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This might be the only mtb forum where people actually get along 84 pages in, talk about REAL books in both finance and philosophy, and say sorry. Long live vital

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.

I, for one, cannot wait for our new Dandotal rubber overlord.

Can we make a forum thread where people complain about edit music, its guaranteed every single time sleeper post something that isnt 20-40 year old generic rock and metal. Let sleeper be a creative. As a big metal guy, this slaps.

How about Lobster or Shrimp links? Both are somewhat related to crabs and that's kind of what you look like when you ride an XC bike (hunched back to a low bar/stem. Just imagine the negative stems that will be on 32" XC race bikes... carcinization continues as Nino Schurter goes from GOAT to Lobster)

I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to be proud that WAO products are made in Canada and (were) owned by a Canadian and kinda bummed that it's now owned by an American. We may not have the overt patriotism that Americans do, but we're still pretty damned proud. How many Americans would stop buying or supporting distinctly American brands like i9 or Profile Racing if they were bought by someone outside of the US? I'm not sure it would be massive, but I'm sure there the sentiment would be similar. If it has to be someone, it sounds like...

No Warner, no Wyn, no Lawlor. They should probably cancel it at this stage.

Support your local dive shop!

I rarely think most modern bikes are actually interesting, some are cool, but not actually interesting. That Rallon is awesome and huge props to Orbea for making something that looks amazing and has features that actually benefit riders.

+2 for me, big big agree. But I’m still waiting for those sweet, sweet slideshows to make a return. Or maybe I just need a Spotify link to that low-tempo, bass-forward track that accompanied the slideshows, so I can cue it up and scroll… Spomer can you make that happen and bring back the old timey feels?

All the comments are visible as well, Vital has quality commenting, and I like to read em all.

https://ucimtbworldseries.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-sports-present… So enduro gets it's own "Drive To Survive" this year. Could be brilliant, could be cringe. For the love of enduro, please let this be good.

Tech Rumors and Innovation For rumors of tech. No one cares what chain stays you prefer take it somewhere else.

Loving the idea you guys think you know more than the dude who literally makes his living from sponsorships and has actually negotiated a contract. But yeana yea, you're probably right. Everyone's just lying to you for fun.

Did you get those launch coordinates from a group chat you were recently added to?

In the meantime, I have an incoming factory order of a couple thousand mtb pants that are going to be hit with an additional 26% tariff, for 53.9% total import tax. India. That would be all fine and good, if: 1: I thought consumers would be wiling to pay 26% more. LOL. 2: Tariffs would hold at 53.9%. They won't, so I'll be in a permanent hole on this year's inventory. These import taxes will roll away within a few months. Businesses need a predictable environment in which to operate. If I knew the tariffs would actually be permanent and...

Allow me to express my enthusiastic support for not debating tax rates here. One of my favorite things about this thread is that we have people from all sides of the political spectrum talking about politics at a very deep level by mostly staying out of the incendiary stuff- tax rates, redistribution, economic philosophy, etc, the stuff that Jeff described as " value debates that will never (ever) work on a screen." If we can stay focused on the economic factors that directly impact the bike industry, I hope we can continue having this wonderful and productive conversation across our...

Hi y'all, Longtime reader, though I rarely post. Some context I run a small non-bike company in Sheridan, WY. We make a ton in house, import a little, and outsource a bunch to other companies in the US. We do about 40% of our sales in Canada. These tariffs will put the brakes on the entire economy. My business is well positioned to make 100% of our product in the US, which would seemingly be a boon for us. But who is going to be able to buy it? Will our customers in Canada want to buy our products at...

As a former recipient of the award, I hereby nominate TEAMROBOT for 2025 VitalMTB Commenter of the Year.

To be fair, it's also possible that competitively priced and highly specialized manufacturing will pop up in the U.S. at enormous scale with armies of knowledgable, specialized non-immigrant workers in the next month to save us from these high costs. That's all we need. Well, that and in-country raw material extraction for materials that often don't exist in our borders in the quantities we need, like bauxite, rubber, lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, etc. But if we can figure out those two aspects in the next month we'll be fine.