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I really feel I am given more credit than I deserve, but I am really flattered and feel very honored.
To the podcast question:
I've been part of quite a few podcasts "lately". If you are interested, you can check them out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWCqkRvyW3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkS7FhHTR08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnW_yq3gY2w
I don't remember exactly, but if I recall correctly there was a lot of talk about Covid already and also a bit about how all started for me in the bike industry.
For those who don't speak German, Youtube auto transcript might work quite well nowadays.
About the stems and handlebars, I am not exactly sure, how to understand the question.
If you want to know, if we do the actual manufacturing in house (e.g. forging, milling, tapering, bending, heat treatment, ...), then the answer is no.
I wished we had this all of this heavy machinery, but we don't. We have a lathe and a milling machine, and some other small machinery, but nothing worthy for series production.
Our equipment are mainly assembly machines, custom designed and made in cooperation with local machine makers. Some of them you can see on our Instagram, some we can not show for obvious reasons.
As mentioned in one of my previous comments, we have close-by suppliers who make the actual parts for us.
We design or engineer (I find the word designing a bit strange, because "to design" in German merely means "to give something a shape") all of our products ourselves (actually there is exactly one very small product, that was originally not ours, but which we sourced and then redesigned to for better fit). That means, for every single part (unless it is a standard bolt or o-ring or circlip) we start with a 3D drawing, then make our 2D drawing for each part.
Below you can see an example of one page (of a two page) 2D drawing of our lower tubes
After we finish these drawings, we go to our suppliers and discuss them. If needed, corrections are made (e.g. tolerances are too tight or tools are unable to reach a certain area, ...).
That is where it becomes very important that you a) either are or b) have a local with you who speaks their "language" and also understands the actual manufacturing process, so he needs to have experience in machining or forging or whatever. And by "language" I do not mean only the spoken words, but also how to deal with people culture-wise.
After our drawings are confirmed, the supplier will often make their own manufacturing drawings - because that tube does not use a single manufacturing process. It might be forged first, then go on the lathe, then CNC'ed, then anodized, heat treated, lasered, .... you get it. Each step needs it's own drawing, and those drawings have little to do with the finished part drawing.
So, these drawigns are then double checked from our side.
Then we get pricing per part and cost for tooling (e.g. we buy and then own the forging toolings for our parts)
These steps are done for every single part.
Then we have the supplier sample the parts (very small quantities), we build and test the first prototypes, make modifications in correspondence with the suppliers, if needed.
Once everything looks good, we order series production runs for every part, receive them in our factory and build the first batch of finished products.
I might have forgotten or simplified some steps, but you get the idea.
You could also have it a lot easier. You could also go to one of the few big dropper factory and tell them you want this or that dropper from their ODM catalogue, but with your logo on.
And then there are also many options in between, where, for instance, you choose one of those "catalog posts" and modify/redesign some parts (e.g clamps or actuator or change the cartridge to another one) either by yourself or tell them to do it for you.
Long story short, we do "assemble" the stems in house. We do not produce the stem parts.
And for handlebars there's luckily not really much to assemble.
@Sacki when can we expect a wireless dropper from BikeYoke?
I don't know, we're still working on it, though.
This is fast becoming one of my favorite podcasts, well done y'all!
The production part at the beginning was so good, I'd happily listen to a multi-episode deep dive on the entire process, especially all the little details we never hear about (3d-surfacing, multiple versions of drawings, the difference a particular production line at a given factory can make etc. I had NO idea!)
make one that can connect directly to an ebike battery like the one from orbea
This article about the troubles PE firms are having (cue the tiniest of tiny violins) got me wondering; what happens at the PE firm when an acquisition fails; i.e. gets written off/goes bankrupt (Kona, Revel, Vitus, Nukeproof etc.)
Is that just considered part of the cost of business? Do the people who championed that acquisition face any consequences or is it just "oh well, we'll do better on the next one"?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/business/private-equity-stock-market…
did this podcast ever get posted? never seen it but... this clip posted today was verrry interesting. apparently the full episode was posted a month ago. I think we all knew the split with Zink wasn't fully 'amicable' but it's interesting to hear this little anecdote basically amounting to... A legal threat. More or less?
Super good question. The honest answer is: it depends, but we can frame it pretty cleanly.
Private equity is generally not structured to “swing and miss” the way venture is. In a traditional buyout strategy, you’re underwriting to avoid permanent capital loss, even if you’re using leverage. That said, bankruptcies do happen. Depending on the dataset, the strategy (mega buyout vs middle market vs distressed), the industry mix, and the time period you measure, you’ll see something like mid single digits up to the teens as a reasonable range for bankruptcy outcomes across portfolios. The more “risk on” the underwriting and the more cyclical the sectors, the higher that number can go.
What happens to people internally varies a lot. If a deal blows up because of bad underwriting or avoidable operational mistakes, you can absolutely see turnover. But a bankruptcy doesn’t automatically mean heads roll. If the broader portfolio is performing, or if the loss is clearly tied to macro factors (rates, a recession, an industry shock), firms can largely move on. Firm size and politics matter too. When the key decision makers are the GPs themselves, they are rarely “fired” in any real sense. The real consequence is economic: unhappy LPs, reputational damage, and much lower (or zero) carried interest. They still collect management fees, but the wealth creation is supposed to come from the carry, and that’s what disappears when performance is weak.
The more important point is that bankruptcy is just the visible tail risk. The bigger story over the last few years is multiple compression and impaired equity returns even without formal insolvencies. There is a whole vintage of PE and VC funds that are underperforming because entry multiples were high and the cost of capital moved up dramatically. That change hits valuation in a very unforgiving way.
A simple example makes it obvious. If you bought a company at 12x EBITDA and later the market only pays 7x (which mirrors today), you need EBITDA to grow enough that:
7x * (New EBITDA) = 12x * (Old EBITDA)
That implies EBITDA has to increase by about 71%, just to break even on enterprise value. And that is before transaction fees, integration costs, and the reality that not all EBITDA turns into cash. This is closer to what’s actually playing out than most people realize: even “good” companies can look mediocre when they were simply bought at the wrong price in the wrong rate regime.
So what’s the outcome? The asset class gets less attractive at the margin. Some LPs reduce allocations, some funds struggle to raise, certain shops shut down or consolidate, and eventually the market finds a new equilibrium through lower entry multiples, more conservative leverage, and (hopefully) better discipline on underwriting.
Can someone explain the tax thing Zink mentioned in the interview? What was it he said YT tried to threaten them with? Why would they owe them (who) taxes?
The sales tax system in the USA is administered at the state level; so if you buy something at the same sticker price in two different states the price you pay at checkout will be different depending on the state sales tax; the same $100 handlebar might be $105 in California, $110 in New York and $100 even in Nevada because they don't levy a state sales tax at all (these are just made up examples)
To make e-commerce easier, there are thresholds either by dollar value or total number of transactions/sales in a year before you have to register for and collect sales tax for that state. Say a bike distributor in Nevada might not have to charge sales tax on bikes they sell in Michigan until they sell $100,000 worth of bikes in a year and they also might not have to charge sales tax on bikes they sell to Washington state until they make 250 transactions in Washington state. As with a lot of these things, the onus is 100% on you as a business to register for, collect and remit these taxes to each state.
So the gig was to tell them that they had fallen afoul of this confusing mish-mash system and assume they were unsophisticated / scared of the IRS enough that they'd take that as gospel.
And now I've just learned about "continuation vehicles" 😬
I'm sure there are perfectly valid uses for them but they sound ripe for abuse: "Continuation vehicles are providing a short-term solution by allowing firms to sell the companies to themselves, book a paper gain and wait for interest rates to improve."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/business/private-equity-continuation…
don't know if zink's statement is 100% accurate, but YT's track record isn't making them look good.
what total a*holes of a company! would love to hear/read a tell all segment of everyone who got screwed over by YT/markus in the last 10 years.
could be a whole book/documentary with zink, AG, people from the US-operation for YT and the frame manufacturer.
@rgard Thanks for the explanation. That is what I imagined. I was ware of there being different sales tax for different states in the US and that there must be a way how to handle "inter-state sales".
In the EU we use kind of the same system to collect VAT for international sales between EU-countries.
In Germany, we have a nationwide VAT rate of 19%. Despite consisting of 16 federal sates (Bavaria, North-Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, ...), these 19% apply for every federal state in Germany.
The same goes for every other EU country. They can have different VAT rates, but it is usually nationwide (whole Italy has 22%, France has 20%, Denmark 25% ...).
In a EU-based webshop the prices displayed for EU-consumers, by law, have to be the final prices, including the applicable VAT.
So, for example an end consumer from Denmark sees the final price, including his 25% VAT. The seller collects these 25%, they will also show on the invoice and the seller then forwards these 25% VAT to the Danish fiscal authorities.
The same goes for every other EU-country. We have to be registered in every EU-country and forward the collected VAT to each country's fiscal authorities.
This applies as soon as you hit a theshold of sales worth 10,000€ per annum into all EU-countries combined (not including your own country).
This system has been in place since somewhen 2021.
(Before that, there were country-specific thesholds. E.g. you had to register in The Netherlands only, if your sales to The Netherlands exceeded 100,000€ per annum, or 35,000€ in the case of Italy, ... If you hadn't exceeded those thresholds, you would always just collect the 19% German VAT in case of a German based business and that would go to the German fiscal authorities.
So what I am not quiote understanding about Zink's statement is:
How would they ("YT USA") owe anything to YT Germany? That does not make sense to me.
Or is what he was trying to say that "they" (YT Germany) tried to "blackmail" the Zinks by stating that "they" (YT Germany) knew that YT USA (the Zinks) owed sales taxes to other fiscal authorities within the US?
I don't think you cna runa business for years without collecting and remitting taxes correctl, can you?
I don't really get it. Can someone help me out?
I interpreted it as YT-Germany trying to tell the Zinks they were operating incorrectly with regard to the US tax system and owed taxes to the US government. Therefore they were hurting the global YT image and likely in a financial hard spot so they should sell YT-USA back to YT-Germany for cheap so they could fix everything.
But Zink clearly said that the were no rules in place at that time where they'd had to pay state taxes to other states.
Why be bothered by such a statement, if you knew you did nothing wrong?
And on the other hand: Why would YT Germany (or that banker) come up with a truly/poor lousy attempt of coming up with something that is easily refutable?
I'm pretty sure Cam and his brother knew, or at least had a good idea, of what needed to be done as a business. This wasn't their first venture. Given what we've seen recently, it sounds like the potential of the US market was realized and they wanted more control, and the profits, of it..
watched a podcast with yt new owner and he talked about how much margin they were giving yt usa, I wonder if this whole bankruptcy was a way to get back the us market.
If what the YT USA crew was saying is true, the US was half of the company's total sales.. And with some of the comments Markus made, I think he was hoping to get the inventory that ended up with Jenson as part of the deal he made in Europe.. That would have let him resume business in a big market with inventory already available..
However, it seems pretty safe to say the bankruptcy wasn't just a grab to get the US market.. But, if things had turned out a bit different, it would have happened..
Not sure if this should go here or in Team Rumors, but it's a good interview with Vali on the 2025 season..
https://open.spotify.com/episode/34C9LvidEQ6Ysw0kXNAnEH?si=s_We83RLTBKJ…
This is a bit beyond this thread but thought someone here might like it. It made front page of HackerNews today...
https://2026macro.vercel.app/
What this is: The author of this site synthesized a bunch of sell side research using LLMs. His method was clever, and good. He then bucketed everything into 10 categories.
The reason its cool is its very challenging to get these reports unless you are on Wall St., work for a bank or ultra wealthy. Though we can't see the reports directly here, LLMs did a good job synthesizing the information.
A really good place to spend an hour of time if you want to see what some of the smartest analysts on Wall St are saying.
Nice find! I sent this off to my wife, as she is frickin' obsessed with markets.
I hope someone's sat down and verified that the AI "summaries" are an accurate reflection of what's in the input material
Take a quick second and look at the methodology, which was posted here https://2026macro.vercel.app/about.html
There is a lot of brilliance here, and if you cared to click on anything, you'd see (real) citations everywhere with links back to the actual research reports.
Not trying to be a dick, but there is a reason I posted this. Its not a lossy compression rife with hallucinations. This is "AI done well".
And I'm not (and wasn't) trying to be a dick either. An LLM linking back to a source in its output doesn't mean that it's accurately representing the source, but if you're happy to vouch for it then at least I can take it more seriously.
Apologies if this is the wrong thread, but has anyone heard anything about Sprindex? Seems that their springs have been very hard to source for a few months now...
I have a friend who just cashed out his tech startup and moved to Portugal. I'm trying to help him (hes shorter) find a really good mullet all mountain bike, and everyone everywhere seems out of stock. I know this was mentioned before, but whats going on? No one can seem to sell bike s right now, prices are down, discounts are up, but also no one has inventory?
Ripmo's and Bronson's are in stock. In the US at least.
The founder and returning chief executive of German premium bike maker Canyon says he can raise annual revenue by a third to about €1bn within three years, claiming that the company has lost direction because of changes in its culture.
https://www.ft.com/content/5b6e419e-cfd6-4950-9a1b-6337839c0cf2
“premium“
Lots of nuggets in this... €800mn valuation at acquisition in 2020, cut by 43% since then, €750mn annual sales in 2025, new line of "lightweight top-end e-bikes at competitive prices" coming, killed off streetwear brand, reduced number of models, started selling in China, net losses in 2023 and 2024, more losses in first half of 2025, trying to get ebitda back up to 10% of sales, Arnold still owns 35% of company.
Good chance your company is in crisis if you're doing an interview with the FT and telling them you're definitely not in crisis.
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