-fuer-trenoli-und-bionicon/
The bigger news is Bionicon was still in business for the last decade. I had no idea
The tech rumours thread's discussion of the upcoming Fuel (E/M/L)X has got me thinking, and seeing as this thread is just industry talk and Jeff lessons now, this seemed like the appropriate place. Can any of you industry lifers think of another time where you could feasibly see three distinct generations of a particular model on the sales floor of a dealer at the same time? I know Trek is typically in a 2-3 model year development-launch cycle with their hotter stuff, but it seems wild I can walk into a dealer and cross-shop the Trek Fuel Ex Gen 5, 6 and 7 all at the same time.
When more and more stuff is done with robotics and AI, what kind of demand will there be for labor? Perhaps a good number of jobs are in fixing robots, or very specialized jobs that require a good deal of visual accuracy, wide range and generalized knowledge, as well as critical thinking?
We've been threatened with the death of working class and the birth of a leisure society before, but I can't help but think we are, slowly, getting to that point. The trouble is, when food is farmed by robots and nearly free to produce, who siphons off the profits? When homes are built by robots and nearly free, who makes a buck? When energy is nearly free and needs little maintenance for its distribution, who pays for those investments made decades prior?
There are dangers to a society with negative birth rate, notably the inability to care for an aging populace, but I do wonder what we'll do with ourselves in 50 years. Jobs in gerontology and healthcare will probably continue to be in demand, but everything else? I wouldn't be opposed to paying people to sterilize themselves. Especially considering that at least for men, there is some ability to reverse such procedures.
Until we pry some of that concentration of wealth away from those who hoard it, we're going to have some problems, and I suspect those problems will increase as labor demands decrease.
Trying to foster a love for fixing people (healthcare), food (farming), and things (mechanics) in my girls as much as their little brains will absorb.
Funny enough, I’m reviewing a Spire right now and noticed the same thing (though to a lesser degree). I bought the bike ~4 weeks ago, and it’s clearly a COVID-era holdover. You know what? I don’t care. The 38 GRIP2 is still a killer fork, the TRP brakes are nearly top-tier, and the frame holds its own.
On a similar note, the winner of NAEC was on an “outdated” Specialized Enduro. Point being: a lot of these generational changes are pretty muted in terms of real-world impact.
Interest rates are up, demand has softened, innovation just not what it was and the center of gravity in the sport (enduro being the thing) has shifted.
The only comparable moment I can think of is the post-Lance crash on the road side, right around the Great Financial Crisis. Different dynamics, sure, but probably a similar vibe in that part of the industry.
I don’t think the sky is falling, but growth will continue to stall, inventory turns will slow, and margins will keep compressing.
Time will tell.
In a similar vein, I still see some discounted brand new 2023 Norco Sights sitting on the floor of a not-so-small local shop (while I am looking for the newer high-pivot 160 MX version that they don't have), and it does make me wonder how some of these businesses are doing. Even the well-established, long term players in Western Canada are having a tough time moving inventory. The bottom has finally fallen out of the used bike market here, and there's a ton of very nice, barely ridden bikes are hitting the market at like 40-50% off retail, that were not there earlier this spring.
If you're brand agnostic, the deals are out there, and good luck selling the old clapped out ride.
I sit right at the intersection of AI and finance...somehow still broke, which feels like a moronic gift at this point... and I spend a lot of time thinking about where this is all going. I could write a long post about what the world might look like in 5–10 years, with only one certainty: I’d be wrong.
But three things feel worth sharing here.
First, automation displacing jobs isn’t new. It’s been accelerating since we learned to extract and transport fossil fuels...essentially doing more with fewer people. That trend hasn’t stopped. I saw a map today that reminded me how radically the US labor force has shifted, even though much of the country looks like it hasn’t changed since the '90s.
Second, technology often races ahead of culture and that cultural lag slows adoption and creates friction. That’s definitely happening now. A lot of white-collar work today is just filler: jobs for the sake of having jobs (this before all the AI stuff really starts impacting stuff). Yes, economic theory says that shouldn't persist in a competitive market, but it does. I suspect many of these “bullshit jobs” will hang on far longer than people expect.
Third, I agree the gap between the haves and have-nots will grow, and the middle class will continue to erode. But maybe Keynes was right: by 2030, we might only need to work 15 hours a week. The tragedy is, we might still be working 60, for a lot less of an inflated currency. But hey, we can probably buy "more" with "net less".
Posted on the other site.
YT Industries GmbH has initiated a legal restructuring process under German law, entering into self-administration to secure the company's future.
- "despite strong global growth and a loyal customer base", it has been "severely impacted by the global discounting battle in the bike industry, problems with suppliers and uncertainty in the US market related to tariff policies." YT Industries said it was "compelled" to enter legal restructuring proceedings under self-administration as the company has "no further funding available under the current structure."
(COMMENTS. TURNED. OFF.)
YT TLDR;
They took on PE at the peak of the bubble, struggles ensued when the good times stopped rolling. Founder guy in the vid probably cashed out (uninformed speculation). Maybe they'll pull a Kona.
Sure does sound like the goal is to get the PE investor(s) off the cap table at a significant discount.
A buddy at work just bought a full carbon Jeffsy with ultimate level RS suspension and GX level components for $2600 during a flash sale.
No way YT is making any profit on stuff like that… guess it’s the only way to move the inventory. Makes sense now
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