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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...

I think that the deeper you dive into this stuff, and the more opportunities you have to meet the people designing these mtb things, the more sympathy you develop and the more understanding you have over the flaws in the products. You lose the “everything sucks, the brands are selfish assholes who never give me the stuff I want for the price I deserve to pay” and gain a perspective like “damn it takes a lot of work to make bikes that ride this sick, and there is a ton of money that goes into this damn sport to fuel...

but you can't really compare wireless xtr to transmission, it's more like eagle axs and that was also compatible with existing 12 speed. shimano is 6 years late if we're being honest.

So new XTR headlines are: no cables, no clutch and the wandering bite point might be resolved? Am the only one who was hoping for some more tangible upgrades?

I hope that tarrifs get presented to us consumers in the "resort fee" or "service charge" itemization fashion for as many products as possible. With that reality staring people glaringly in the face, it will show the remaining sheep that stay aggressively igornant, exactly what the choices of the executive branch are costing them. That will of course be difficult, similarly to the example being discussed above where a dtc brand may pass the tarrif through on a 1/1 basis, but a wholesale/distributorship model has a quadratic price increase as it passes through the line. Maybe if people see the...

While typically I agree that add-on prices are an annoyance, I find the idea of adding a tariff fee line item pretty interesting. https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/04/16/specialized-an… It's a brands way of saying "The price of the actual product didn't go up, but the fees associated with getting the product here did." Seems like a good way to clearly assign responsibility for why consumers are paying more now. It's worth noting that if Spech is charging dealers 10% of dealer cost, or consumers 10% of MSRP for DTC sales, as opposed to the actual 10% of their imported invoice cost, then they are...

This goes without saying, but I do not like what this administration is doing with tariffs. I won’t repeat in detail what many of you have already nailed but to summarize: these policies are destabilizing, costly, inflationary, and may very well lead to higher interest rates (all very bad for a very global bike industry). And for what? I’ve yet to see a compelling argument, even a theoretical, about the long-term upside. For fun, I'll give you my "best case" scenario, but this isn't so much what I think will happen, just what could hapen. Oh, and in case nobody...