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I'm with Sethimus and believe that Orbea is offering something a cut above, in many regards. The value, integration & overall ride quality of the bikes is absolutely top notch. A 2% drop from 2024, seems like a heck of a good performance that I bet most bike manufacturers would be envious of.
That said, I worry for all established bike manufacturers when nearly anyone can now go into the bike manufacturing business, quite easily it would appear. Troyden at Crestline did it very successfully, Velduro is doing it. There are now so many small brands popping up with compelling product, such as Teewing.
There is a ton of focus on the Avinox motor with a huge swing towards this motor system (which would not have happened if the industry only reviewed and sold Class 1 motors), geo really is pretty well worked out as is frame manufacturing. Bikes are starting to seem like commodities.
Which Orbeas do you guys own?
Just curious…
about to order two Rallons.... 🤪
wife & I couldn't be more excited. other than that the brand never really stuck out to me much
. but the innovation is un-avoidable delicious from my perspective
Love to see it. Hope you took advantage of their custom paint program.
Rallon. Unreal bike and I’ve had a lot of super enduro over the last five years. Someone just demoed one and ordered it right after. The custom paint is a big plus I’d say. The bike feels more unique, you feel more of an ownership, which I would think lends itself to a stronger relationship/loyalty to that brand.
oh heck yeah. i don't mind waiting!
had the first gen rise and didn't like the whole shimano control setup, way to clunky and unergonomic
I'm not saying they are in danger of takeover, just that they have gone from remarkable profits (5.3B Euro for 2024) to slim profits (90M Euro for 2025) in short time. They just took a 2.7B Euro write-down and cut 500 jobs. Oof.
$3k for 100 bikes.
Maybe it's just our reps have been spotty with Orbea but they can be a pain to work with, and people seem to leave the brand quickly. The bikes are totally fine from a design standpoint, but they have been some of the most obnoxious bikes to work on or deal with warranty issues with. Their headset routing is awful too, worse than Scott's by far haha
I have a '26 Wild with the CXR & 600wh battery. In a L with dual coil suspension, dual DH wheels, dual DH tires, 200mm AXS dropper, electronic shifting & big brakes, it weighs 48.6#s ready to ride with pedals. More importantly it's the most balanced bike I've ever ridden, and it actually feels lighter than my Relay when riding.
The custom paint schemes are really cool, and I wanted a nice silver/ blue motif. However, it was thousands of dollars more cost effective to buy a base model CF M20 with the Kiox and CXR that I wanted and just install my own curated parts. That left me having to choose one of their 3 base colors as that was the only option on the base model M20, and it's fine. The green actually looks pretty cool and it's a rarer color.
My advise to Orbea is that everything should be a line item. They should allow you to choose your frame material, then your paint scheme on the CF frames, then each part as a line item all of the way from a base Al frame only, to a completely loaded custom CF bike.
BTW, Orbea provides dealers with 25% off right now on any Bosch standard build. So heck of a time to get a deal.
As far as HCR goes, I had never messed with it before this bike and as a result I went with the electronic shifting and dropper to simplify my life. But I have to admit, I rather like it and I think with integration for the dropper and shifter electronics on an e-bike (or even a bike with a small battery for these components), it's the future. Some of you might not know that Orbea already powers the electronic dropper on 2 models directly from the motor system. Moving forward, I think cable ports on the Al cheaper model makes sense so they can run mechanical, but with full integration on the CF frames where HCR is acceptable.
My Relay is admittedly a bit of a rat's nest because I slapped it together from take-off parts to sell it, but I do think the Wild just looks way cleaner in part because of HCR.
Your mismatched grips are triggering me.
LOL.
Yah, it's what I had on the shelf and I forgot about that till just now.
Bird offers a fully custom buildout regarding the components but it probably complicates things quite a bit and I can hardly imagine it's cost effective for them.
As long as the business model is as it is and bikes are built as they are, it's hard to imagine things will change en masse. Even worse, any cases of vertical integration would even lessen the parts picking options as we can see on motorcycles.
I used to work at a bike manufacturer that had a high degree of customisation of paint and components available to the customer at the point of ordering, it was a huge pain for the factory and inventory planning. Over time as production volumes increased the options reduced and now they offer very limited options. That level of complexity doesn't really scale well and is expensive to do properly, customers ultimately prioritise value.
I have long wondered if shops are going to bypass distributers and go directly to Asian factories for consumable parts. Ie shift cables, crimps etc. It would mean longer lead times and someone with greater responsibility when it comes to ordering, but it also would mean better margins for already generally high margin items, that consumers are not brand loyal too.
Wonder if shops in Europe and NA would be willing to order bikes like these for kids bikes where warranty scenarios are lower, but these bikes do look very entry level.
I stocked my home workshop with a lifetime supply of cables, crimps and ferrules plus hose, olives, banjos and barbs for multiple brands for less than I paid for my last 'Shimano' replacement line and banjo from my LBS, took about 10 days to arrive. Wouldn't even need to be that responsible to make it work, just slightly more responsible than average.
I called and chatted with the rep for an hour about intricacies of the bike and ordering. Super helpful. I also warranties my seat stay and got a new one in a week.
The lack of headset routing is not the reason those cables look like shit. They all look a foot too long.
Can hear that rats nest of cables rattling down the trail from here. Clean that mess up.
In some cases, yes, and it's already happened in the earlier days of the web being a thing. We used to order groups from Pro Bike Kit when they were offering them significantly cheaper than what we could source domestically, including shipping. Plus, they actually had them in stock. The shop owner knew he was basically feeding the beast that would bite his hand, but getting an extra couple hundred from a sale meant bonuses and bills paid. A number of shops do drop ships straight from the manufacturers these days too, but to that end they generally get roped into MSRP pricing. Personally, I've ordered bulk hydro houses, cables and housing when I could find em from any place with what I was looking for at a good price. In some cases that was getting things at or lower than wholesale. If some guy with a good workshop in his house is doing it, I'd be hard pressed to think shops aren't looking for options outside the norm too.
Interesting to note that with Orbea's AGM, they work with "one person, one vote".
So you don't end up with a very small number of people controlling everything if they have more personal shares.
Sucks to see this.
Knolly
https://www.bidspotter.com/en-us/auction-catalogues/maynards-can/catalogue-id-bscma10155
Feels like that's the bitter end, right? Administration/receivership/bankruptcy is one thing, but it can lead to restructuring. Selling off all the physical assets via auction is another thing entirely. Although I suppose YT went through the auction process and they're back again.
Anyone with real access to capital want to make a run at buying all the inventory / assets out of receivership and rebooting Knolly? I'm semi serious.
How semi-serious?
Its a super-duper longshot, but I have watched this play out a few times now. All depends on a few (huge) things...
1) Who here sold a tech company/has generational wealth/a mega rich uncle/dad who runs a hedge fund and is bored? We'd need 7 figures to buy the thing out of receivership.
2) What is the price? If the price is right, it works. If its not, its all for nothing.
3) "Who's coming with me?"
The timing is not in our favor, and I can't stress how important point number 1 is. Most people aren't interested in tying up millions of dollars in a failed bike company, even if there is a brand worth saving and a real business underneath it.
..and yes, I'm completely ignoring how I'd turn the business around in this post, but its a massive lift (obviously).
Sucks to see em go. Gonna be a lot of knolly’s floating around for a long time. If I was in bc I’d grab one for sure.
How deep into the 7 figures do you think it would take? (asking for a friend). just to clarify so that this doesn't come across as a flex... I am not the one with direct access to capital, at least not enough for a move like this... but I do have college roommates that are into the sport and made their living creating micro-transactional video games. I should have followed them into their startup careers instead of doing what I do...
I don't know but I did reach out to the receiver to see if they'd entertain an offer
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