12 Aug 2010

After being asked yet again for a road frame with an Edge fork, I thought I’d put out the proverbial ‘I’m not happy, Jan’ to the guilty parties who make the life of small time custom bike builders (or maybe just ones from Australia) just that little bit more of a pain in the arse than it needs to be.

Back in late 2008, we were buying Edge components directly from Jake at Edge. He was very helpful and obviously keen to increase his business, and very keen to get Edge on our Tephra XCR test bike which featured in RIDE magazine.

Warwick,
How goes it? This is a great opportunity that we would like to jump on. What do we need to do in order to get a fork and wheels on this bike??

Before the XCR test, I was running a set of Edge 2.0 forks which they gave to me at their manufactured cost, which I thought was very generous.

Just when I thought I had negotiated some Edge wheels and forks for the test, I get handballed to this guy Peter Kyriakidis who was now apparently the new ‘Australian Distributor’.

Dear Warwick, thank you for your enquiry which Jake Pantone has forwarded to us as we are the Edge Composites Distributors in Australia and New Zealand and all sales are handled by us.

The price to you for the purchase of one Road 2.0 Fork is $615 ex GST and RRP is $981. We would need to know what rake you require before quoting a delivery time.

With regard to the wheelset, our standard builds use DT Swiss Aerolyte spokes and DT Swiss 240 or 190 hubs. The prices to you for one set of clinchers are $$3150 and $3,530 ex GST respectively with corresponding RRP’s of $5,050 and $5,650.

Warwick, please us know how we can assist you further.

I made it quite clear that I was not going to pay them a margin for showing their product on the bike, and that if they wanted the exposure, then I was not going to be the one to pay them for it - I wanted the products either free or at manufactured cost. The guy just couldn’t understand. On the phone he said to be “But Baum has to pay for their parts”, as if they were the beacon of fairness and righteousness.

“Let me make it simpler for you. Your logos are going to be plastered all over my bike, in a test paid for in lieu and negotiated over 6 months by me, and you want me to give YOU money for that exposure?”

Still nothing.

So as we were running out of time and I’d already promised the owner of the Tephra XCR Edge forks and I wasn’t going to pay 700 bucks for them, I had to give him my own set.

Of course literally within a month of the RIDE article going to print, I get a customer calling up saying “I want one just like that!”

Awesome.

So I send this Peter guy another email trying to figure out why he and vicariously Edge are trying to stooge me.

Hi Peter,
Does Edge now no longer have an OEM/Small order pricing structure?
I’ve already quoted my customer based on the previous pricing I have purchased forks for from Jake.
This bike we are currently doing for a customer is off the back of our recent very favourable review in RIDE Cycling Review of our new Tephra XCR, which featured your forks.
If I have to go back to my customer and reneg on my quote by such a huge amount, it’s not going to look good for any of us.
Can you see any possible solution?

Regards,
Warwick

Essentially I quoted the original prices I’d been given by Edge thinking they’d see the light, or at worst I’d have to get them grey market so I didn’t lose a whole pack of money for no good reason. Check the gumption of this guy.

We have quoted you the wholesale price which is the low volume price break. We would be happy to review this on the basis of a committed forward order plan over the year or for batch orders of more than 10 of each component.
Warwick, if I understand the sequence of your emails correctly, it seems you quoted prices to your customer and then enquired about the basis on which you could purchase the corresponding items. It is therefore remarkably inappropriate to imply that either Cycling Edge or Edge Composites can, or should, take any responsibility for you having done so.

At this stage, I was way past ‘Not happy, Jan’.

Hi Peter,
I really don’t understand your sales technique here.
Yes, your assumption about the ’sequence of emails’ is incorrect. I quoted my customer back in 2008 based on the 2008 “Industry Price List” prices I had, and now that the frame is ready to turn into a bike, I see here 3 months into 2009 I’m faced with a 125% price increase?
How does that exactly make me “remarkably inappropriate”?
Personally I’m finding your adversarial sales technique and gross overcharging just a bit more “remarkably inappropriate” than me trying to get a good deal for my customer.

My email was cordial and reasonable and based on the information I had, so it’s very disappointing to me to be affronted by such a reply, from someone who’s supposed to be a representation of the companies they import.

My only crime is not purchasing three months ago when I could have got the forks for a more reasonable USD185. I’ve supported Edge Composites in a very small way but a much as I can, but my custom and support appears to be frowned upon.

Is your level of courtesy based on volume of sales, or do you have some other yardstick?

Yeah, I got no reply from that one. I mean, the postie can’t deliver when the bridge has been burned down, right?

Essentially what Edge have done, I consider a particularly interesting morally and ethically questionable business practice. Peter Kyriakidis runs ‘Cycling Edge’ which is a retail outlet nee importer of Parlee, Moots et al.., so what they’re doing is deliberately pricing me out of the market in favour of some dude importer of other custom builders whom they do support. This is from the same company that says proudly on their website

In fact, we’ve been making….parts for the nation’s most fastidious frame builders…custom artisans who refuse to adopt the big box mentality. That said, their demands are higher….When you’re committed to the perfect marriage of art and engineering, you don’t settle for second best.

One thing you won’t find from Edge is a bunch of marketing hyperbola. Sure, we have a great PR and marketing department, but we’re 100% wholesome in our statements….You only have to look at who we partner with to develop our distribution to understand just how committed we are to checking every box that the entire team is worthy of representing. It’s all about walking it - and we’ve put plenty of miles in; as have our athletes.

What a bunch of crap. One rule for them, another rule for anybody else.

How easy would it have been to have sold me some parts at cost for the RIDE article, and allowed me to purchase Edge parts just like my US counterparts do, direct and at equitable prices, rather than handball me to some @$#%&@ with no long term brand building ideas short of ‘how much money will this sale make me?’.

Instead, I haven’t sold a single Edge part, and instead opted for Easton for our road builds (and now 3T).  It’s cost them sales and goodwill, all so some retailler can protect his over inflated bottom line.

Well if you’ve read this far you deserve a medal, but I hope it gives some insight of literally as a small business person what you have to deal with, month in, month out.

It’s the absolute height of irony of course, because it’s these companies that rely on small builders to give them the cachet when they’re start-ups, that are the same ones to reject them when the OEMS come calling.

Mmmm…..wholesome.

Posted by warwick @ 11:52 am

08 Aug 2010

I gotta say that upfront I don’t know much about what constitutes an ‘All-Mountain’ race. For me, an ‘All-Mountain’ bike is one you put up with it’s lack of climbing prowess for the extra grin factor on the way down. I can’t really see how you can feasibly have an ‘All Mountain’ race, because as any road racer will tell you, you can’t make up the time you lost on the climb on the downhill. I can see the attraction though - as DH and XC have become more polarising and more specialist, that leaves a whole bunch of people that aren’t really either, looking for somewhere to shove their competitiveness.

One such guy is obviously Mark Weir.  He seems like a pretty classy rider in that SoCal bogan kinda way, but as a guy who’s mantra (on of them anyway) is ‘you have to earn the downhill by riding up’, I can’t abide any sooky-la-la-ing from a rider of his Stateside calibre :

Weir would like it if Downieville was slightly more skewed toward the downhill portion of the race. As it stands, the overall all-mountain winner is decided by overall time, and even with the downhill win, Weir found himself close to eight-and-a-half minutes away from Giant Factory Team’s Carl Decker, who raced a 29in-wheeled Giant Anthem X cross-country bike.

“The cross-country was a blowout by super horsepower,” he said “It should probably be based on a point schedule. He [Decker] won the all-mountain on the climb. It was a great ride and he’s a great rider, but the margin was huge. You shouldn’t just have to ride the downhill; it takes the race out of the race.”

And so to does losing the hillclimb portion by - wait for it - eight and a half minutes.  But that’s the perspective of the typical American rider in their own sandpit.  They’re kings of it until someone knocks them off, and then they either cry it was unfair, or have a little cry into their beers.  It was the same when Craig Gordon went over to the US enduro scene where Team Trek had dominated for years, and then he handed them their arse. (and put himself in hospital, but that’s beside the point!).  It was the same when the World Cup circuit was created and dominated by Europeans in vast amounts in all disciplines, leaving the Seppos (and us for that matter) crying in a puddle. (Yes I know Decker is North American, but he’s also not a guy trying to climb on a 6″ travel bike)

It’s a matter of perspective whether or not in a race where the net elevation gain/loss is zero, whether or not the downhill section was simply ‘ridden’, or whether or not the loser couldn’t climb for shit.  How can you reconcile what is more valuable?  How on earth could a ‘points system’ make anything more equitable?

Honestly, I can’t see how an ‘All-Mountain’ race could possibly work. Mostly because the entire concept of ‘all mountain’ is a non competitive act, but also because it’s built around guys who can’t climb to save their lives but whom relish the downhill. Isn’t that just a downhill race with an annoying bit tacked on?  What about have it all downhill, but only mildly downhill, with a few short climb pitches you can probably power over anyway?  I was yawning just typing that.

So, I decry the sandpit sandbaggers and their stupid ‘new class’ of racing - but wait - I have an alternative!

The Mountain Bike Septathlon™ or MTB-Sep for short.

What it is, is riders race every off-road discipline know to man - XC, DH, Trials, BMX, 4-Cross, Singlespeed, Cyclocross, and the winner truly takes the crown of ‘All Mountain’ Champion.

Coz lets face it, who wants to the the local champion of “Mild Downhill bit where the uphill part doesn’t count because Weir had a sook about losing that bit by 8 minutes”?

I’m definitely on a winner.

Posted by warwick @ 8:46 am

28 Jul 2010

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Posted by warwick @ 5:26 am

25 Jul 2010

Honestly, I don’t understand mainstream bicycle manufacturers. Almost every road bike we’ve ever done, the customer has shown us his current bike and the seat has been slammed all the way back on it’s rails, and yet manufacturers still think a 73 degree seat angle is still a good mean.

This is Cadel Evan and George Hincapies bikes, courtesy of the journalistic geniuses at cyclingnews.com (btw fellas, these aren’t the same frame). See the saddles? Slammed all the way back on the most layback seatpost I’ve ever seen.

Now with tube based designs, there is a limit obviously to how far you can layback the seat tube angle, and how short you can have the stays, before the tyre crashes into the seat tube, but with carbon? No such excuse.

And the short chainstay myth? With any given material, through wall thickness and shape optimisation, you can make any length chainstay as stiff or as flexible as you like. Length has almost no bearing on stiffness, so any designer really can create any length chainstay they like and still have it stiff.

All this boils down to then is simply the inertia of a paradigm devoid of meaning, from companies that are so scared to do the right thing that they will only be as different from one another as they dare.  In the process, they bring along the baggage of a time when bicycle design is more about cost optimisation than anything meaningful like real world ergonomics and individuality.

So thanks BMC and all you other Tupperware manufacturers for keeping this nice point of differentiation between yourselves and us custom guys. It makes the job just that little bit more rewarding.

Posted by warwick @ 1:12 am

04 Jul 2010

With alarming re-occurrences of shorter and shorter intervals, there seems to be always some sort of bike industry related retardedness that I have to prevent from crushing my soul. Whether it’s the parochial attitudes of parts wholesalers, the incessant retroism of the custom crowd, or the repeated denigration of design as an important part of creating custom bicycles (?), there’s always something to keep me amused, shocked, or running to the toilet.

About a month ago, I posted a fairly inane comment regarding a frame with ‘faux’ truss forks, putting forth a fairly benign challenge for anyone to come up with some engineering backing up the design.

This is a Pereira, but it could easily have been a Mclung, or half a dozen other builders paying ‘homage’ to the design. I commented -

Find me a structural engineer that will concur that those struts to anything whatsoever and I’ll eat a kangaroo.

And then came the comments from the peanut gallery. It’s tone is akin to chiming into a Christian forum and proclaiming “What proof do you have?” (Names have been deleted so I don’t get emails along the lines of “how dare you repeat my public comments” or something equally absurd. Except my own because whatever I say online is exactly what I’d say in reality).

Thylacine Cycles said:
Find me a structural engineer that will concur that those struts to anything whatsoever and I’ll eat a kangaroo.

What A Pear said:
Warwick,
I’m pretty sure that any structural engineer would concur that they do something. I have nothing but experience to believe that those forks wouldn’t hold up without them. I’ve raced my own version of this bike at 24 hours of Moab (a rocky and punishing course) and ridden it all over Oregon for a few years. I can’t imagine that the fork would have held up to such use without the struts. But, then again, I’m not an engineer. I’ll have to ask one.

Fanboi001 said:
Über-cool, as always!!!

Denouncing Engineer said:
I have a degree in mechanical engineering XXXX. They do something, but I would trust your real world experience over my text books…they don’t call it a B.S. for nothing! Fucking hot bike bro.

Oblivious said:
All I can say is……WOW, that’s beautiful!

BigGob said:
I wonder if Kangaroo tastes anything like Crow?

Spewhi said:
Crow/Kangaroo… Both probably taste like your foot. I’ve been lucky enough to have the second Roaring 29er that Tony Built. Essentially, it’s the been my “go to” bike for the past year and a half. While I won’t say anything about the fork specifically I will say that mine is the best riding rigid mountain bike I’ve ever thrown a leg over. The ride qualities of the frame (geometry, mat …

Thylacine Cycles said:
Yeah, I’m eating crow with all the wonderful counter arguments such as “I wouldn’t trust my ME textbooks”, “I won’t say anything about the fork specifically”.

What A Pair said:
Warwick,
Reviving this after two months? What’s the point? Truly it really doesn’t matter whether they do anything or not. People like the way it looks and the way it rides. What else matters? You got a bone to pick?

Actually yeah, I do.

Firstly, I’m questioning the validity of the design. Despite the exchange and despite the fact that Pereira did not come up with the design, nothing was put forward to change my hypothesis.

Secondly, I did not attack Tony, yet the fanbois are very quick to jump to his defence. I’m sure he’s a grown-up and I hope that like any professional, he’s mature enough to accept some questioning regarding design. It happens in every other sector of the design community, but more often than not, people can’t tell the difference between a ‘personal attack’, and a ‘call for debate’.

Thirdly - and almost most absurdly - one poster reportedly with a degree in ME is espousing ignoring any engineering!  That’s kinda like a doctor letting the patient treat themselves. “Just go with your gut feeling!  I’d trust that over my 7 years in school anyday!”

The pearler was left for last. Apparently, if you question a design, and then someone supposedly to be qualified to assess said design says “Just ignore the facts” apparently that’s a big win for the originator of the design! It’s like being forced to watch an American teen movie and everyone is high-fiveing eachother because someone farted.

Of course I have to put this disclaimer in because that’s the atmosphere of the custom bike industry. I’ll say this once, so if you don’t get it, read this next part 10 times so it sinks in :

None of this is an attack on Pereira, it’s an call to arms to question aspects of bike design that really need it. At no stage did I attack him personally, I simply asked for a critique of the mechanical aspects of the design. THAT IS ALL.

And now my critique of the fork design. In case you’re as bored reading as I am of typing, it doesn’t do anything worthwhile short of look like something that was made 100 years ago. Even a five year old could be shown what a truss is and how it works, and this fork design is not a truss. There’s no question that it would add to the ‘feel’ of the fork, but any strength addition….I’d like to see the sums. Nobody has been forthcoming as of yet, but naturally I’m very open to constructive assessments of any interesting designs such as this that people seem to take for granted because “it’s retro cool”. Including my own. Tony mentioned that he believes that without the struts the fork would’ve broken, but the forks are not dissimilar to what was being ridden 20 years ago and there wasn’t much issues then; not to mention the increases in tubing and casting technology today etc.. Has he taken them off and repeated the process of ’seat of the pants’ testing to back up his ‘beliefs’? Has Mclung? Has anyone else?

Not to my knowledge, and that’s the point.

To my Industrial Design brain where for years we were taught to be self critical, to critique ours and eachothers worth minus the ego, I’m always surprised at peoples’ defensiveness. I don’t really see where the personal attack is and I’m surprised when people take it that way. If something is done on a bike ‘because it looks cool’, then that’s great, but I can’t advocate the attaching of some performance gain because of ‘a belief’.

My philosophy when it comes to what I put into Thylacine Cycles is fairly function based. I really like retro-styled bikes (including the frame and forks above, they’re gorgeous), but I can’t stress enough how much the unwaivering, unquestioning mentality of some people grates with me. This kind of dialogue is the exact same thing that people who questioned the fact that “hey, maybe the earth isn’t flat”, or, “L. Ron Hubbard is the next coming and we must give him lots of money” would’ve had. I can’t abide that, and in the bike industry which appears largely built on bullshit, smoke, and mirrors, I think it’s really important that we engage in some sort of real and positive questioning of what’s going on. It happens in every other part of our lives, so why not our bikes?

*edit* If you want to know what a real truss fork looks like, the only one doing it even vaguely properly is Jeff Jones. I contacted him recently and he does actually have plans for a steel version of his fork, which would be one to look out for.

ps: I had kangaroo for lunch today. It was tasty.

Posted by warwick @ 7:27 am

05 Jun 2010

A recent customer Peter was kind enough to send in some rather nice shots he took of his brand new Tephra/Force build bike.  I should be doubly happy for the bad weather recently, because it meant Peter was stuck inside taking photos rather than out on the road getting it dirty!

More photos as always can be checked out over in our flickr repository.

Posted by warwick @ 11:18 am

29 May 2010

Okay, so after way too long, Mike’s ‘Rift’ is out of paint and finally able to reveal itself to the world. Powder is courtesy Spectrum Powderworks and is a “Trans Green over Faux Raw.” Even I’m impressed.

More photos over on our Flickr.

Posted by warwick @ 1:02 am

29 Apr 2010

Here is a sneak peek at the “Late ‘11 / early ‘12″ Thylacine ‘The Rift’ All-Mountain 29er. This one is somewhere inbetween proto and production, being for an ‘early adopter’ customer and good friend, Mike D. (No, not that Mike D.) He’s had a lot of input into this frame and is in more ways than one, a co-designer, so I’d like to thank him for his inputs (and patience) which has been invaluable.

The plan for this frame is to have it available in 3×2 geometry - that is, three sizes of rear, and for each of those sizes, two front end designs, so six sizes in all.  They’re not really going to be ‘production’, but the rear ends will be batch made so that we can speed up the build process substantially.  They’ll also be available as full custom, because, well, that’s what we do.

It’s all still a little bit up in the air at the moment, but as usual I was so excited I couldn’t contain myself, so there ya go.  I feel like I just got drunk and left the next gen iPhone behind at the bar.

More info as it comes to hand. Should be available after September, all things going to plan.

Posted by warwick @ 6:31 am

06 Apr 2010

Here’s a quick snapshot of “the Elephant in the room” (I mean that in the coloquial sense, not insinuating Geoff is a trunk’d mammal) - Geoff Hughes aboard his monsterous yet still somewhat dwarfed Tephra Ti.  I should run a caption contest for what the middle guy is saying to the short guy.

Posted by warwick @ 8:32 pm

05 Mar 2010

After telling us “No, I’m sorry we don’t have that info”, we got sent just now individual outputs for the generator race, which is a bit of a hoot.

You can see Brett, Erin and I settling into a rhythm, then Brett’s gears start slipping so he gets all agro….you can see me with 3 minutes to go try and up the pace then failling miserably every time…..and Erin decides with 4 minutes to go that he can’t be arsed but with one minute to go can’t decide whether he made the right decision or not….and as for Dan……..I dunno Dan, wtf were you doing!  Look at those spikes!

• Brett - Bike 5
• Me - Bike 6
• Erin - Bike 12
• Dan - Bike 11

I’m actually quite shocked that of everyone that raced, I was the fifth fastest out of 144 participants, and the only riding I do is a tootle twice a week to go play Badminton!  Clearly I don’t suck quite as bad as I think I do, or maybe to put it another way, I maybe should be a track rider.

The horror.

Posted by warwick @ 2:16 am

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