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It's tough because they've had major sales for YEARS at that point. They're almost never not on sale. But they ONE HUNDRED PERCENT ran as big a sale as possible right before ripping the rug out from people, knowing full well they were locking customers into purgatory.
Trouble brewing would have been obvious and they should have slowed sales if anything if they were worried about the well being of their customers. But they were more concerned about setting themselves up in the best possible way to survive.
But, ultimately, yes we bought YT bikes in December and got them in January. For similar prices to what was being displayed during the flash sale. I think the extra 'marketing' of it to seemingly bait as many people into it is the problem. Not so much the having a sale at all part. From what I recall they REALLY pushed the flash sale on socials. Shame...
And who was CEO when all that happened? lol
Seriously let him buy it back and fund it or whatever he wants... But somebody take the reins from this guy.
"My guess is they were having discussions about the state of the company and Ardian's continued financing long before the flash sale or Ardian's final decision."
I'd not be surprised if Ardian hadn't put a "we want to see $X by the end of the quarter to show you can actually sell" target in place and the flash sale was the last ditch attempt to do that - regardless of profitability.
Shoutout to @chriskief for all the work above - HUGE! Greatly appreciate it.
CSS Composites is done:
https://escapecollective.com/us-thermoplastic-carbon-manufacturer-css-composites-is-shutting-down/
They are the guys who made the thermoplastic carbon wheels for Revel, Chris King, etc, as well as under their own name Forge + Bond.
would upvote you 100times if i could, mirrors my thoughts on that whole topic exactly
Well that sucks. Not to kick someone while they're down, but a local "pro" was an ambassador for them and rode the Forge and Bond wheels for enduro. He had significant issues at multiple races (catastrophic failures).
I wonder if Revel going under then coming back left them with a big hole in the balance sheet.
I'm going to guess more along the line of the abundance of cheaper and lighter options currently out there on the bike side... As far as the whole company shutting down, maybe some big contract work didn't happen?
Their selling point was that they're kinda recyclable and less of an environmental mess than resin-carbon. Weight somewhere between carbon and fully recyclable (and cheaper) aluminum, so it was a tough sell.
Ebikes are now the market driver, and I suspect all carbon rim offerings are going to have an uphill battle. Saving 100 grams per wheel isn't as compelling on an ebike, and you already dropped so much $$ that upgrading wheels will be less appealing.
Plus, saving 100g per wheel on a 50lbs ebike isn't as dramatic compared to a normal mountain bike..
I'm thinking that bicycle parts weren't their bread and butter..
I was doing alot of research on F+B and CSS this past week or two, being intrested in some carbon wheels. I was never able to figure out what the hell else CSS actually made other than bike parts, 99% of which was rims.
Sad to see them go. Its been real tough for the "alternative" carbon brands ever since COVID. GG and now CSS. Seems like WeAreOne was about to tank too before they got bought out by I9. Sucks to see innovators have to close their doors
Great idea but unfortunately probably 5-10 years too late. Too many competitors and unfortunately most people just don’t care about made in us anymore.
This quote from the PB article corroborates what I vaguely remembered (I had thought Revel stopped making wheels a while back):
"Revel stopped producing wheels with CSS a few years ago. When we launched our first wheels with them, they were incredible to work with and the wheels made a big splash in the industry. Over time, things changed, and we decided to focus solely on developing new bikes instead of wheels. Since reacquiring Revel a few months ago, we’ve seen how challenging warranty service with CSS has become for our customers, and now we understand why. We only learned of the closure yesterday from CSS’s lawyers, and I feel incredibly bad for all the employees, vendors, and riders impacted. We’re committed to exploring every option we can to support riders who purchased CSS-made wheels and may need warranty replacements in the future."—Adam Miller, Revel
It's here nor there at this point other than to say it doesn't sound like the Revel stuff was the only missing financial piece.
Can someone explain how the business model for carbon wheels ever worked? I buy a wheelset for $1.5k and it has a lifetime warranty. I swap them from bike to bike indefinitely because I've invested a good chunk of money in the hoops. I am never a repeat customer unless I take up the n+1 bike life, or go mullet /full 29 (feel like most people know which rear wheel size want on this front at this moment in history) Said, carbon wheels company now has to spend tons on marketing to try and court new customers for almost every single sale.
As if this wasn't bad enough this product is also a niche of a niche of a niche as many riders will never even consider carbon wheels. I'm not a carbon wheels hater I just genuinely have no idea how it could work as a pure-play business that's not tacked on to another business with "synergies" like Reserve and Santa Cruz.
I think you are spot on in your assessment. Ever since COVID the "warranty wars" have kicked way off with every carbon hoop needing to have "lifetime" warranties to sell because someone started offering said lifetime warrnaty (I wonder who did it first? Reserves? ENVE? I forget). Now you even see aluminum hoops with lifetime. Which if we are honest with ourselves, carbon as a material, and wheels in general, it just doesn't make sense.
These cost have to be much easier to absorb for big diverse companies like Santa Cruz or Race Face who are making money on so many other products whereas singular wheel focused companies like F+B or WeAreOne are essentially only making money on hoops. Which clearly are eventually going to break in many if not most use cases haha
I always assumed a big part of the higher price of carbon wheels was the built in warranty.
Lifetime warranties are a horrible idea even if people like me loooooove them. I ride stuff for a long time, and anything (not just rims) that's not a total boat anchor will eventually break. I've literally never had a rear rim that I didn't eventually ruin, and I'm fine with that. I don't want an insanely expensive 700g carbon rim that will actually last a lifetime and not tank the company with warranty claims. I'd rather run an EX 511 equivalent rear at 550g-ish and I'll lace a new one over when needed.
Sometimes pointy rocks are in landings - rims are gonna break. I want bike companies to survive. Let's get rid of lifetime warranty and go to an honest 5-year as the absolute max.
Do you think lifetime warranty killed that company? My assumption would be no, unless they were just monumentally stupid and didn't do sufficient forecasting to properly bake the cost of running the program into the cost of the rim. Personally, there's two way more obvious things to point at:
1. general bike market conditions
2. the difficulty of running an American manufacturing company in the current tariff/regulatory bizzarro world going on down there.
Edit: another company falling before the deadline!
I'd bet that it's a lot of #2. Huge tariff on raw carbon can't help out in the current market.
I don’t know a single person who was running those rims. I’m sure they are out there but I tend to assume the issue was lack of business.
I know Stan’s has said they don’t manufacture in the us not because it wasn’t possible from a price feasibility standpoint. But that the vast majority of their rims are oem. And since the vast majority of bikes/wheels are built up overseas it makes more sense to make them there and ship aftermarket rims here then make them here and ship oem rims there.
I was quite interested in the Chris king wheelset. Big fan of that company’s vibes. Hopefully they can find a new supplier.
Here's my take.. The industry screwed itself with the lifetime warranty. If a warranty covers manufacturering and/or material defects, should ot take 5 years to "discover" the defects? Should landing on a sharp pointer rock be considered a defect? Should anything a consumer breaks be assumed to be a defective product?
They featured a photo of one of their athletes with broken product ON THEIR WEBSITE...no context.
I'm guessing it was the web guy's last day?
Pretty sure that I’ve experienced this same argument with regard to fly rods 20 years ago 😂
I'm not a weight weenie, I like stuff that doesn't break unless I did something really wrong, and this is a bit off topic, but . . .
if we're making a list of problems with lifetime warranties, we should probably also add weight to the list. One of the ways you make lifetime warranties work financially is to overbuild to drive the warranty rate as low as possible.
An interesting question is whether a lifetime, original-owner warranty or a 5-year, transferable warranty would create more exposure for the manufacturer. I think I'd bet on the latter. I'd even wonder how much difference in exposure there is between nontransferable lifetime and 5-year?
Honestly. I think a lot of manufacturers are using the warranty for marketing purposes now.. Especially in the carbon wheel market, where if you don't offer some sort of free replacement program, your wheels had better be really inexpensive..
The overalls are the only context we need
Let's be real though, lots of high end sales involve carbon wheels, and lots of people go after them thinking carbon wheels will make them better but they still ride blue flow trails and the wheel are being extremely under ridden, as well as road bikes. The amount of people smashing carbon rims multiple times vs the number of people that they'll last forever due to their riding level, is hugely Sku's to the rich blue trail riders that are more likely to have a blown up freehub body than a damaged rim. I've been pounding on a set of Roval Traverse XD's with zero issues for two seasons now and I'm blown away as I can rarely keep alloy rims round for 6 months. But I cooked the bearings in 4 months. I see more hubs come through our shop with issues on carbon wheels than the rims itself, 10 to 1 if not more.
I think it's easy to keep a lifetime warranty if they're really only replacing ~5% (absolutely a guess based on what I see where I work ) of the products they have lifetime warranties on them, and that's built into the cost of all the wheel sets they make, both road and MTB.
CSS Composites > Future Comp > Christensen Arms > Ancor Capital
Future Comp founder and CEO are Christensens. Christensen Arms was acquired by Ancor in 2019. Did Roland just use some of the funds from selling his firearms company to start a new project? I don't know, but if that was the case, then it may not make sense to keep sinking his own cash in. If Future/CSS were owned under CA, then maybe Ancor had enough of the bike industry.
Re CCS/F&B, I'd have to think that a supplier becoming a competitor is not a good model to implement. Getting bougie or big brands to buy more of your goods has a limit due to their needs and obv a co needs to sell more to cover their costs, but I'm left wondering if they struck a nerve with some of the co's they were supplying to with that move resulting in fewer sales overall.
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