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Fox Factory's Results and My Take --> https://jeffbrines.substack.com/p/fox-factory-q3-earnings-miss-expectations
TL;DR, results missed the mark, guidance lowered, and bikes & baseball bats were to blame. Stock trading down (~20%) this am.
EDIT: Figured I'd drop a few more notes here since I have time. The big thing the market is hung-up on is forward looking guidance being lowered and 2026 commentary being cautious.
Ultimately, their results are a reflection of everything we've been talking about in this thread through the year. While the industry will be just fine big picture, near term there aren't really any "growth opportunities", especially for a company as big as Fox. OEMs have gotten significantly smarter and more conservative with how they are ordering and it appears my predictions around buying in 2026 might ring true - fewer products at a higher price point.
Markets don't like stories of "no/slow growth" which appears most likely for Fox. They've hit their "total serviceable market", at least for the near term, and the market is repricing the stock accordingly.
Maybe the pendulum swings too far toward "conservativism", only time will tell.
There was a Pinkbike podcast with Clint and Dustin shortly after the acquisition and Clint said Dustin was on the short list of people who could take over the CEO position.. Congrats Dustin!
Don't forget, this is brought to you by the same people as the Design & Innovation Awards, the self-proclaimed "Oscar of the Bike & Outdoor Industry." A judged contest that is free to enter, but 3,450 Euro (plus VAT) to claim if you are the lucky recipient of the precious award. Need more cash, just add more categories for brands to enter, and then select (extort) winning products most likely to pay the ransom.
"The Bentonville of Mountain Bike Media"
Not sure it means anything, but for about a week or so now RCZ (by the looks of it a OEM gear liquidation store that @Karabuka mentioned a while ago) is selling A LOT of yeti stuff - frames and build kits and complete bikes. And we're not talking one or two models ready for a refresh, it's everything from ARCs, SB120s to SB165s. And all frame sizes and all levels of build kits.
Their off road products always seemed kindof strange to me. It seems like with the growth of overlanding, there is opportunity for more aftermarket sales to compete with the more mid-tier vendors like OME/Dobinsons/etc. Fox seems focused on providing to OEMs instead, though, and only their top tier builds, which prices a lot of people out especially when you consider the combined cost of buying a vehicle equipped with it and equipping it for actual overlanding/off road use.
Ohlins does the same thing in the 'adventure' space, but their R&T series supports a lot more vehicles aftermarket. It seems like missed opportunity to me esp in a time when people aren't buying new vehicles at the same pace anymore but people are still maintaining and equipping older trucks/off road vehicles.
Reading suspension questions in 4x4 groups makes your head hurt too. If I were Fox, I'd rather offer a full kit dialed to the spring rates on a known vehicle. In the truck/jeep/side by side world, everyone slaps this or that on this or that end & rarely dumps big money into a completely dialed damper set with correctly matched springs/coils for that vehicle. And then as soon as they buy it, they either slam a ton of weight on/in the vehicle or pull a ton off.
No doubt there is a market for used e-bikes, both in the US and Europe, but this seems like a high valuation (~$400 million). Is this not just another Pros Closet, but with way more shipping issues due to batteries?
NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Upway, the global leader in professionally refurbished e-bikes, today announced the closing of its $60 million Series C funding round, led by A.P. Moller with participation from U.S.-based Galvanize and Ora Global, and continued support from Sequoia Capital and other global investors. This new round brings total funding to over $125 million since its founding in 2021 and marks a new stage in Upway's mission: giving e-bikes a second life and riders a first choice. With this funding, Upway is doubling down on U.S. growth, expanding operations, creating jobs, and building the backbone for circular mobility.
Makes me wish mtb had a Jake Phelps type character keeping the culture
We could only be so lucky!
Bizutch standing right here waiting for permission to go off on a rant...
"Mountain biking doesn't owe you shit... Mountain biking owes you a front tire washout right before a rock garden. YOU OWE MOUNTAIN BIKING."
Not looking so good over at Rad Power
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/10/rad-power-bikes-faces-shutdown-in-january-without-new-funding/
The company’s leadership is “still fighting to find ways to continue,” and “the cessation of Rad’s operations is not a forgone conclusion,” according to the email, which was sent by Rad Power’s “people team.” Rad Power employees were told there had been a “very promising” option to keep the company alive that “appeared to be likely to close,” but the deal — which was not specified in the email — “did not come to fruition.”
I think we've seen that venture capital in general has become increasingly desperate over the last several years
shit bikes with shit parts and shit chinese hub motors don‘t sell? more news at 11
Previously working at a shop, you just described the majority of the ebikes that roll through the door.. Most of the the time they are leaving pissed off because you have no source for getting whatever part of the electronics that fried itself..
I often try to put myself in a VC’s shoes to understand whatever the thesis may be, but boy...we are really reaching here. Am I missing something? As others have pointed out, the model isn’t fundamentally different from The Pro’s Closet, which just narrowly thwarted bankruptcy.
What’s even stranger is looking at the cap table, Galvanize is a credible firm, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more respected VC than Sequoia (though I'm guessing they invested during the COVID "everyone gets VC money" boom). AP Moller is European, and I don't mean this disparagingly, but euro vc is its own flavor of capital management so...whatever. Anyone is welcome to take a look at the public pitchbook profile, but considering how new the company is (seed round in 2022) and employee count (180) and the fact none of us have heard of it...it feels very....odd. https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/484103-80#comparisons
As to deal quality and private fund supply, here is a fun fact: There was roughly $1.5T in private equity globally in 2010; today that number is closer to $10T. Venture capital followed a similar path, from $600B in 2010 to about $3.3T in 2025. Also, fun fact, when you take VC + PE firm count, you end up with more globally than there are McDonalds. I'm not making this up.
The reality is, there just aren’t that many great deals out there for all that capital to chase, whether in PE or VC.
All of which is to say: maybe I was wrong. Maybe we’ll keep seeing private-fund interest in the bicycle industry for years to come, especially when someone manages to spin “bikes” plus “technology” into a compelling story. (says the guy going into an investor meeting shortly for a "bike adjacent" tech company 🤞)
EDIT: I just had a buddy point out this might be a "climate tech" type of play for these firms which does change the math a bit.
I must have skip read something. No trigger...
YT's on Jenson...
https://www.jensonusa.com/mountain-bikes?brand=YT - XXL only but still.
we sometimes get these but they are turned away at the door, not touching chinese motors.
Maybe I don’t fully understand what you mean by “which just narrowly thwarted bankruptcy” but the original The Pros Closet was fully liquidated with all assets sold off and the current incarnation relaunching having purchased the IP. Quoting below from the Bicycle Retailer story. It may be a little semantic but I think the lesson of the original business cratering under the weight of outsized expectations and questionable investment should not be forgotten.
“The retailer closed in October after 18 years in business and it assets were assigned to a California ABC (Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors) organization. After selling its inventory and facility assets at auction, Elshair Companies, a private investment firm, acquired TPC’s digital assetsincluding its trademarks, website, software and customer database”
Jake Phelps was a horrible person.
Citations? Not arguing, I'm curious because I've only heard the hagiography version and I'm curious about the other side of the story.
Not saying I want Jake Phelps exacrly, just someone willing to stand up against the corporate nonsense that people try to push in.
I don't know all the details of how he lived his life, but I believe that there are some people who don't like him because of how he tried to keep skateboarding dangerous, encouraging people to keep trying even after they've hurt themselves, take excessive risks, things like that. Someone else can add to this, but I won't derail the thread any further.
People are complex, and we often don’t know the full story, but I also feel like if a person was that bad it generally comes out eventually. It seems like for the most part Phelps is/was regarded highly within skateboarding both in life and death.
Someone would’ve made a documentary by now if he was a ‘horrible’ person I would think.
I think for those not as in tune with skateboarding they're kinda missing... The context. Phelps is the type of asshole that people tend to refer as "our asshole". He was not 'nice' and he was never attempting to mislead people into thinking so. Quite the opposite. He made it as known as possible that he is polarizing, and that skateboarding itself is polarizing. THAT SAID... He wasn't quite 'going out of his way' to specifically ruin someone's day. He is not evil.
He is basically the end game level of core lord. The absolute apotheosis of lot lizard.
He's like that uncle who you KNOW is not living a healthy life, is kinda rude, half your family is okay with him the other half aren't... But all you know as a naive kid is that one time you did a kickflip and he said 'fuck yea, man' and gave you a fist bump with a hand that was holding both a coors light and a cigarette.
Basically, he was a living legend. He was "one of God's prototypes" as Hunter S Thompson would say... "Too weird to live. And too rare to die."
Sadly he did pass away. Of an overdose. He lived 'that' life right up until the end. The corest of the lords. Chaotic neutral, in DnD terms...
You’re right, I should have been more precise with my wording. The Pro’s Closet didn’t technically file for bankruptcy (as far as I know), but by all practical measures, it was in that territory (likely Chapter 7 rather than 13). I also forgot they raised over $90M, which makes the whole story even more illustrative.
Not that it matters, and its total semantics, but the reason I phrased it that way is because the company still exists in nearly the same form, same region (Boulder/Northern Front Range), many of the same employees, and even the same website. It’s not the same company in a legal sense, but we’re bordering on a Ship of Theseus situation.
The larger point, which I think we both agree on, is that these types of models aren’t particularly novel or likely that profitable and they almost certainly aren't venture backable. At the end of the day, it’s a used-car dealership model with a fancy inspection checklist and a brand veneer. Maybe there are a bunch of VCs who made out like bandits from Carvana or something...but thats the only analog here, and it really doesn't check out.
Sorry, last derailment. BUT, that was pretty fantastic writing @LePigPen. I wish I could express that masterfully in written words. Haha.
"end level core lord"
Who is making tee shirts? Count me in.
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