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C'mon. I'm guessing that you are a repeat, long-term customer. Shops will always make things work for someone like that. I know this, because that's my demographic. If a cheapskate walks in a shop, who clearly has made it his modus-operandi to cut-out bikes shops from everything he buys, and wants you to spend two hours sourcing some part for a 26" MTB, that you can't even get tires for, that guy doesn't get your free labor to "figure it out" for his cheap-ass.
I take most of my bikes to the local shop for repairs. Probably 2-3k per year. The only thing I don't use that shop for is my ebike, which is not a brand they sell. I don't ask them, I just assume that the on-brand shop knows a lot more about it. And they're cool too--but just 5 minutes farther away.
And I'm cheap too, about parts / bikes. I regularly buy tires, drivetrains, grips, and pretty much all clothing online. I buy lightly-used bikes (dirt-jumper, enduro bike, ebike) from...the facebook marketplace or...the other site, slightly damaged mtbs (my 5010 was a new scratch-dent that I found online). Recently, I splurged and bought a DH (Norco shore) from the locals lately, that was on sale. The sales-kid's eyes bulged because I think that they'd basically accepted that I'd never buy a new bike from them!
Point being: shops will work with you. If they know you, you spend money with them (even if you don't buy bikes from them), and respect them.
Interesting article in the economist today (paywall so not linked) talking about the continuing rise of commuter ebikes as a supplement to (or Infact replacing) a second family car.
Brands such as Tern or Urban Arrow are apparently selling much better than the general market.
Anything that makes it into even slightly more mainstream media is worth noting.
If I didn't live somewhere where it's -30C on occasion I'd certainly be considering one considerably more than a e-mtb. My anecdotal observation is that I'm in the minority commuting on a human powered bike these days.
I think Southern California accounts for ~90% of ebikes as commuter/family/etc use.
It's legitimately getting to the point where... We could use full on 'bikeways' for bicycles traveling at higher speeds than average joes on a beach cruiser but much slower than a motorcycle on a highway.
Bring back the OG Pasadena Cycleway! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Cycleway
(Especially with how poor the existing cycling infrastructure is... Now would be a good time to create separated paths if it gets the ebikes away from cars/pedestrians.)
Sorry, obligatory 'traffic in LA' rant.
Its a good point though. Luckily I don't live in Seattle anymore, but a bike was way better at commuting then a car. Never had an ebike, but I coulda knocked off even more time off the commute. As it stands, I was already running into issues with ebikes passing at hyperspeed on narrow bike lanes in 2018. Cities really just need to turn a lane each direction into bike lanes. Fuck cars.
I pedal about a mile to my hyperlocal trails and I’m the slowest bike every time. I am slow by nature and I am on a mountain bike but damn I really am the only guy pedaling too. I am swallowed up by hordes of tourists flying by on rental BYOKRANEs and HAANBIKEs with 4” tires, it’s remarkable. Rolling fucking thunder! Roadies take the other route but when they show up they smoke me too lol! There really is no better way to get around most cities than an ebike though, I’ll never not have one.
Terns are sick.
Portland made a fast bike lane over a bridge deck like a decade ago, it’s worth it…but it all kinda seems moot after just spending a couple weeks in Amsterdam: we’re a car country. Full of psycho car brains with no empathy (ask me about my road empathy program, where citizens test periodically in all manner of vehicles in an effort to raise the collective chill through exposure. From box trucks to roasted tercels to beach cruisers to rolling blind spots like chargers or whatever, you could be called upon at any time to pilot one for a day. Like jury duty for drivers. Note: looks like you don’t have to ask me about it because I just told you. You’re very welcome.)
I suspect most here have commuted to work by bike. It’s very location dependent, and goddamn I wish I could recommend that anyone gets an ebike and ditches a car but it really doesn’t seem worth it. Gonna get run over.
Oh speaking of chargers have you seen the new electric one that has Star Wars sounds at startup? USA is the dumbest.
Ya that's the hard part but I'm hoping more practical offerings from your run of the mill Specialized/Trek/etc and the general gained experience of all bike users slowly eats away at the Amazon/Walmart ebikes so it's actually supporting the industry positioned to not only sell the bikes but promote or even outright pay for infrastructure or the policy change to do so yada yada
I'm still team amish bike (partly BECAUSE ebikes are not terribly well sorted long term, although thats changing, slowly) but the fact that I do sadly drive a car now and then in Los Angeles, and have a mental health episode about every single time... I'm all for alternative transportation and the infrastructure it requires.
If it can keep my favorite bike brands alive as well, boom bonus. I was surprised to see that Norco had a normal commuter bike that looked rad and some dude had one with a surf rack on it nearby. Kinda reminded me of my Specialized Roll.
But ebikes are just too fast for most 'bike lanes'. There are many parts of local bike lanes/paths where I slow down on my normal bike to navigate safely. The idea of an average joe with no MTB/BMX experience navigating the same stuff on a bike that can go twice as fast is... Well, I mean you already know. We see more and more stories every day. Be it ebike or all the eScooters. People BRAINING themselves and often not wearing a helmet or just wearing a silly skateboard helmet. (My personal favorite is when they ride by with no helmet... But you see a helmet clipped on to their storage rack. Uhhh OK!?)
I am wiiiiiiiith you
I had a couple of the best possible bike commutes in Seattle over the past decade: from way up north on the lake along the BGT and from Madison Park, both to Fremont. Beautiful and off the roads, chill. But pretty rare. And I still don’t know if I would suggest it as better than a car for most people! E-bike was the way on both though, no doubt. Full on commuto warrior routes on roads?—gnarly.
Now I’m in a California beach town and I’m tripping out because it is even gnarlier. Turn back the clock time, no helmets no flow no chill no skill.
The real question I am trying to poke at is this: at what point does a company cease being the same company? To me, this maps to the Ship of Theseus problem. It is not a perfect analogy (at all), but it highlights something important. If you replace the parts of something over time and it continues to operate with the same purpose, brand, and legal identity, is it still the same entity?
This becomes especially interesting with companies. We treat companies almost like living organisms. They pay taxes. They incur liability. We talk about them almost viscerally, as if they have their own agency and lifespan. They can outlive the people who founded them. They can survive brushes with death. They can shed departments, leadership, capital structures, entire business lines, and still persist.
So when someone argues that a company is no longer the “same” because it restructured (even massively), I struggle with that. Companies go through these cycles all the time. If we start putting asterisks next to every company that has undergone meaningful change, we will quickly find there are more asterisks than companies that have remained perfectly static by that definition.
I have already laid out why I think TPC is still the same company in any meaningful sense. It still serves the same function, the same customers, the same market, under the same brand and identity. If a restructuring or a recapitalization disqualifies a company from being the “same,” then we also have to apply that rule consistently to a long list of companies that survived very similar near-death moments. Ironically, Carvana is one of the clearest examples of this, stock was down 99%, they had to entirely restructure and are now doing okay.
A company can change. It can evolve. It can shed skin. But that alone does not mean it stops being the same company, at least to me. The real world is messier than that, and companies that survive hard resets are often the best proof of continuity, not breaks from it.
E bikes definitely follow the weather.
Is "90%" from research, because there were a ton in Denver, when I left 5 years ago, and a good amount in Knoxville. I certainly see more people doing chores / commuting on ebikes than I ever saw on regular bikes. In a very short period of time, my commute on the Cherry Creek bike path got loaded with ebikes (rental and other).
Sorry for the double post. Haven't been in front of my computer much this week.
I wanted to jump back into the service discussion because I think it is genuinely interesting. I have worked on a lot of toys over the years. Bikes of every kind, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, cars; some of this on my own, some on behalf of a shop. So I get both sides of the argument.
On one hand, it is frustrating when a shop refuses to work on a bike because it is older than a certain year or because it is not a brand they like. I have always believed we should keep more stuff out of the landfill, and repairing what you already own is one of the best ways to do that. Plus, it feels really good to fix something that you were sure couldn't be and restore it to its once "glorious" condition.
On the other hand, as someone who has actually done this work, I fully understand why shops turn certain jobs away. An hour of labor is not always an hour of labor. I can name plenty of times I went off brand or off year and ended up eating way more hours than I ever billed, often without feeling like I delivered the quality I expect from myself. If it is my own machine, or a buddy's fine. If I am learning something I can reuse on future projects, maybe. But if it is a one-off job with no repeat value, it usually is not worth it for me or for the customer.
This is where the tension sits. I want to keep things out of the dump and keep things on the road/mtn/trail, but I am also admitting that some things are not worth working on. That circle does not square cleanly.
What usually happens is that the market fills the gap. Even in my sleepy mountain town, there are a few people who are known for being incredible with old engines and obscure stuff. On the bicycle side, there are lots of home-garage mechanics who will take a shot at anything. You have to ask around to find them, but they exist. The market will market, and people will slot themselves into the open spaces wherever cracks appear. What isn't mentioned in my slightly-too-perfect suggestion is the rate/amount charged to work on all this stuff often outstrips replacement cost. So the rub persists. Cost of repair, not just finding someone to do the repair, outstrips the underlying value of the vehicle.
This was all a long winded way to say let the market do its thing, every problem is another companies opportunity...but it won't be perfect.
I find this to be a matter of perspective.
An insider will typically have a very low threshold for a company to no longer be (perhaps “feel” is more appropriate) the same, whereas an outsider will have an extremely high one.
Who knew Adam's invisible hand is also adept at fixing your old bike.
The current gen specialized enduro is 7 years old. So next year I won't be able to find a shop willing to true my wheel?
Haha. That is great point. When does the 8 years start or how is it measured?
Is it once the exact purchased bike is older than 8?
There are Enduros that are 7 years old and brand new Enduros that are 0 years old
Is it once the model line is 8? If it’s the model line does that clock start when it’s released or when that revision ceases to be produced?
How old is the Enduro?! What if a bike is ‘timeless’?!?! Haha
Nukeproof is officially back! The whole range is now online again, and there is a brand new Reactor to celebrate the launch too! Get the deets: https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/nukeproof-back-business-updated-reactor-first-new-bike-drop.
so Jeff, is this the same nukeproof than before and was the nukeproof before the current one the same nukeproof before the 2nd one?
Typically as far as getting spare parts, the clock starts ticking once production ends... As far as working on the Enduro, at least that bike still lines up with most industry standards..
Totally respect your point, I just wanted to make a joke about the Ship of Theseus paradox, using the Ship of Theseus paradox.
Yes, but also no. I lean towards no. There's some continuity in its designs, and some of the former employees work there again*, but the company was wound up and then the IP acquired in a liquidation sale.
Vitus would be an easier question. It was a zombie brand that was merely resurrected out of Nukeproof's design office and supply chain, so unambiguously not the same company. Even if they rehired Sean Kelly as a brand ambassador.
* But only because they were pursued by the new owners – there's a clear discontinuity in their terms of employment.
Edit: before I posted this I had written some musings on Robot's Ship of Theseus analogy and I immediately thought of IBM. It's been in essentially the same broad industry for a century (it's been doing computing since before the modern concept of computing...) so it's seen generations of people (and ownership) come and go. But there's a clear line of continuity from the IBM of 1933 to the IBM of today and in spirit I think most would probably say it's the same company. It hasn't even once been resurrected from bankruptcy like, say, GM. And I think bringing up the Ship of Theseus is apt on a forum for MTB enthusiasts.
Being from the UK "Trigger's Broom" is probably more relatable than The Ship of Theseus. 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUl6PooveJE
These debates are fun, and honestly pretty interesting, but at the end of the day every person has to decide for themselves what they think of a company after a major event. There is no universal rule. Companies change constantly. Sometimes the changes are minor, sometimes they are massive.
Think about the sheer number of variables that can reshape what a company “is” at its core:
M&A, restructuring, bankruptcy, management turnover, a new investor showing up, a key employee leaving, the company moving locations, killing a product line, adding a product line, shifting up or down market, brilliant marketing changing public perception, disaster strikes company causing huge PR issue, going public, going private, inventing something with patent protection, losing patent protection, and on and on.
Any one of those things can alter the nature of a company in a really meaningful way. So I’ve given my opinion using TPC as catalyst, but everyone is obviously welcome to their own. It is a nuanced question by definition.
With Nukeproof specifically, my honest answer is “I don’t know.” I don’t know how much of the IP, vendor relationships, tooling, or institutional knowledge will carry forward. If the new ownership picks up where the old team left off and continues to build great bikes at great prices that absolutely rip, that feels pretty close to continuity to me.
In fact, that scenario feels a lot more like continuity than a company that technically survives a private equity sale, cleans house, and pushes the bikes into a big-box store. The latter keeps its legal identity, the former might not, but an EIN number alone doesn’t define whether something is “the same company.” At least in my view.
Virtual Shape Shifter
Hellyes
truly, re-animating a second time to enter your third iteration of existence is about as on-brand as one can be for an entity named Nukeproof.
One could argue they get notably Nukeproof-ier with each resurrection
guess they should have gone with Nukeproof. then Nukeproofer. then it could now be Nukeproofest. 🤷♂️
So , those responsible are Nukeproofifiers?
Or perhaps Nukeproofiteers?
And they're back..
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRKB_9bCCYw/?img_index=2&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZ…
Welcome back, YT! https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/back-roots-founder-markus-flossmann-buys-back-yt.
jeff is famous now:
https://www.mtb-news.de/news/markus-flossmann-interview-yt-rueckkauf/
stormsurvivor@yt-industries.com... what is wrong with that guy?!
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