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Arc’teryx is in a very different position to most brands entering MTB, and the current numbers make it clear why they can afford to treat it as a fringe category without pressure. They sit inside the Technical Apparel segment of Amer Sports, which also owns Salomon, Wilson Sporting Goods and Atomic. That group context matters because it brings scale, shared sourcing, and a long track record of operating across multiple technical categories. Looking at FY25, the business is moving fast. Total revenue hit $6.57B, up 27%. Technical Apparel alone grew 30% to $2.86B, with 19% omni-comp growth. That tells you...

One challenge with low volume apparel is amortizing the development cost. Soft goods sometimes cost more to develop than hard goods as it's a ton of labor making patterns, sewing up samples, testing, reworking the protos, repeat this several times, then have the factory make a few pre-production samples to make sure they interpreted your tech pack correctly. You also need to validate for durability (all brands do this, right? RIGHT?). It's as much voodoo as it is hard science, which means lots of back and forth. Yes, we give them CAD files for patterns, but it's still all hand...

@sethimus @Evil96 @CascadeComponents I love, like love-love, that someone with an engineering background (and seemingly a degree) and a wealth of manufacturing experience provided factual mathematical evidence, and it has been refuted by "I believe the manufacturer of this shiny new thing I bought", like conformation bias doesnt exist or something.... There's a quote about facts and opinions that I'm trying to remember here...... it'll come to me....

Unfortunately I'm an idiot, so I'll answer your question even if it is sarcastic. I found a known value that's easy to measure, the rear brake rotor. I set it to 203mm (as mentioned in a bike check from my memory) 16.2cm = 6.377 inch, rounded up however the app used rounds things and also not a perfect angle. Closest match for phone size would be a Iphone 16/17 pro max at 16.3 cm or a google pixel 9/10 at 6.3 inches. I'm going to go with the iphone 16/17 pro max. I should touch grass. I'm also either going...

Higher pressure puts more load on the seals, which in turn adds friction. It also pushes on the area of the shaft so with a large shaft and/or high pressure you effectively add extra preload. The difference between a low pressure, small shaft system and something with a higher spring force would be over 10kg at the shock so if you can safely reduce that its worthwhile. As for the IFP itself, a larger diameter needs to travel less for an equivalent shaft displacement compared to a smaller IFP so it can respond much quicker as well.