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Not sure why the downvotes are coming in. This year, a brand at their Canadian dealer event brought all their A-level dealers into a meeting and asked them "our ~130mm trial bike that we're really proud of isn't selling, what gives and what do we do with the next one?" and the dealers, nearly unanimously said "it can't be 37 pounds in that category". While it's true the demands on trail bikes have never been higher, if I'm going to be pushing a bike that weighs the same as a 160mm bike, pedals the same as a 160mm bike, and...

The new Revolver FS is going to slay as both an XC and trail bike!

Can't wait till mine arrives! I have previous generation and man that bike punches well above its weight class. It came along with me to a 1st place in my age category at Galbraith enduro this year and has had to deal with my poor decision making out on the trails all the time and does it without any fuss. Love what Norco has cooked up this new weapon.

new shimano pedal looking awesome!

RE: 2016: People may not remember this, but it was not a good year in the bike industry. Europe had terrible weather in March and April, Brexit was happening, there was an unforeseen glut of inventory (at the wholesale/distribor) level in the USA and China saw a big slowdown that caused their market to contract. If you go dig around you'll see stories on this stuff. As to the future, while I don't have a crystal ball, I do believe they'll hit their 2025 numbers. This is not inflation adjusted, just raw sales numbers. One thing I learned in working...

The question is why is the fuel now a freeride bike? (Almost) Started out as an XC bike right? Not complaining but it is weird.

Looks like the revolver is coming on Thursday

welcome to....

Eh I guess that's nice? Dissector was always an OK tire, not really better in any way than the Spec Eliminator. Do they last more than 6 rides? That's really what we all truly need to know. The Eliminator T7/9 grid gravity has been the burly, long lasting Dissector you've been wanting all this time. The new v2 Eliminator is more gravity focused than the old one. Better cornering and braking traction. Once I burn through my Spec tires I'm trying Contis to see if I've been missing anything.

I’m still sad we moved on from fork offset too early

New post up on the whole YT situation. Thanks to a sleuth-y VitalMTB member, financials were found (up until 2022). Huge shoutout...but I want to make sure he wants the shoutout first! Substack My Blog My Super Ugly Windows 98 Themed Blog (reader beware)

This is a world class forum/thread. As someone that departed a PE hot potato in my past life, its all an interesting read. Keep up the good insights, posts, observations. I just saw our fantasy rankings are listed on the left, so sad that I missed Andorra roster and got a friggin zero score, slipped about 200 places But-my wife is clocking a wonderful 69th place! no pun intended on her ranking number.

Gosh. What a heavy 24 hours in this thread! As somebody who only checks in every couple of days my emotions have been a rollercoaster over the past 20 minutes, reading through all of this. Jeff - Thanks for both the knowledge and your openness. You just hit me with a dose of "same!" I feel like a guy that is sitting on relatively specialized knowledge, and I'm incapable of getting people to listen to it or act upon it. Perhaps that's not the right interpretation of what you were saying, but no matter it made me feel a bit...

All I want to say is, Jeff, please don't leave! and Robot/Charlie, we still love you!

Jotegr +1 This thread is one of the main ones I read regularly and I became a member purely to contribute to it.

I don't have a horse in this race other than being very sad if Jeff stops posting his type of posts, and interacting with all of us in reply to help us along. It seems to me Jeff's posts were (are) nearly universally loved here, there's a reason I started jokingly referring to this thread as "bike industry talk and lessons in finance with Jeff". It would be a different landscape without Jeff and I hope he reconsiders.

Jeff, thank you for your insightful contributions on here, they are much appreciated. As someone who was out of work for a while due to the bike industry implosion it has been great to get a deeper understanding of the global and organisational factors that resulted in me and many of my colleagues finding ourselves out of work. It's been useful to rationalise the personal lived experience against some objective analysis from yourself and others. While I'm now working in a different industry I can see a lot of similar factors at play here and have my eyes open to...

Hey Jeff, I'm so sorry that my forum post bummed you out so much. It sounds like you want to stop posting on Vital entirely based on what I wrote. I'm so sorry it was so disrespectful. I have really appreciated your insights and analysis, and I think everyone has, and this bike industry forum in particular has been like a mini "intro to finance course" over the last 3 years based on everything you and other people (who know way more about this stuff than me) have contributed. Rereading what I wrote, I can see how my words may...

I agree that YT had an uphill road regardless of who was at the helm and perhaps no management team could have saved the ship. However, hindsight has a way of making things clearer than they actually were in the moment. To remind everyone, interest rates remained relatively low throughout 2021, COVID outcomes were still not totally clear (cities hadn't reopened fully), the MTB supply chain wasn't fully back online, and demand was hard to gauge (there wasn’t enough supply to base it on). Yes, some shops started to note that 2021 wasn't as gangbusters as 2020, but it was...