Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
You might find this podcast enlightening regarding Kenstone, Haro, etc...:
Straight from the horses mouth. Pole has no desire or intention to make those customers whole or to perform an act of good faith. The AI response is the icing on a very delicious cake for me here.
That sucks for those people... Unfortunately, their only recourse who be to file with the court handling the bankruptcy, but the amount they would receive would be pennies on the dollar..
To me, it seems like an obvious PR move and show of good faith to say hey if you ordered a Pole and never got it we’ll hook you up with a bike. How else will you convince people to give you their money again?
I could see a larger company potentially trying to do that..I don't see that happening here.
Based on what's happening with CSS/Forge+Bond, I wouldn't be surprised if someone else does these people a solid. I mean, giving away 30 bikes at what, about 50 to maaaaaaaybe 70 % MSRP is a fairly cheap marketing campaign with A LOT of effect. And just to reach those 30 people you need to publish it on all the known sites just to get across and at the same time it will get across to all other people that are interested in this sport.
(FWIW, if someone does this based off of this post, I want in on the deal even though I never bought a Pole
)
Outside Inc acquires Inntopia (some booking and lodging trends software brand) in their bid to be "the amazon prime of the outdoors." this is the highlight paragraph from the the colorado sun article.
The acquisition of Inntopia grows Outside to about 450 employees, up from 370. It also led to 20 layoffs, most of them editors and employees of Outside magazine. It was the third round of layoffs for Outside in five years. Thurston has now shed every employee at the magazine who was there before he bought the storied publication in 2021.
https://coloradosun.com/2025/02/13/outsider-20250213/
more from the article (positive earnings as a high goal seems like a really solid game plan lol)
This year, Thurston said, the company’s highest goal is to not only grow revenue, but have positive earnings and cash flow.
“I cannot emphasize how much we need to put this profitability in our position,” he said.
and then (hopefully it's not "die", but...)
There are three outcomes when you borrow a bunch of money from outside investors, Thurston said. You go bust, you sell to a competitor or you go public and sell shares on the open market. There are few media companies that are capable of spending more than $150 million for Outside Inc.’s assets. So Thurston is in a do-or-die scenario, with 25 legacy brands and 450 livelihoods on the line.
“I keep spending revenue from my existing companies to buy more companies, and I can’t figure out why my existing companies aren’t profitable yet.” 🤔 tough question.
Maybe another round of editor and content creator layoffs will help Outside mag finally realize its hidden potential.
Or maybe he's realizing that a print magazine in the digital era is a tough deal to make profitable..
Oh it's better than that... he's burning venture dollars in the hopes that combining these companies will drive synergies 🤣 and unlock profitability that would be unachievable by any one company alone.
Feels like the Ticketmaster playbook to me... buy absolutely everything in order to create a monopoly, control prices, limit competition, etc.
Late stage American capitalism. Why design, innovate, or disrupt when you can own and do nothing?
AI generated content?
If there's one thing I know about readers and viewers today, it's that they are CRAVING more AI-generated content. Not getting enough of it yet. Can't get enough. Foaming at the mouth for more AI-generated content, in fact. Gobbling it up.
Coming to a website soon... Ai generated bike reviews...
Can't tell if sarcasm or real?
I like Large Language Models for some things (there's a moment coming when the whole business of software development is going to be upended which is going to be very interesting...) but for other things much less so.
It was the thickest sarcasm I could lay down
I don't know if this was mentioned before, but Guardian bikes, that kids bike manufacturer that makes those really weird brakes that do the front and rear with one lever and cable, are pushing for bikes to have a 50% tarrif in the US.
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/10/08/peopleforbikes-urges-industry-action-guardian-calls-%E2%80%98crushing%E2%80%99-increased
We should do what we can to get them to knock off the BS, I've sent an email about it personally. This would seriously wreck the bike market in the US, even for them.
Didn't Gaurdian get some government loan or grant not too long ago? Use the government money to offset their cost increases from the tariffs they are pushing for? Especially since a bulk of the parts they use are coming from overseas...
Just saw this..
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/international/2025/10/20/private-equity…
Are they any success stories of a private equity firm coming in and improving a bike brand?
Couple things...
I think the acquisition of Whyte by Causeway Capital is the first PE deal we've seen in years. Again, someone check me if I'm wrong, but maybe the ice has thawed.
@PisgahGnar - to your question...
First, PE and VC are not the same. I know I keep beating this drum, but VC aims at backing startups in high growth industries with the goal they will IPO or get bought for billions of dollars (I'm generalizing). PE invests in private companies that are generally mature with the goal of selling them in a relatively short amount of time for more money (sub 10 years), often using leverage as part of the deal. On a small scale this can look like buying a bunch of HVAC companies, bundling them together, "finding cost/ops synergies" and then selling the portfolio to another PE firm or a strategic buyer. On the bigger side of things it can look like Jared Kushner's firm taking publicly traded EA private for $55B. Goal here would be to do something special (or ride some secular wave), and then re-IPO the company (likely) at a higher amount.
PE = common in the bike industry
VC = not common, and if you hear about it, bullshit alarms ought to go off. The exception here is "bike adjacent", like a piece of software that is kind of in the bike industry but not exclusive to the bike industry.
Assuming you meant PE not VC, the answer is yes. Fox Factory and SRAM are two success stories. More recently you could argue Pinarello and Vittoria haven't been all bad.
Thanks! And yes, meant PE. I wrote VC because I was reading a different article moments earlier, edited to PE but probably not before you saw it.
I didn't realize Whyte is the first acquisition in a while. I guess we've just been talking more about the results of those deals recently, and as in most "news" the negatives are discussed more than the positives.
On the Pole customers not getting their bikes, I'd consider that a life saving loss. Riding a Pole can result in a visit to the E.R. when the catastrophic frame failure unavoidably occurs.
Maybe a bit of gossip, but as an example of how wide ranging the YT fallout is, I was watching Brian Cahal's recap of Rampage and when discussing the YT frame failure he mentioned that YT still owes him a travel invoice which probably comes from when he was invited to test the new decoy at their press camp.
The Whyte deal could make sense, unlike some of the more recent examples. They're buying at the bottom, not chasing a bubble. They probably didn't pay much and may have saved a company starved for cash (who knows).
Another bike park data point. Snowshoe is selling the 2026 season pass for the same price as the 2025 pass. It had gone up every year before this. Crowds are for sure thinner. Maybe things have stabilized there post COVID.
A bright note is that the crew revamped/reworked more trail mileage this year than the three years before this put together.
Thredbo's 2025/26 summer season pass is $759, up from $499 in 2020/21. Exactly twice inflation.
Holy smokes. Snowshoe is $289
FYI $759 AUD is $494 USD, which is still a crazy amount for a chairlift with basically one DH trail, but a little bit closer to earth than $759 USD.
and this is exactly why AI is gonna be an issue lol
if people can't detect that sarcasm we are hopeless in detecting how AI can be used to manipulate us. easily, quickly, and en masse
Post a reply to: The Bikeconomics (Mega)Thread