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Matt Walker & Chris Hauser confirmed trek factory via race registration for Tennessee National.

To echo what @Robbie420 mentioned, Gates is a massive and highly profitable company, generating over $400 million in free cash flow just last quarter. They likely spend far more on their company Christmas party than on the belt drive bounty for bikes. Put another way, $100K isn't even a rounding error for a company of that scale, its almost insignificant. Regardless of size, from my perspective, it's an interesting bet. On one hand, I’m all for incentivizing brands to adopt belt-driven gearboxes. Personally, I’m very interested in designing bikes that eliminate the conventional drivetrain altogether, even with a weight penalty...

Ah yes, the BlackRock Family Owned Business (TM). There is a big giant internet out there for you to go troll. Please leave this little thread alone, if you don't mind.

For those playing along at home, here’s where we stand with the most ridiculous rumors so far… #3 - Phoebe Gale off FMD, going to Reece Wilson’s new AON team, after being prominently featured in the Orbea FMD press release. #2 - Aaron Gwin back to mentor the kids on lower budget Trek Factory after becoming a partner in Crestline bikes last year. #1 - Old man Dan Atherton returning to stomp $$$ DH podiums on a prototype belt drive after his most recent 57th at a 2018 Crankworx stop. There’s a few others close to the top 3, but...

Seriously?

lost backcountry, replaced with jenson lost E13, replaced with ? "close to me" lost camelback, replaced with ? "moto enduro brand"

intense factory on EXT

This is Atherton's brand new HQ in Wales. Do you know how much a brand new purpose building like this costs? Lots of ££££££, before you pay dollar one on staff costs. Whenever I see big cool new shiny corporate HQ's in bike world, I think the companies think it's supposed to impress me, but it just worries me. A lot of the Bellingham companies got shiny new offices in high rent areas in the last 5-10 years and each of them took my breath away in a not-so-great way.

Since we're all beating this dead horse, I'll close with a few thoughts. Assumption on Capex: You all are right, AB could be outsourcing all of their additive manufacturing and CNC work. However, if this is true, its going to make scaling the business harder than it already is and per unit costs higher. Not saying its impossible, but you are either caught carrying all sorts of inventory in the form of lugs and links, or you are somehow ridiculously tight with the vendors that are doing all this work for you, and risk long lead times and lost sales...

I hear you, and again, I like a lot of what they’re doing. I want to be clear that when I’m being critical of a company, it’s not meant personally—it’s just an assessment of what I see, and requires a whole bunch of assumptions to be made (which might be wrong). Much like the original post I made in this thread about GG, I really do tip my cap to anyone who takes risks and makes things happen, but I’m also going to analyze where any company might’ve gone wrong or what I see as questionable decisions. This is largely...

I wanted to follow up my earlier post with a few more details as to why I made my Atherton Bikes (very speculative) prediction. Again, please take my thoughts with a giant grain of salt. This was a total hare brained speculative Monday morning musing I probably should have kept to myself. In any event, here is why I feel really any brand like AB has a challenging future ahead. All performance continues to asymptote. Paying more for a product is getting the bike rider less and less in the way of absolute performance. While I know Atherton has a...

We should probably do a few predictions posts, eh? I've got a number of thoughts going into the new year, and will synthesize them into one post, but I do think we're going to see more companies pull the plug this year. I'll go out on a limb and say Atherton Bikes may be one of those stragglers who calls it quits. I have literally no data on this, so please take this with a huge grain of salt, but when I was poking around their website I realized I can't just "buy it now" with respect to a frame...