Mountain Bike Consumer - New Product Vitriol

Some product launches go so much against the grain of what was preached by the same companies previously that they cause emotional distress and mental model revolts. I don't think this has anything to do with MTB but I have to admit that watching the world burn is my favorite hobby if the heat of the flames aligns with my own predictions.

It seems kind of crazy right? People seemingly go to a tech site to complain... that there's new tech? Or that the fanciest, newest shit is... expensive? It seems to me a lot of the complaining is around cost, which I get, but I sometimes worry that the negativity can be to such an extent that it can slow progress.

For instance I rode the Fox Podium, and came away super impressed. It seemed pretty clear to me that their explanation about friction reduction made sense, was real, and that the performance was clearly next-gen. Like everyone is going to want one of these things.  However it's a niche, first gen product, so yeah there are some issues, and yeah it's expensive. What we need though, is probably just more competition. Like RockShox needs to compete in order to not just make a better product, but drive costs down too. But if they view it as a failure, or as bad for their brand image or whatever, because the perception is so negative, doesn't that just hold back arguably inevitable progress?

A few years ago I went to Sea Otter, and I was trying to better understand tires, and how they work. Because a lot of the chat around tires I thought was wrong. So was talking to this to the tire guy and he said "look, we don't design these tread patterns this way because we think it's good. We do it because it's basically a marketing thing. We design a tread pattern based how how we think it's perceived, not on what we think is optimal." Which if you just want super good tires, is kind of fucked up.  

It makes sense that the industry responds this way, because misconceptions are so prevalent, and they guide buying decisions.  For instance I went to my LBS a couple of months ago to buy a new tire, and I asked the guy where the xynotals were. And he said "oh the xc tires are over here". How the actual fuck is a DH casing Super soft compound tire an XC tire?  Oh cause the knobs are "short"... because they are designed for hardpack. But I think that's actually a common misunderstanding. Where I live, I see guys all the time trying to get more grip, and so they look for "more aggressive tires" and they seem to get into this like negative feedback loop where they are trying to run like argotals which are loose conditions tires, on hardpack. So like a month ago a guy crashed in front of me and unironically blamed it on his "xc tires" (Assegais). 

I can't imagine designing for that kind of market. I would go insane. 

That "XC tire" conversation from customers and from a shop employee makes me want to walk into the ocean.

It boils down to hyperbolic marketing claims about products that can't possibly meet unrealistic expectations, which in turn leads to disappointment, lack of trust, and feelings of anger due to perceived betrayal.

I’ve been mountain biking since I was a teenager in the 90s and the marketing material has never been as sober as it is right now and the products have literally never been higher quality.

Thirty years ago you’d drop a huge stack of cash on 1.9” tires made out of QC-rejected pencil erasers and hay, they’d be hard as coffin nails and look leprous after three rides (several flats per ride), and the marketing material would be all like “God himself couldn’t make rubber stickier; this rubber is so sticky it’s gray; you can ride on the damn wall”. Things were built by dirtbags with machine shop access to look like a butch version of the same part a hallucinating 1920s Frenchman would be racing up L’alp Du Donk on a facefull of cocaine and horse dewormer.

Twenty years ago you’d drop a huge stack of cash on a suspension fork promising to erase bumps with a mind-blowing 3” (3! that’s big! we’ve all agreed that’s bigger than average!) of travel and you could watch the thing try do the suspension fork equivalent of trying to off itself by swallowing its own tongue as you went over bumps. Three rides later and it’d have puked up its guts on your shoes and hard-pivoted to being a rain stick. Things were built by dirtbags with machine shop access and a CAD/CAM workstation and a CNC mill to look like a sci-fi version of the same part etc etc etc etc

Ten years ago? Honestly, not bad. The industry managed to hire some folks with actual ME degrees and FEA software got cheap enough that all the “what if cranks but made out of stress risers” designs (hello Kooka) lit up like Christmas trees on someone’s workstation instead of spontaneously disassembling themselves underneath you at mach chicken. The marketing was a little over-the-top, the claims a little lofty, but the main problem was mounting tubeless tires, QC (hello Avid), and suspension linkage designs you had to maintain by feeding them new shock shafts every season.

Today? C’mon. Everything’s more expensive than health care, but it all works really, really, really well. Some stuff breaks, some stuff isn’t particularly great, but it’s impossible for me to look at my bike now and the gear I ride in and feel anything but a deep sense of gratitude that this silly hobby of mine keeps getting more and more fun, year over year. Bike marketing these days, esp. in the mountain bike space, is mostly just geo charts and shreddits of some kid half my age going four times as fast as I can with a little wink and nudge that maybe I could do that if I was running the same saddle as him.

@TEAMROBOT - I remember testing showing CX file treads were slower in almost every application, but still people buy and ride them because they look fast.

Btw, while I’m here, I feel like a massive driver of mountain bikers yelling at clouds about product happens when product support doesn’t match the promise. Unhelpful warranties on stuff sold with massive margins, and a consistently terrible pattern of companies refusing to acknowledge issues until suddenly a new model pops up. 

It makes journalism more important, I get so irate seeing reviewers acknowledge issues in old product they simply refused to when it was contemporaneous. 
 

In my opinion, and looking at other industries - there seems to be the exact same kind of "vitriol" with new product releases, but I feel the difference in mountian bikes is maybe a lack of balanced reporting as new products come out. We either get the copy + paste press releases of a product launch and reviews that either glaze it too hard or are too non commital to give any real insight, and at the other end the "contrarians" who act like they are the only ones "talking truth" and rage baiting the internet. 

I'll use PC's and computing as an example - I can watch dozens of videos from relatively unbiased people who objectively run a bunch of tests and will just present the results without forcing their own opinion too hard.  They will add some thoughts but at least theres some real data for you to make up your own mind from, and if they are biased theres always plenty of other places to get more opinions from. And over time you learn who is best at just presenting the facts and aren't obsessed with proving themselves "right"

Point is, when a new product is launched and people start raging, there is at least a counter to that which either proves them right or wrong and I just don't feel like there is enough of that in the bike industry  - especially mtb.  People can start spouting nonsense about a product and it will spread unchecked because there aren't enough "expert" voices out there loud enough to put it to bed. There has been some people doing a better job lately - a lot of Vital reivews, the stuff from Escape Collective, James Huang (n-1), Jeff Brines and even a couple of specific Pinkbike writers (Jessie-May Morgan is open I recall writing some good pieces)

Maybe the other part of it is the media focuses too much on what it thinks is the "typical" rider, ie people who look and ride like them. But many brands are smart enough to build produce parts which cater to the majority of actual people on the trails - who are far more diverse than what the forums look like. But it means a product gets launched and the comments are full of "whataboutme" because they don't realise what the true "average" rider is looking for. See the comments about the new tallboy not being progressive enough - I'm sure it rides great for 99% of the people who buy it, but the "enthusiast" thinks its not good enough for them.

also @Bobsmothersbrother - can you please point me towards these "massive margin" products - I would love to get in on some of that!

Part of the vitriol or maybe just resistance to believe what you read, is that there are far too many "journalists" in the bike space that automatically endorse every product that comes out. While we definitely live in a great time when it comes to high-quality products, every new product isn't perfect, and not every product suits all situations. As someone who has nerded out on bike tech for quite a while, it's hard to stomach the message that everything is the best...only to find out that it's not. Mavens are a good example. When they first came out, it seemed like everyone was doing backflips for them. Since they've been in the market for a couple of years now, opinions are somewhat varied, and SRAM has even released revised versions. I think we all need to avoid getting caught up in believing the newest product is the best just because it's the newest.

Not much to add, but kudos to these replies so far. Good stuff.

There's a lot of homogenization in bikes and parts lately –– many existing/continuing products are losing their character and new ones are less differentiated. I think that's partly due to design by committee, data-driven decisions, and brands being generally conservative coming out of the post-pandemic darkness. Add to that there's basically only two OE-specced suspension and drivetrain brands anymore (and one drivetrain brand is losing major ground) and, yeah, bikes especially are becoming commodified. That makes for easy comparisons when spec is closely matched, but prices are disparate. That's when I notice the most vitriol.

As someone who also started mountain biking in the early 90's as a young teen I agree with all the above. 

@TheSuspensionLabNZ haha, massive margin for who?

I think it’s pretty well established the drivetrain manufacturer margins in non OEM components are pretty wild.

Totally agree with your comments on journalism and also see how it’s often driven by the ecosystem- test at manufacturer event, maybe after, write article fast.

one bizarre example recently was Matt Beer’s article in the new EXT Shock. I really like Matt’s stuff for the most part, but the only comparison made is with a Fox X2. It’s so sloppy it can only be rushed, surely there are other coil shocks to compare it to, but instead you get the performance of comparison with no real information. 

I guess that’s the digital media environment in a nutshell, especially with products where so much is subjective. 

Ok, so I’m really curious when you bring up Mavens as an example of a release that got hyped -- which reviewers do you think weren’t critical enough and what do you think they glossed over?

The Mavens thing is crazy. The bike world has been gaslit into believing that massaging pistons on brand new brakes from the factory is supposed to be normal and accepted. Pre Mavens this was never done on new brakes.  

I just had to do it on a new set of Code Silver Stealths.

I was encouraged in early 2023 by the Commencal help desk guy to do a piston massage for the Guides that came stock on my late 2022 Meta HT hardtail.

So to find out that Mavens were terrible because people had to do a piston massage for the first time was…confusing.

I didn’t trust myself to do a good brake bleed at that time so I took it to a shop and he said he did (and still does) the piston massage on most brakes.

I've done similar procedures to brakes since forever - sram guide, shimano saint, most formulas. People have always moaned about different brakes but its just a case of knowing all the methods of making them work well. I guess people learn a certain way of working on brakes, which has worked fine up until they encounter something different like the maven and all of a sudden they struggle. I see similar things with wheel building, hubs, suspension and drive trains where they only learned one generic way to work on a part, instead of understanding how they actually function

Great thread and comments.  

To restate some of what was said above, I think the vocal minority on the forums and in the comments sections has unfair expectations of the brands.  That minority wants the brands to design the best product possible for the hardcore rider.  I'm sure the brands would love to exclusively focus on doing that, but that cannot be the ultimate objective.  The ultimate objective has to be making a profit.  Even if it's a small company with ownership that's not primarily motivated by money, you've still got to keep the lights on.  And there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make money (as long as its done ethically).

In many instances, producing the best product for the hardcore rider and making a profit can overlap to a large degree, but they are two different objectives.  I think a lot of the frustration we see stems from people not accepting and appreciating this fact. 

All that said, personally one of my biggest frustrations with components is that everything new seems to be designed with ebikes at the forefront of the company's mind.  I'm currently adding to my stockpile of X01 mechanical spares, because I like the light, immediate shifting and don't need to shift under lots of motor power (I run X01 on a midpowered ebike with no issues).  I'm still missing flip chips at the rear axle to change the rear center. I've always found NSB, Wheels Mfg, or good in-house (like SC) hangers to be stiff enough for precise mechanical shifting, and running cables through a real bike is easy peasy.  I'm 210, and I've  always lowered a Lyrik to 140 rather than run a Pike at 140, but it's really hard to imagine eating the weight of the new Lyrik for a 140-150 fork on a real bike.  

I agree with the general point being made and I think it's most evident on suspension products, which have a more frequent release cycle and magically something users complained about with the previous iteration gets addressed directly, when there was no mention of it before. 

The Maven subject though is a weird one. Most reviewers noted the power as being really good but opinions on lever feel varied, some reported a really stiff lever, some did not. The biggest issue was the wandering bite point that plagued them if you didn't do the dual rotor piston massage procedure, which at the time was not on the SRAM YT channel, buried in their service manual at the very bottom (e.g. not part of bleed or install instructions), and rarely mentioned by any reviewers. When I bought mine the day of release, the shop I got them from told me SRAM informed them about the process and it was a required process for the install, but meanwhile I think only one reviewer mentioned it of the 6+ I read mentioned how to do the process correctly. Even in that case, it wasn't clear that you really had to put a lot of pressure on the lever to make it work, this only came up in the comments of one of the reviews and fixed the issue for me. 

It's such a simple thing but it went overlooked. It doesn't fall into the negative category for me, because all the brakes I've tried had their own quirks on install and this is such a simple procedure, but it barely got touched on from what I remember. I also think a lot of the reviews on the Mavens were overshadowed by a YouTuber who released a fairly negative review, despite using the wrong rotors, going straight to metallic pads, and using the same rotor sizes, all against SRAMs install advice. There have also historically (not unjustified) been a lot of anti-SRAM bias with brakes in particular, which fed the fire. So the whole thing turned into kindof a circus.