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Oh, and just to back up my assertion of the importance of the human component, here is a screenshot of what I have ordered from Amazon. I never ordered from Amazon any bike components, but I saw this deal and wanted to give it a try. Price was 394€ by the way (including 19% VAT) for a full XX1 Eagle groupset, shipped from Europe: First time I ordered, I received a RS rear shock (OE product). Seller told me to send it back and order again. Guess what I received. The same thing went on to happen for 4 orders...

Thanks for all the love Vital! My goal is to continue a career that allows me to contribute to another 1000 pages of the tech rumour thread.

When I refer to "manpower" I am talking about our in-house capacity. We manufacture/assemble our posts in Taiwan in our own facilities with our own team of now 13 people. That means every single post is assembled by ourselves, not, as it is otherwise often the case, by a "partner"/factory/assembler who is contracted to do all the sourcing, manufacturing, assembly to get the product ready in the box to sell. We draw every single part, source the suppliers, have them made, get them to us and then put everything together in our own facilities with our own machines. No post...

If you want to know the defnition of what a forecast is, I cna try to explain in my own words (that is how we work with forecasts and does not need to apply for others): For starters, we are an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) for many brands. That means that companies buy our products to put them on their complete bikes. Usually, before the beginning of a new year or model year, our customers will provide us with an estimate of their complete demand for a certain period of time. This estimate is called a forecast. This forecast can...

It's a very interesting and impressive interview. Thank you, Sam, for taking the time and going so much into detail and also Jeff, of course for trying and then making this happen! It was interesting to hear how YT experienced the turbulent times during covid. For us, I can say, that we already saw OE orders being postponed and cancelled already around Q2 2022. But the more important thing happened to me in April 2021. There was one particular OE customer who used to need around 1,500 post per year from us. End of 2019 (pre-Covid) we received a projected...

Commencal have had their media / video / production done in-house for a long time; Leon Perrin who made that video has been there for like 10 years now I believe? In that case it is worth noting as a very different business approach to marketing from just about every other company out there. That's why ALL of the video production is so coherent, on-brand etc, they've actually invested in having that capacity rather than the "throw $X at filmer Y to make a video with athlete Z about product A" that most other brands seem to have.

Blown away when the Method Man dropped. Like the actual visceral feeling you get when you see a rider you like with a proper run time video from a brand that does good work and the music is fire and the filming and editing is good and the track/zone is SICK... It's ALL coming together. Gave me the feeling I got as a kid popping in DVDs of the best skate/BMX videos. You KNEW it was going to be good. They couldn't afford for it to be bad. Despite saturation, kinda hard to get that feeling these days. The only...

with youtube you can use all kinds of good music these days without copyright strikes (just like insta reels or tiktok). the video won't get monetized but who cares when it amounts to like $87 for an action video under 30k views briole video and all commencal vids are 🔥

okay okay... just... on the TOPIC of whats good vs whats bad marketing for bikes (and me boomer-moaning about how it used to be cooler). this is EXACTLY... EXACTLY how you market your brand. I almost forgot how legendary Commencal's media production is cuz I feel like there were less concentrated edits in recent years. wow

I hit the steeps in Santa Cruz today with the shaven brakes and I’m pretty blown away with how powerful they are. It feels like a >50% increase in power from xt with MTX pads. I’m using the stock organic maven pads and it’s by far the strongest brake I have ever used. I had more control than I’ve ever had on the steepest trails. I’m a big fan of the maven calipers after today. Unfortunately I have also confirmed that the XT wandering is due to the lever. On sustained DH, the lever does pump out just a little...

Why yes, of course! During the Sinister bikes v Iron Horse east coast glory days, FTW and I would both have spares of all the small Sinister parts at local races and Daq had full spares kits when he was on the road with Ebbet and Smutok at Nationals and Crankworks. At Mt Snow Frank would often take bikes he didn’t even design or build back to the shop and patch cracks and ream things or spin up hardware over night for people. I never even saw him ask for money for that… Almost all the Iron Horse racers were...

The venn diagram overlap of "has enough money to mess around with expensive parts and has an expensive bike" and "does not own proper hex keys or a bike stand" is maddening.

What do you mean by “relative strength of forces”? This sounds like a misunderstanding of the physics as play within suspension. The conversation around unsprung mass relates to the acceleration of the wheel when it impacts a bump, and this acceptation is directly tied to the mass of the object being accelerated. While anecdotally you may not have noticed a difference in the added weight, 500-1000g is substantial. Apologies if I’m coming off strong, but I think it’s important to discuss anecdotal vs scientific/theoretical when talking about this stuff. I’m curious to see what Dave’s comments were on this. I’d...

I thought it was breathtaking that the riding images in the press release feature a rider with "YT MOB" pants and helmet. It's sort of like taking your best friend's recent ex out to a seafood dinner. It's not illegal, but it sure looks bad. Didn't realize they were still using the name and likeless of their ex-athletes on the site, too. Yikes.

Might be missing a point with YT's Tues release. Given the rapid turn of new company, who dis? to the release of an uncaged DH model kinda says these were not just in the pipes but landed prior to the dissolution of the old and inferior brand. These may have been picked up by the neu and impruved YT for .50/dollar or less, so could not only be a marketing gimmick but also a bit of a profitable one to boot.

I had one of the my ‘26 enduro frames in my hands a couple weeks ago. If literally hundreds of FTW built frames hadn’t passed through my hands over the last 25 years, I would be hard pressed to tell the difference, the start-stop marks on the welds were even in the same place Frank does them. Neko and Logan need margin and scalability to build a sustainable brand. That takes working with a more vertically integrated supplier- and there really isn’t anyone domestically that has the manufacturing firepower to match the amazing product and marketing firepower the Mullaly boys...

The single most newsworthy innovation is widely available USD forks. Regarding other things that stick out to me from this last year: -Chain Slap / Anti-kick back devices: E13 sidekick hub, DT Swiss DGDF -Drivetrain items: Shimano Wireless, Sram c70/c90 mechanical transmission -Misc suspension: MRP Lift Damper, Fox DHX/X2 lineup, Push Sv8/vtx, More Bomber/DHX aftermarket tuning options -Brakes: Hope's new lineup, Maven Base, Shimano's new brakes, Lewis Xerox Machine, thicker rotors, rotor shrouds -Ebike: Bosch cx gen 5, DJI avinox, specialized fast charger for levo 4 -Apparel/Accessories: Battery tire inflation pump madness, Canyon's new breakaway helmet design, The return of...

So as the year and this thread draws to a close, what were 2025's most significant innovations? What could get nominated for the Innovation Of The Year Awards? 32" wheels? That seems like nominating a shoe size. Fox's Glidecore air piston? That seems awfully similar to what Formula and perhaps others have used already. Some aspect of Shimano Di2? Maybe the wiggly shifter buttons or the angled brake levers? I really hope the greatest innovation isn't founders coming out of retirement in hope of saving their foundlings from extinction.

It all comes down to policy. Removing the gold standard isn’t an issue in itself. An independent fed is a good thing. Simply there has been a total failure in leadership since the 90s on both sides of the aisle. When Clinton left office we were on a path to completely eliminate our national debt by the late 2000s. Since then we have continually increased our costs (some good, some bad) while cutting taxes across the board. But the shift (or realistically return) of the government supporting business over normal folk started much earlier. When Eisenhower was president taxes on...