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Lopes yelled at my son and his friend to "put their helmets on" during a transfer at an enduro once.

Oh, and @TEAMROBOT once gave me crap about my Race Face wheel review.

ben cory has a nickname for me.

Whenever I see something like this bike, it gives me horrible Proflex flashbacks. Leave it to some motorcycle engineer to come up with this because his bro with a E bike asked him to do it. Nobody’s even mentioning how the geometry of this thing is completely buggered now. Remember when 29er forks all sucked because they had the trail measurement/crown offset completely wrong? Also, dual shocks?

"There are CEOs, CFOs, fund managers & capital allocators that have built their entire career on a net-zero interest rate environment." This is well said, and pretty scary to think about. People who have only ever thought in terms of high risk, long-runway projects and now have to learn to live within their means and make money the boring, slow, old fashioned way- selling physical products to actual customers. Makes me think about Silicon Valley, where seemingly any and every idea was getting funded and the revenue model was "sometime we'll make tons of money, somehow, in the future." I...

Isn't it an 8t? Also, not a pulley, it's the electric motor drive sprocket! A whole different thing 😜 Also sprag clutches are spongy due to their design, the forces in the sprags are high and they deform quite a bit. And because of the leverage ratio that's very noticeable on the pedals. Kinda like the sponginess of the front brake vs. the rear brake (a longer hose in the rear takes up more lever throw to deform).

I never thought I'd get to talk about the interest rate environment, capital allocation & what the past can teach us about the present/future in a mountain bike forum. First, Robot is right in the big picture that its not business Armageddon and rates have certainly been higher most of history. Funny enough, I think BofA released a chart showing the history of interest rates from ~3,000 BC to now (or at least it was circulating on Twitter/X recently). Turns out, for most of the period following the time of Jesus & the Roman Empire to now rates were somewhere...

I'll be damned, cause I never thought I'd see an historical fed funds rate chart in a mtb forum. The point is spot on. Rates aren't "high," they've just returned to historical norms after being suppressed for way too long. Or put another way, and not to minimize anyone's individual economic struggles, the cost of borrowing money isn't anything to get upset about - it's about what it's always been, setting aside the insanity of continuing Great Recession policy way too long.

The "free money machine" is turned off, kinda, but it's not like it's business armageddon because the Fed raised the interest rate. The current Fed Rate is 5.5% and, historically, that's not crazy. For reference, Paul Volcker bumped the fed rate all the way up to 20% in the 80's, which really is rough. For anyone who cares, I've included a graph below of the fed rate since 1954. For about half of the graph the fed rate is at or above 5%. The fed interest rate has been bananas since 2008 when it dropped all the way down to...

LOL. Fair. But its better than the company ceasing to operate. Plus, if you read between the lines here I'm obviously just hoping a google search brings this thread up and they reach out to hire me to run the portfolio of bike cos they are rolling up...

This is a good synopsis of "how did we get here" if anyone doesn't want to parse through a bunch of other posts. I think the fun part is to look to the future being I can broadly agree with Dave's recap (few quibbles, but not important for this conversation). Here are the keys to consider when peering into your crystal ball/magic 8 ball. 1) Mountain biking went through a phase of increased demand during COVID. This demand is better thought as "pulling future demand to the present". This means higher than average demand was followed by lower than average...

I'd wager if Wiggle goes under what would happen is all the brands would be sold off in bankruptcy. It honestly could be a killer opportunity for the right private equity fund to pickup a good asset at pennies on the dollar, depending on what the balance sheet/income statement really looks like. One thing we never can be certain of in the space is how a brand is really doing. Good product & meaningful profitability don't always go hand in hand.

You couldn't have a mechanical transmisson, it would always force instant shifting where as transmission is slightly delayed to only shift when ready.

That was an excellent article. Shops can be their own worst enemy, and crap customer service [ESPECIALLY towards women] is enemy #1. Regardless of the unpleasantness inflicted upon the IBDs by the big brands, if a shop doesn't nail that customer experience, they're going to be roadkill eventually. Seriously, how hard is it to say hi to somebody when they walk in the door? Or treat your customers the same regardless of their appearance? The author's other comments about growth having to come from outside the existing customer base via the mobility market also rang true for me. Lots of...

Bump for some (not so good but) foreshadowed news. https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2023/10/17/signa-sports-u… Looks like Nukeproof and Vitus having some difficulties.