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In the podcast on NSMB, Dustin said that they were tariff exempt as their carbon all came from the US.
In a weird moment of luck, I got to go to a party/bbq at Clint's house once. How he came off in that pinkie interview is exactly the person I met and blabbed with for an hour plus. Jovial, convivial straight shooter, lights are on, everyone's home, and they're having a great conversation type of guy. Certainly, someone on a forum somewhere is bemoaning WAO getting gobbled up by a US co, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a better person to acquire their business.
On a forum somewhere... just go read the comments on the pink site LMAO. It's like today Canada died.
And yes, as a local, Clint is a cool guy and generally respected. If WAO was on the ropes as we believe they were, this is a great partnership.
Yeah I don't think the cost difference is as big as people think - aluminium frames still need a lot of labour per frame vs the large up front cost of a carbon frame so the longer they run it the more the costs would even out.
Also I don't think they've had a production alloy bike for a long time, so while they probably have the capacity to produce alloy mules for prototyping, it might not be enough for proper race bikes. The other thing is at least a carbon race bike gives them some useful data from a materials point of view that could be put in to the other models.
My general rule is to not read the comments. My way of trying to maintain the illusion that people are reasonable :D
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 Clint is a good fit, but still a little sad about it.
(And for the record, I've got WAO's laced to Profile Elite MTB hubs, so I'm definitely not anti-American)
Our current government and media loves rage baiting so I am not too surprised with all the whining about WR1 merging with i9. I bet you none of these people bothered watching the 1.5hr interview or read the F.A.Q. on i9's press release either. It is simply a knee jerk reaction to the headline. Don't worry, they will go buy a cup of coffee at Timmies after all the raging.
In reality, WR1 is still going to operate in Kamloops and provide jobs for the locals there. Clint and Dustin have a history of working together and this merger is really to save WR1 from "stakeholder bullshit".
https://industrynine.com/we-are-one-acquisition?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAacAMSJKwsB846zJpLjJrZT2nlUDosQwZOBRZWh10pnR5IncpHgF950JVKAmTw_aem_GMYrVRBsy4sWykTmaXP9IA
Read the interview and understand the reasoning. My (slight) disappointment has nothing to do with the current political stuff. I'd be sad to see a Canadian company fall under outside ownership, regardless of what's happening on the international stage.
Also, Tim Hortons is garbage coffee and has always been garbage coffee. Support local roasters who work with and buy from small farms. Quality > quantity for bikes and for coffee. Lol.
You are 110% correct. The lil company that could, for sure, but needed deeper pockets to really reach their limits. I'm just stoked they didn't succumb to the PE buyout that has plagued many an industry the last 20 odd years. Having someone with the smarts, passion, and especially capital to help both brands grow sounds like a game winner to me.
(And not all us Yanks share in your sense of all of our overt 'patriotism'. A lof of us folx think that the more flags we see someone displaying the less likely they are to understand the depth and intent of our Constitution, but that ain't a topic for here.)
In the interview it sounded like Clint was very open to selling the whole shebang back to Dustin when he decides to step down 😀 (And yes, it's much too early to make any predictions but it was clear from the interview that Clint thinks extremely highly of Dustin and places a lot of value on his insight and experience).
That was not my take-away from what he said, and also not my experience on what happens to companies this size when the founder/chairman steps aside. With the words Clint used, he was suggesting that the company would go to a split ownership strategy (multiple leaders in the company take out SBA loans to buy him out). My experience, is that can and does happen, but more commonly, the company is converted to an ESOP and the owner is bought out over a 5 year period.
There are good and bad examples of both. This is a made up statistic... but it matches my perception/experience from my own marketplace dealing with companies that are exactly like i9... Around 50% of the time +/- an ESOP conversion and owner buyout strategy is un-successful. It draws down the working cashflow position of the company too much. It can work, if you time that buyout right with the right backlog absorption and market stability over the buyout period. In reviewing financials for companies that are either entering or within this transition, you can see the precarious nature and in some volatile markets, I'm convinced it's a fools errand. Many times, what I've seen is that this reduction in available cashflow aligns poorly with a momentary or moderate loss of leadership, which makes for a very difficult period to work through.
We are seeing this a ton in my industry as the baby boomers retire and there isn't a wealth of investors, or younger people looking to buy those companies and continue. I would also argue, that a nepotism strategy of passing the business to the idiot children is also about 50/50 successful, so it's really not as if ESOP is any worse then other methods of transfer of ownership. I do genuinely believe in the high level theory of esop's, and I know of a few that are not only successful, but highly lucrative for those that stick with the company for long periods of time and gain significant investment shares that are bought out when they retire.
Back to the fork in the road option of a multi-owner strategy based on key leaders assuming a buyout. That does to me, feel like a more certain strategy. The company I work for, entered into this strategy when the original owners moved on from the business 30 years ago and we just successfully transferred ownership for the second time. We are a 400-500M a year business with strong financials, but we, similarly to many mountain bike industry small/mid-size players, play in a very volatile market.
Here's Hans Rey's Thank You video to GT.
Wild to see. End of the era.
The first mountain bike magazine I saw had Hans Rey in it with the GT MTB team of the early 1990's (Rishi Grewal, Juli Furtado, Missy Giove). The first MTB video which blew my mind was of Hans doing trials on a GT triple triangle hardtail. Hans is one of the reasons why I've always wanted to ride a GT growing up and why it was the first bike I bought as soon as I got a job and could afford it.
Apologies for the off-topic post.
Right there with ya. Zaskar with a Mag 21.
These are some good insights. I don't see a lot of ESOPs, but I'd add a higher-level, threshold factor to whether an ESOP is successful for the business and remaining employees: is the selling owner truly interested in rewarding longtime employees and ensuring the business carries forward, or are they approaching the ESOP purely from a standpoint of income-tax planning and maximum benefit for themselves. In the podcast, Clint struck me as firmly in the first group, which helps an awful lot.
As this thread has kinda become a state of the industry thread I thought this might be the right spot.
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/06/16/devinci-offers-oe-production-qu%C3%A9bec%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98aluminum-valley%E2%80%99
Devinci looking for more OE manufacturing for other brands. Surprised to see it it say that hyrdoforming comes from Asia, forgings make sense but I thought all the tubing was drawn and formed locally in QC.
How about a Chromag aluminum DH frame made in QC? Or Norco having a run of their DH frame made there. Rocky Mountain would do well to take advantage of it.
If I understand this correctly this will take the already enormous price of framesets and push them even higher since they will get no tariff relief? So we're in a similar situation we are with ebikes, since shipping them requires them to be a complete bike, framesets are extremely rare.
So this raises a further question: Is Devinci shipping raw aluminum or aluminum tubes to Asia for hydroforming and then back to Quebec, or is the alloy for hydroforming sourced elsewhere?
I have no idea. I would think that the tubes are drawn and hydroformed locally. It doesn't make sense to make any claims about being near the source of aluminium production but ship the in process materials around the world before welding up a frame. I could see the forgings coming from Asia.
I know some local guys were just there shooting some manufacturing videos maybe that has some more behind the scenes info buried in it when it comes out.
Edit: I just looked back at older factory tours and no sign of in-house tube forming. I would think if they did form the tubes in house it would have been shown.
The article says "The company sources hydroformed aluminum frame parts from Asia"
I've searched, but I don't know of any domestic sources for anything other than the simplest, straight wall, inch sized, aluminum tubes. I believe the draw benches from Easton (California) were exported to Hodaka (Taiwan) in the 2000's.
I realize that there is no domestic supply for bike tubing. At the size and location of Devinci I would expect they can have their own tubing drawn locally by a company like Alfiniti.
Quebec produces 4% of the worlds aluminium (70% of North American) and has significant resources there locally in the region for aluminum post processing.
I have heard rumors that there might be a butting draw bench somewhere on the continent. Maybe Devinci has it.
Obviously the two of you guys, specifically, have far more knowledge than I do on how bikes are built, so I'll ask this. It strikes me, a layman, that in modern alloy bikes, saying they "[source] hydroformed aluminum frame parts from Asia" mean they source.... most frame parts from Asia on most of their FS bikes? It just leaves me wondering what's really coming out of QC factories and into my Devinci and what isn't. Brian's raised the obvious inference from the article (and other press releases) - it seems that by highlighting the fact alloy Devinci's are made in-house and that the factory is proximate with world-renowned Canadian aluminum manufacturers, Devinci is allowing, if not outright asking, readers to finish the article having made the assumption that there's some level of QC aluminum in Devinci bikes.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not out to start a witch hunt about how Devinci doesn't have enough Canadian aluminum in their bikes - the fact that they can import tubes and weld in Canada, and not only stay in business but seek to expand is very cool - I'm just curious if there is any of the QC product going into production bikes rather than prototyping and procedure, and if so, what's the breakdown.
A lot of people use the word hydroformed when they mean 'shaped in any way'. That use of language might've been encouraged by marketers and has now become colloquially accepted. In reality most shaped tubes are mechanically formed, pushed, swaged, squeezed, not hydroformed.
Hydroforming (and it's sibling process hot air forming) came to the bike industry after bike tube production had relocated to Asia, so I think all the bike tube hydroform machinery is over there.
This might be a controversial opinion, but hydroforming is very often (not always) done for aesthetic not functional reasons. It's very often marketing BS adjacent.
Anyway, regarding Devinci, if they have a forming tools and a tube butting machine (draw bench) they could conceivably make all of their tubes in house. (Actually plenty of MTBs seem to forgo butting recently and just tell people weight doesn't matter). Because they mention importing hydroformed tubes it's safe to assume they do import some - I'd guess that ebike motor and battery housings would warrant that.
Just remembered this. Litespeed has a draw bench they still use to custom draw their own tubing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X6wb_neCD8
Thanks @earleb , great info. I used to work with ABG so I've probably seen that tool, maybe I'll give them a call.
I did find someone in San Diego with a draw benches for steel tubes but they said they wouldn't (or didn't want to) work with aluminum.
How is your French?
https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/QQLA/TC-QQLA-27565.pdf
DEVELOPPEMENT D'UNE MACHINE POUR L'ÉTIRAGE À FROID DE TUBES D'ALUMINIUM 6063 À ÉPAISSEUR VARIABLE
A research paper between University Laval, Devinci, and Alfiniti to build custom cold draw bench for butted 6063 tubing.
Thanks so much. I'll confess that I really don't want to get into that. Making frames, links and shocks is already plenty.
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