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Its not crazy at all to think that he is making more than an engineer at the company, almost any other sport is like this. Its just a bike company we are talking about its not like you need to pay an engineer 250K a year.

Also, someone must get to the bottom of where Norco is finding all this money in 2024 and 2025 with the bike market being in the dumpster. Greg, team manager and part-time racer has to still be commanding $200-250K+/yr. Then 6 factory-level riders. Granted the only 'big names' are Danny and Erice (Danny likely still came at a discount, maybe $175k). But still, having 6 full-time riders, Greg part-time. That's a ton of mechanics, travel expenses, etc. And their marketing budget is considerable, based on what they did last year with the videos and design. This fresh team announcement video...

norco team is official - danny hart, erice van leuven, gracey hemstreet, lucas cruz, bodhi kuhn and lina frener full PR here - https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/norco-race-division-unveils…

It was a Commencal actually

full frameworks PR for those interested - https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/anna-newkirk-joins-framewor…

Ah, yes, I’ve been concerned there aren’t enough choices in the stem category.

This is 10X the case in a closely held company if the controlling person/family is hellbent on going in some particular direction despite the financial warming signs. RAD/Rocky certainly has the structure where this could have happened. Their ebike drive units sound like they work well, but for a $100m company to develop something this complicated seems fraught. How the heck to do you scale enough to amortize the R&D in any reasonable way? Quick mental math is just a hell naw. I figure they bet the farm on deals such as the partnership for city bikes that fell through...

If anyone wants to connect the dots on who makes what and where this is a good site to waste some time in. Funny thing at least some of the POC helmets and TLD helmets are made by the same place. https://www.importyeti.com/

Companies are almost always headquartered where their owner wants to live in my experience. When an owner decides to move to Florida, the company usually "finds a competitive advantage in FL" really quickly afterwards. Have to imagine Sainte-George is where Raymond Dutil lives and grew up. And agreed, it's close to amazing riding right now, especially with the recent rise of the Quebec trail centers. And MSE and the ski hills have been big mtb spots for a really long time. But the company is named "Rocky Mountain", and Saint-George on the other side of the river from the big...

Question for the collective: How well-known are the frame manufacturing companies in Asia? Is it relatively easy to link a manufacturing company to a specific frame brand, or is the process more opaque? I’d love to map this out if possible. Here’s an analogy from semiconductors to explain what I’m asking: Nvidia designs, engineers, and sells GPUs TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s chips ASML provides the machinery TSMC uses to produce those chips To be clear, I'm not concerned about who makes the tooling for bike frame manufacturers (e.g., the mill), but I’m curious if there are key suppliers to these frame...

In the comments Neko says an opportunity came up with another brand. Sounds like Frameworks is breaking up with Hayes, not the other way around. Also great that it appears Frameworks is bringing in the suitors and getting paid.

Personally I'd say most of us subscribed to this thread do. If you find his posts too long winded then fair enough, don't read them, but for me Jeff brings great insight and knowledge to the thread, he's certainly given me a better understanding of the financial side of the bike world.

SILVER BRAKES MADE IN THE UK?! WON'T PEOPLE THINK OF THE YORKSHIREMEN THAT ARE NOW OUT OF A JOB? DISGUSTING

One thing that this made me think of with respect to Rocky was their desire to make their own e-MTB motor/battery and not take an off-the-shelf model from Shimano, Bosch, or others. I thought I remember this being a thing, though I see they license the unit from another Canadian company called Dyname who seem to only supply Rocky. Was this maybe a step too far for a medium sized company? It could have been something revolutionary in that Rocky would get to keep more of their sales dollars from the ever-growing e-bike market, but maybe they just don't have...

Better get the pitchforks out lads the ride vest is made in China

five bucks says he’ll find a way to stay on

Hans Rey can finally retire though