By: Things we Learn Monday August 30, 2010

Edge Composites Becomes Enve Composites

It’s good to see good companies enjoy success and move forward. Edge Composites has been a favorite around here at Embrocation. They make really nice products – their wheels ride nicely and are among the strongest and most durable available on the market. They’ve also eschewed complete, stock wheel builds instead focusing on bespoke builds featuring DT Swiss and Chris King hubs, which gives them a custom, hand-built, high-end feel that other wheelsets can lack.

Like so many companies with great products, they experienced a growth rate that caused some problems to their internal workings. Last year they ran out of cross forks toward the beginning of the cross season. In doing so they sacrificed a large quantity of sales for themselves, their distributors and bike shop customers. They’ve also had some customer service issues – emails and phone calls left unanswered was the rule, rather than the exception.

So, I have high hopes that this latest re-branding efforts will harken a change not only in name, but in culture. Edge Composites is now becoming Enve Composites. (I believe you’d pronounce this Envy. ) They say the name change is due to issues of branding and trademark issues, especially in the European market. I’m not a huge fan of the new name. Edge was a really solid name and helped establish their brand image. I think that despite the somewhat lackluster new name, the strength of their brand with ensure continued growth.

In addition to the name change, Enve reports that they’ll be opening a new facility in the coming months to allow them to ease the prototyping and production processes. Hopefully this will allow them to improve their lead-times on new products and keep the pipeline full of existing products, lest they experience poorly-timed product outages like last year. In any case, it will be interesting to view their progress in light of this re-branding effort.

Pre-Interbike Thoughts
I’ve gone to Interbike in Vegas nearly every year since I was 19 years old. First as a retailer, then with a booth as a manufacturer, and now as an independent rep and part of Embrocation. In all honesty it’s something that I used to look forward to, and now I dread for the couple months leading up to it. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Interbike or have a good time. It’s more that I hate Las Vegas and could do without another transcontinental trip inserted into my schedule in what is typically the busiest part of the year for us here at Embrocation. Despite that, I’ll be looking forward to a few things this year: Having a few Embrocation team riders in Cross Vegas, meeting with our team sponsors, looking at some cool new products, and making this year’s trip with a couple Interbike virgins, whose excitement should overshadow my jaded pessimism.

So, I head into this year’s Interbike with some renewed optimism and a determination to have a good time. In any case, we’ll be reporting what we can, when we can from the show – in our own unique way.

Fun with Blood

I’ve been feeling a bit run-down lately. Sleeping a lot, not feeling good when I am awake, etc. It’s late in the season, with a lot of miles in the legs so I thought I was just tired, but this feeling has persisted through a few weeks. So I went to the doctor, something I almost never do. After a full exam he could find nothing wrong with me, so he ordered a bunch of blood tests. A nice young lady took about 4 vials of blood out of my arm and told me I’d be hearing from the doctor in a week or so. Exactly a week later I got a letter in the mail telling me that my blood tests came out “essentially normal.” A couple days later I got another letter with detailed information. It seems the reason I’m feeling this way is that I have a virus in my system, festering away, not making me overtly sick, but taking enough of my energy to keep me from feeling right.

This information was good to know, but what really interested me was the other information about my blood profile – the veritable alphabet soup of values: HCT, MCH, HGL, RBC, etc. All of these values came back comfortably within the healthy range for an adult male. But I couldn’t help but view them differently as an athlete. To be quite honest, I felt like some of them should have been better; that my hard training should have resulted in values that were above what’s normal. I spent a few hours going through the various values, looking up their definitions on Wikipedia and then determining how I could affect a change, without resorting to unseemly pharmacology, of course.

In short, I didn’t really learn anything about how best to increase my Hematocrit, for example, except for the aforementioned pharmacological approach and/or altitude training. I did come to the realization that this could be an addicting process. Just as racers who train with power will go to all sorts of measures to increase their 20 minute power by 2%, I could imagine these blood values becoming a constant source of motivation to improve. The ability to check, re-check and take some action to affect these values is one thing that separates the elite amateur (most of them, at least) from the dedicated professional.

By: Things we Learn Monday August 2, 2010

A couple weeks ago I wrote an Open Letter to Campagnolo. It was part love letter, part expression of confusion and disappointment. Embrocation got a lot of comments about this piece, mostly good. We even got a coveted call-out on Brendan Quirk’s What’s New column.

Good stuff. (Actually just good to know that someone’s paying attention to us!) I didn’t plan to bring any of this up again until today, when I got a message from Campagnolo themselves, asking if I would publish a response to my open letter. “Of course I will!” was my response, and so, here it is:

You can hardly imagine what a pleasure it was for me to read your considerations and suggestions.

For two main reasons: first of all because they give me a fantastic opportunity to inform personally “the world” (i.e. everybody that can have access to your and my words through the web) about what is going on at Campy in terms of new products, activities and ideas and then because feedback and thoughts of a bicycle enthusiast, like you, contains very important input for a company like us.

I will move to the different points you raise:
First of all, I would like to underline the full respect all of us at Campy have for our competitors and their many achievements.

But let’s start from the product. I am particularly pleased to state that our 2011 new range does definitely contain tremendous changes.

I only have two ways to convince you and other riders to confirm or regenerate your enthusiasm for Campy: rather than go through a long and detailed technical description of the new features and weights, I will simply invite you to ride the new products.

Please just try one of our 2011 groupsets!
Whatever you will choose, from “Veloce” up to “Super Record”, you will immediately feel the goal we pursued in developing our new groupsets, i.e. to outperform the current benchmarks today available in the market in terms of braking, and front and rear shifting performances.

Of course I cannot express any opinions on my competitors’ products; I can only look forward to reading your opinions and comments on a blog or forum (or hopefully in a second open letter to Campy directly), after you have tried our 2011 range groupsets. You use words that for Campy, and which every manufacturer in the world – and I do – would consider as terrific achievements: “great stuff”, “tremendously good products”, “phenomenal product”, up to an incredible “religious experience”… believe me JM; to read these words makes me feel hugely proud, thinking back to my origins, to the people working for Campy, but particularly, to all the riders that our engagement has made and will make happy to ride a Campy equipped bike.

And that’s the point; the 2011 range has been developed to continue and improve all this but with a new, crucial target, i.e. to convince young and ambitious riders that even riding a now easily achievable and well priced 10-speed “Veloce” and “Centaur”, or today a very convenient 11-speed “Athena” (thanks also to the devaluation of Euro to Japanese Yen and US Dollar), they can experience Campy in full.

I then would like to come to some of your very intelligent and proper considerations on the route-to-market. To get the control of our Distribution is world-wide and one of our major targets: the way our products today sometimes come to the market, bypassing the Dealers, their role and their added value to Campy is a cash-flow killer, not at all a positive aspect. The shortcut price flow, whilst protecting naturally the final consumer in terms of product cost, generates a price battle along the distribution chain, so that the immediate undisputed price advantage for the consumer risks to set aside both the competence of the Dealers in conveying our product to the market and the technological content of the product itself.

Through several activities that you will see soon (also in the US) we will give more and more importance to the Dealers, highlighting their competence, their ability to correctly address the rider’s choice, their importance to provide the after sales service.

I appreciate your considerations on the way we advertise and promote our products in the market. I am sure you also understand we have to make choices; Campy is continuing to hugely invest in the product both to keep it at the top in terms of performance and to make it achievable and more competitive for a larger number of users – particularly young riders.

What we want to convey through our ads is the concept that Campy is reiterating into the present its tradition, its excellence and its values: history to Campy is not the past but simply the base of the present, with the unchanged attention and care for the top performance the riders in every age are looking for. The support to racing teams is a great effort we are trying to bring forward, but we have to be honest in recognizing we cannot be everywhere and on every segment. It is true that our choice was to sponsor Pro Teams with the aim to link our brand to top performances: this year the 5 riders covering the first 5 positions at “Giro d’Italia” on 4 different brand bikes were Campy equipped. At the end Campy was on 12 victories out of 21 stages.

At “Tour de France” too the achievements and stage victories were great; we won 7 stages and we took back to Italy the “Green Jersey” after many years. Coming to “Tour of California”, Campy has got this year important victories in stages 4, 5 and 6.

The support to local races is something we already do to promote our products in some countries, but frankly speaking, we need to concentrate our actions paying very close attention not to spread them out and risk losing impact where we do them.

Nevertheless, the US market belongs strategically one of our top priorities and we will set up dedicated actions to this crucial market aimed to encourage riders to test our products at the Retailer’s end. We are very proud to have an incredible number of riders tattooed with Campy logo and we are at the same time proud to know that the main entrepreneurs and product managers in our sector world-wide have their personal bikes equipped with Campy despite the bicycles specified in their catalogues; but I agree with you this is not enough. We need to do more. We are preparing our future on daily basis and we are eager to see the results of our efforts; should we succeed to engage you, JM, to test our new products and come back to Campy with the same old enthusiasm, this will be for us another important victory!

Thank you and… I hope to meet you on the road.

Ciao
Campy

Pretty cool, huh? I think so. And getting a response at all totally dispels any assumptions I had about Campy not caring about the US market. All I can say in response right now is that I most certainly WILL try the 2011 Campy product. That’s a foregone conclusion… Quite frankly, I can’t wait and I’ll be certain to report back my feelings. Although if it’s anything like your previous product, I’m sure to love it. Who knows, maybe the Embrocation Team will find themselves on Campy next year… wink, wink.

Seriously, Mr. Campagnolo, thanks for the response. It means a lot to me as a life-long devotee of your product and I can see that you really do understand and take seriously my concerns and complaints. I’ll shut up now and let you do what you do best without having to worry about punks like me.

By: Things we Learn Friday July 16, 2010

Dear Campagnolo,

Do you mind if I call you Campy? Everyone else does, so I figured it would be ok. You have to realize that when we say that, it’s not a put-down of any kind. It’s just easier for Americans to say. Some Brits say Campag, which I suspect is said in much the same way – just easier on the tongue. Besides, saying Campagnolo in casual conversation is generally regarded as effete here in the US of A.

I digress. Let me come to the point. I love your stuff, really, I do. I started out riding Shimano for the first few years I was a road rider, mainly because it was what was available and worked well. I liked my time on Shimano, but when I started riding Campy a few years later it was like a religious experience. It totally redefined my expectations of my equipment and my level or riding enjoyment. I started on a Chorus 10 speed group that, over the subsequent few years, I probably rode about 10,000 miles. Since then I’ve invested in a few more 10 speed groups and, more recently, a couple of your 11 speed drivetrains. Again, all great stuff – no regrets.

I just got an email from you with this PDF presentation about your 2011 products and as expected, they look great. It doesn’t look like you’re doing tremendous changes for ’11 but the ones you are doing are really cool. The threaded chainring? Brilliant idea.

And the colored hoods and cable sets… you’re a little late to this party, but we sure are glad you came.

So, here’s the thing, Campy. I feel like our relationship is a bit shallow. I need more from you. You see, a couple years ago SRAM entered my life and everything changed. They used to be the punk kid on the block, making grip shifters and unique if second-rate mountain bike parts. But they grew up, got their act together, improved their products to the point where they’re the new benchmark and they introduced some road gruppos – four awesome road gruppos in as many years to be specific. They’re killing it right now and they totally deserve all their success because their products are really, really good.

But that’s just half the story. You see, Campy, in addition to making some tremendously good products, SRAM, as a company, has a great personality. They’re engaging, involved, enthusiastic, articulate, smart and hungry for the business. They move me. Whereas you, Campy… you are, well, a bit snobby; a tad aloof.

I know if feels like all I’m doing is comparing you to SRAM, but that’s not really the case. SRAM just brings my feelings about you into stark relief. Rather than get jealous, or simply ignore what I’m saying, I think you could use this as a learning experience. It’s clear you’re not totally opposed to change, after all you’re bold enough to do things like 11 speed drivetrains, and embrace fringe technologies like tubeless road, so I know you have the capability to do things differently than you are now.

I think it would be in your best interest to look inward and address the following issues:

1) Get control of your distribution. The fact that your European retailers can sell your products for what in many cases is less than US wholesale prices is absolutely killing your sales in the US. Get control of yourself. I know it’s good for your cash-flow to be selling stuff right out your back door for cheap to those Euro online retailers, but I promise, it’s not benefiting your long-term bottom line and it certainly doesn’t do anything to improve the impression of you product stateside. If retailers can’t make any money selling your goods, then why should they even bother to try?

2) Get involved with domestic racing. I know I keep bringing up SRAM, but I can’t help it… They’re just nailing it and right now they own the amateur racing scene. Why? Because, as I’ve said, they make great products, but more importantly they’re making these products widely available to race teams. They’ve been aggressive about getting as many racers as possible on their good while still helping their retailers maintain a profit margin. They did this so well for the first few years of their road business that now they have an unstoppable momentum – they’re the go-to brand of choice for most regional racers. Don’t dismiss this market – they’re the ones who log the miles, show up to local races and group rides, post pictures of their bikes on blog and online fora. They’re the young riders who will someday stop racing bikes and getting discounted parts and become full fledged, full price consumers. Get them now; plant the seed. Sponsor some regional Pro/AM race teams, support local races, get your logo on some jerseys and most importantly, your parts on some bikes belonging to young, fast people.

3) Do some marketing. You already do this, but it’s a little hurting. Your marketing efforts require more than a little tweaking, especially for the US market. In your attempt to be classy, your advertisements come across as stiff, stuffy and somewhat pointless.

Ditch the retro angle. Maybe it works in Europe but it doesn’t work here. None of your would-be customers cares about the history. They just want cool shit and they want it now. Get gritty and edgy with your ads. Pro Tour stuff is great, but make it real and tangible to your audience. This stuff is just antiseptic dross that neither conveys nor inspires passion. And, for the love of God, make sure you run your copy through someone who’s fluent in both English and Italian…

So, Campy, I hope you’re ok with me saying all this and I hope you realize my criticism comes out of love and concern for your well-being in the long-run. Your product is phenomenal. People love you -they get your logo tattooed on them! I just want our relationship to be built on more than that – I want you to engage me and continually make me want it. And I want you to reach others and make them want it. I’m happy to help you do this, if you’re willing…

JM

By: Things we Learn Friday July 9, 2010

I suppose I’d be remiss if I didn’t weigh in a bit on the recent and ongoing Floyd Landis news. Let me put it simply: I believe every word he’s said and every story he’s related to the press. And I think that his story and his sudden candor will be the rallying cry for other athletes to make similar admissions. Maybe this won’t happen all at once, or maybe I’m just thinking too wishfully that it will happen at all.

So, here’s why I believe Landis’s most recent admissions / allegations. Here’s a guy who basically went from nothing to a top-level Pro Tour rider in a couple years. In doing so he amassed more wealth and status than he probably ever imagined possible. He did all this with the help of a doping program that, from many accounts, was widespread and commonplace at the top levels of the pro peloton. This is what outsiders call cheating, and what inside the elite pro ranks must be considered to be as much part of the job as training miles and proper diet.

Imagine then, the frustration when at your highest moment as a professional cyclist, the greatest moment of your life, you test positive for a banned substance – a substance introduced to you by your teammates and commonly used by your fellow cyclists and for which none of them tested positive. If this was indeed the situation, as Landis indicates, then his sequence of actions – deny, fight until all avenues of defense are exhausted, then admit the truth – seems understandable. With his career in ruins and no hope of return to the top levels of the sport, what’s left to do but come clean and tell it how it really was?

Armstrong and the others most recently implicated by Landis are saying that this is a case of ‘sour milk’ and they’re absolutely right. But just because Landis’s accusations may have, at their root, anger, bitterness and jealousy doesn’t mean they’re necessarily false. Someone’s motives, however dark, may taint the delivery of their message, but ought not call into question the veracity of the claims themselves.

Beating the cobbles; and that dead horse
What would Cyclingnews.com do if not for races with cobbles? The special equipment used on bikes for these stages seems to provide endless fodder for the techies over there… Bigger tires? Weird. Double wrapped bars? Interesting, tell me more. Box section 32H aluminum wheels? Get the fuck out! Seriously though, can we talk more about Cav’s bike with a big Samurai sword covered with blood?

Punch Me, Just Don’t Hit me with that Bora
Today I learned that getting in a full-on fist fight with another rider at the Tour de France will only earn you a fine of 400 Swiss Francs. Think about this for a moment. Engaging in what appears to be an intense physical confrontation with another professional cyclist, at a race venue, will earn you a fine roughly equivalent to $380. Here’s a little bit of perspective from the National Basketball Association. I find this fascinating reading and good for a laugh or two. In case you don’t feel like clicking the link, here’s a good one:

“The NBA fined LeBron James (Cle) $25,000 for kicking a water bottle during Wednesday’s Min-Cle game.”

It would seem the going rate for a physical altercation in the NBA is between $25,000 and $35,000. No small amount of money, especially relative to the 800 Francs the UCI picked up as monetary punishment for two of their most elite riders pummeling each other’s brains out just moments after the stage ended.

Perhaps the UCI realizes, as do we all, the intrinsic comedic value and the relatively rare and unthreatening nature of this sort of act. See the video for corroboration of this.

That one grown man in a spandex leotard attempting to beat another grown man in a spandex leotard with a bicycle wheel is inherently humiliating to those involved (while being more than a little entertaining to the rest of us). In the end, the fact that this fight was broadcast around the world and will live on in perpetuity on the internet may, in fact, be punishment enough itself.

By: Things we Learn Monday June 28, 2010

It may be a little early to start talking cyclocross, but hey, it’s a big deal to us and something we look forward to and plan for all year long. It seems like a lot of companies are putting a good deal of planning into the cross season as well. Specialized and Trek have new cross bikes coming out, as does BH and Kona, while unsubstantiated rumors tell us that TJ and the rest of the Cyclocrossworld.com team may be riding around on new Cannondale cross bikes this year as well.

That these companies are investing in their cyclocross lineups is good news for the industry. For many companies cross bikes have been an afterthought; model segments typically composed of bikes that were either designed to do too little or too much. This seems especially the case for Specialized, whose previous efforts in the cyclocross arena were a bit half-assed. Their Tricross model was always a bit of a Swiss Army bike, designed for commuting and road and whatever else – too many things to be a true cyclocross race machine. Their new Crux cross bike line has both carbon and aluminum frame models and seems to have a race focus that the previous models may have lacked. So, with any luck, the big S has taken the Tri out of the Tricross with the new Crux line.

Trek’s new Cronus CX also seems a promising new product under the banner of the new Gary Fisher line. (For a good article on this little bit of branding, read last week’s What’s New Column from Brendan Quirk at Competitive Cyclist.) This bike looks pretty badass. I kind of want one. I haven’t seen one, but from what Trek says on their website it looks like a good racing machine.

Image and bike details from trekbikes.com

What’s most heartening about this move by two of the biggest companies and their new cross projects, is that cyclocross is moving from afterthought to priority. It bodes well for the sport – after all, these big companies seldom bring a product to market that they don’t have extreme confidence is selling well. I’m looking forward to seeing some of these new rigs this fall, that’s for sure.

This seeming new-found commitment by the big boys to the sport of cyclocross does raise one interesting point for me, though: It seems like cyclocross was one area of the cycling world that was comfortably the domain of smaller, handmade bicycle companies. It’s the only discipline I can think of where steel bikes are still sought-after by racers, for example. Around here it seemed the common course of action was to get yourself a cheapo Redline or some such thing when you started dabbling in cross and then, when you inevitably became obsessed with the sport, upgrade to some sort of handmade bicycle from IF, Seven, Moots, Zanconato or some other company that had been successfully building true cross racing machines for years and years. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been intermediate options. Cannondale and Kona have been making eminently race-worth machines for years, but this amounted for a smaller part of the overall cross bike pie. It will be interesting to see if the new entries onto the market have a cooling effect on the cross bike buying public’s appetite for the handmade products.

New XTR
The other day I got an email from Shimano of America Corporation introducing me to the new XTR Line.

It looks pretty great, I think, and has a bunch of features that I think that it will be popular. The issue of course, is that nearly every feature Shimano is touting has already been on the market for a few months with SRAM’s XX. Features like the double chainring, which is the new thing for 2010 and has been a big hit on SRAM’s aforementioned XX so far. It’s not going to be long before the vast majority of mountain bikes come standard with double chainring cranks. It’s a step in a positive direction, one that makes sense and also makes me wonder how the triple chainring, with its greater complexity and less effective shifting performance, ever became the standard in the first-place.

Cannondale figured this out a while ago and has been using the double setup on their sponsored racers’ bikes for some time now.

Image borrowed from Bikeradar.com

From all accounts, having a dedicated double chainring with shifters to match brings shift performance to a new level by mountain standards. And don’t forget that the drivetrain now uses a 10 speed cassette. Probably one of the most compelling reasons for 10 speed mountain drivetrains isn’t any real performance advantage, rather it’s the consolidation of part numbers and SKU’s that bike shops and suppliers have to deal with. Having continuity in cassettes and chains makes things drastically easier from a stocking point of view. It’s also cool to be able to combine road and mountain parts without worry of incompatibility. I’m honestly not sure if XTR derailleurs are compatible with Dura Ace shifters, for example, but I know all the new SRAM 10 speed mountain parts are completely cross-compatible with SRAM’s road parts. This allows for some interesting bike setups, and some fun project bike options.

As a cross racer, I’m excited about the new XTR pedals. They’re said to have a wider platform for greater stability, so I imagine they’re going to be great for clipping into with ease upon remounting.

JM

By: Things we Learn Friday June 11, 2010

After the Connecticut Stage Race debacle this past Sunday I decided that I’d head down for a long-overdue visit with my parents in southern Connecticut. They live in the New Haven area and even though it’s close to Boston I seldom get down there to visit, especially during racing season. I ended up staying a couple days and doing some great riding – actually two of the best days of riding I’ve had in a long, long time. The roads in that area are just great for riding, but you have to know your way around as the best riding is only to be had on the myriad back roads that bisect the area. If you do know where to go, you’re rewarded with phenomenally twisty, windy roads punctuated with shortish, punchy hills. Perfect terrain for hard training miles if one is so-inclined.

One of the best things about returning to the same roads I first rode as a child is how fast I feel relative to my memories of riding there. Hills that used to seem interminable are now easily dispatched in the big ring; distances between towns that were once all-day affairs are now traveled in a matter of minutes. It’s a testament to how much time I’ve spent (wasted?) riding my bike since I was in my early teenage years, and it’s really, really fun.

Given my crash the previous day, I tried to ride easy on Monday. I ended up riding to Bethel, home of Cannondale and one of the best bike shops in western CT, Bethel Cycle. (Speaking of riding as a kid, we used to ride our mountain bikes in the woods around Cannondale’s corporate headquarters in the hopes that we’d see some prototype out on the trails. Super-V Raven? What’s that motorcycle thing?) I dropped into the bike shop and talked with the owner, Greg, who runs a tight ship and is quite the athlete himself – actually he’s the masters national Duathlon Champion. (For the uninitiated, Duathlon is like Triathlon, but without the swimming – Run, Bike, Run… crazy.
After a quick visit with Greg, I grabbed a coffee and a muffin from the coffee shop next door and rode back to my parents’ house.

The following day I woke up super early and went out for a great training ride. Like I said, it’s hard not to get a good ride there:

Campagnolo and other Euro Stuff

Due to a variety of factors (see the implosion of the Greek economy and the subsequent economic repercussions) the Euro has lost value relative to the dollar in recent few months.

This is a good thing for American consumers who enjoy European products – I’m thinking here mostly of Campagnolo products, whose higher prices have been exacerbated for us in North America by the strength of the Euro currency. The fact is that bicycle retailers in the US are at a huge disadvantage when selling Campagnolo – there’s just no money to be made when European web-based retailers can delivery Campagnolo gruppos to North American customers direct for less than US wholesale costs. It’s an unfair advantage that Campagnolo, as a company, seems completely unwilling or unable to tackle. As good as Campy products may be, stiff competition from Shimano and SRAM, combined with their price protection and greater return on investment means Campy will always be a niche product line in North America, with little appeal to new customers – the only customers who will buy Campy are those Campy guys – the ones who have never ridden anything else.

But this is this recent exchange rate adjustment means that we’re seeing the lowest costs on Campy products in the last few years, and the perfect time to try some out. Same thing goes for other European products, like Deda, Fizik, Cinelli, etc. I for one have always been a Campy guy, but I’ve found a happy home on SRAM components these past couple years. Nevertheless, I’ll likely be unable to resist picking up a Record 11 gruppo for one of my bikes.

Tubeless Road
I’ve always embraced new technology for bikes and generally chuckled at those guys on internet forums who dismiss any new technologies out of hand and can’t understand why anyone would ride anything other than a lugged steel bike with 32 spoke hand-built wheels and downtube shifters. But I just couldn’t get my head around the tubeless road thing. I’ve always been a ‘train on clinchers, race on tubulars’ kind of guy, so there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of room in my world for tubeless road system. But, being the diligent and curious scion of the bicycle industry that I am, I decided to give them a try. So, I got myself a set of Fulcrum Racing 3 2-Way Fit wheels. These are Fulcrum’s mid-range wheels that are compatible with Hutchinson Tubeless road or standard clincher tires.

I have to say, after a few hundred miles on these things I’m really liking them. For starters, though, these do not ride like tubulars. I don’t care what anyone says – they ride well, but not like tubulars. Rather, they feel like a really good set of clinchers, but somewhat smoother, especially given the lower pressures that are possible. The packaging on the Hutchinson Fusion 3 Tubeless tire tells me that someone of my weight should be riding around 92psi. Since I’ve been in the habit of pumping my tires up to something around 115 to 120psi for years and years this adjustment to lower pressures is a mentally tough adjustment. The results of these lower pressures, though, is smoothness and comfort over rough roads. These lower pressures, in conjunction with the triple compound Fusion 3 tire, has the most relevant benefits on wet roads. While we’ve had fairly good weather for most of our riding this year, there have been a few races that have taken place in the pouring rain, and that’s where this tubeless tire system excels. This tire system allows the most confident cornering on wet roads I’ve ever experienced.

The system seems really flat resistant as well, especially when used with tire sealant. I’ve been using the CaffeLatex tire sealants with the tubeless wheels and so far, it’s worked. I did get one flat, but to be fair it has a HUGE hole – I hit something that would have flatted any tire, and even in this case the sealant worked well enough that it sealed the whole enough to allow me to limp home. This seems especially important in a race season that’s been marred by one flat after another. The sealant is easy to use and you can get this funny little latex disc when the sealant hardens up…

So, I like this tubeless road thing. It will be interesting to see how far wheel manufacturers take this new technology and if any other tire companies jump on the bandwagon with tubeless road tires.

By: Things we Learn Friday May 28, 2010

About 10 minutes after the conclusion of the Giro’s stage 16 uphill TT I received a mini press release from SRAM that said the following:

“John Gadret (Ag2R) took a third place podium spot in today’s Plan de Corones uphill TT at the Giro using Apex Mid Cage RD and an 11-32T cassette! Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) was also riding the Apex today to a 8th place in the stage.”

This is a great example of why SRAM is currently dominating the road bike component market. SRAM Apex, their as-yet unreleased entry-level drivetrain parts, are being used by Pro Tour riders in the hardest Giro d’Italia stages and SRAM is proudly broadcasting this fact. Consider that the two riders who bested the above-mentioned John Gadret were running Dura Ace and Super Record, respectively. Yet Shimano and Campagnolo remain silent as their flagship products are ridden to victory, while SRAM, eternally hungry for business and driven like no other is crowing about the results from riders using their 4th-tier components. It’s genius.

This smart, consistent and relentless approach to marketing is why SRAM’s Apex will be a hit when it’s introduced onto the market sometime in the next month or two, just as Red, Force and Rival were before it. After all, this is their entry-level gruppo that’s good enough for Pro-Tour riders. Imagine if Shimano sent out a press-release about how Stefano Garzelli just won an insane mountain TT using Tiagra parts. Not likely. But Shimano is poised to release a newly redesigned 105 group and new XTR and XT mountain groups in 10 speed yet there appears to be scanty information flow from Shimano about these huge developments.

The point here isn’t to beat up on Shimano and Campagnolo. Their products are good – phenomenal even. But so are SRAM’s and even 4 years after SRAM first entered the road component market, it still seems like Shimano and Campagnolo remain somewhat complacent about defending their market share. The new 105 might be head and shoulders above Apex in quality and performance, or it might not. The point is that between the two, Apex is going to be the likely sales winner simply because SRAM is positioning it that way and going to great lengths to market their newest product. I’d like to see a marketing counter-attack…

Demand and Supply

Last year couldn’t have been more grim for most of the US economy and the bicycle industry wasn’t immune from the downturn. This year, however, most bike shops are reporting huge increases in sales. Everyone’s busy with repair work, bikes, clothes and accessories are selling well. Everything’s great, right? Well, not quite. Supply of many bikes and components has become thin – frightfully thin, and it’s not yet Memorial Day.

I spoke with one shop owner who carries Trek and Specialized who said if a customer wants a road bike between $2000 and $4000 dollars, they’re pretty much out of luck. A Cannondale dealer from the north shore of Massachusetts said he recently had to get a bike from a dealer in southern California in order to meet a customer order. Other examples of this are popping up all over the industry. Suppliers, eager to tighten their belts and reduce production in the wake of last year’s softness, simply didn’t make enough product to meet the demand in what looks like a year of strong recovery for the bicycle industry. Who could blame them? These suppliers blame retailers, who drastically cut back on their pre-season orders this year, again expecting the soft economy to continue. And who could blame them? Nobody wants to be stuck with a store full of bikes that aren’t selling. That makes paying the bills rather difficult and nobody wins… so dealers cut back ordering and suppliers cut back production accordingly.

But there are winners in this sordid story of skewed supply and demand: The so-called second-tier brands (not your Treks, Specializeds, Cannondales, etc.) are now receiving panicked calls from shop owners in desperate need of bikes. Similarly, this is also a boon for handmade bike builders who can supply product, albeit with a specified waiting period. In any case, the tenets of capitalism ring true in our industry – those who can supply the demand reap the rewards.

Hot Beverages

This week I learned that former US Pro Champion and local hero Mark McCormack is a self-professed hot chocolate connoisseur. We rode bikes together last Friday at the weekly “pastry ride” hosted by Pedro’s from their facility in Haverhill, MA. At the obligatory coffee stop at the end of our ride Mark ordered himself a large hot chocolate, with whipped cream, of course.

This struck me for a couple reasons: I’m used to cyclists being heavy coffee drinkers – it just goes with the territory. I also see Mark as one of the most manly of men who crushes peoples’ souls in races, plays hockey with his brothers, etc. I’ve always liked and respected Mark and to see him get amped up about hot chocolate was endearing. He also told me that Dunkin Donuts has the best hot chocolate, an assertion that I put to the test the following day and I have to say, that shit was delicious.