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From my perspective, the key theme emerging in this thread over the past few days is just how significant of a headwind the plateauing of performance has become for the broader industry. I’ve been hammering this point for a while, but it’s worth reiterating: there’s nothing inherent in bicycle engineering that guarantees the new model will be meaningfully better than the old one. Marketers do what they do best—convincing us that every new bike is a game-changer. Cognitive bias is powerful, and for years, we’ve all been conditioned to believe in the necessity of frequent upgrades (and I'd argue this...

The type of grips you run has a pretty substantial impact from my experience. Pure silicone grips provide more damping than lock-ons.

Bike tech is a circular cycle. You know what else is a circular cycle? Crab.

I wonder how long we will be left on the grandfathered cheaper Trailforks subscription...

My opinion... Used ebikes have the re-sale value of a pringles can left out in the rain for 4 weeks and full of water. Any real mileage on them (over 300-500) and there will be practically no interest, even at 50% under msrp. Not a shocker, but it's a turn in the market where your ownership decisions are now impacted by that. Previously, the move was either get a new ebike every year before the depreciation got gnarly, or just hold onto it and run it into the ground. Now the answer is clear, run it into the ground and...

fox asked to remove it, so i did. it wasn't public information. the difference between a trackside leak, rider leak or an admin mistake that a brand makes on a website.

apparently some guy mated a new front triangle to a balfa bb7 rear. pretty cool! (image found on fb):

BLE is the most fun bike ever. I ride mine more than anything and it just reminds me of why biking is fun!! We will keep selling them until there no more demand... But we are just limited by the batch sizes we can do. We know our bikes are expensive, but manufacturing here in the UK is expensive. And I promise we're not getting rich from doing this!! I think this is one of the key things people should think about when buying a new bike, do you want to make some fat cat buy another yacht or help...

Before I started making bikes, I had a variety of different designs, but had always preferred single pivots. They just felt more lively and engaging to ride. And even thought I was doing a bit of racing, I felt this was most important. It's never the bike that is slowing me down, so a bike that I felt most confident on was always going to make me the fastest. I think I nailed geometry pretty early on via quite a bit of testing of different variations. But pretty much for the whole of Starling's time, geometry has remained unchanged. We've...

I've always heard brake jack is terrible on single pivots. True/false/thoughts. I'll come back to Brake Jack, but in my experience it's no worse on our bikes. Just learn to brake in the right places, this is the most important skill for being a good rider!

From what I can gather, almost all D2C and online fulfillment will eventually be consolidated into that massive warehouse in SLC they picked up roughly a year or so ago. Along with many other things like all warranties, wheel/suspension services, and their internal schooling. As for all the well wishes…thank you. I’ve been turning wrenches for almost 20 years, and this is the first time I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me. I’ve already poked my head around locally and pinged some friends and things don’t look horribly bleak, so I got that going for me…which is nice.

@TayRob bummer to hear. that sucks.

I'm so sorry, what a crappy thing to go through ☹️

I got a 9am text message from our regional manger saying to give him a call, he said we were shut down, and to refer to one of our HR people with any questions. We’ve got three days to get our personal stuff out of the building, and they’re thankfully paying us through the month of February so all of us have a fighting chance to possibly find work. There was no warning, no communication from anyone high up enough in the company that could make a decision like this, and little to no remorse for booting six people out...

That super duper sucks. Sorry man. Do you get two weeks or a severance package, or just "bye" in email form?