Post up any and all info about carbon rims worthy of DH or All MTN/Enduro. Keep all the carbonz in the one thread.
Carbon Rimz thread.
- Thread starter no skid marks
- Start date
http://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/1401387/
i bought a Hope hub set from this guy he showed me the carbon rims he and another have been building with for the last yr or more , he has also been racing enduro events with the rims and has had no issues . the rims looked very nice is finish and appearance , i don,t have anymore info on the actual brand name , but they look to be a quality product .
i have a email for him but i,m not gonna post it if you have interest i can forward it via a PM .
i bought a Hope hub set from this guy he showed me the carbon rims he and another have been building with for the last yr or more , he has also been racing enduro events with the rims and has had no issues . the rims looked very nice is finish and appearance , i don,t have anymore info on the actual brand name , but they look to be a quality product .
i have a email for him but i,m not gonna post it if you have interest i can forward it via a PM .
I smash the piss out of my ENVE AM rims, often through many rocks, and they keep on being awesome.
These look like the www.light-bicycle.com rims. Not sure if he is building them up or having light-bicycle do it but his price is $300 more than theirs for a wheel set.
I'm in the same boat, I've had my ENVE AM wheels for about a year now and have beat the piss out of them with no issues. I actually took them off to true them last night for the first time and they were still straight after a year. A couple small wobbles nothing a quick couple of turns didn't fix - pretty impressive if you ask me.
except no 26" option. boo.
^^^ agree. I saw this derby guy on the forums get interested in the topic of affordable carbon rims a while back, and it was interesting to see him get to the point of actually engaging w/ a factory & bringing a product to market...if i remember correctly, that wasn't his goal at all but it turned out that way.
he won't be the first person to see an opportunity to provide a NA-based face for a product to handle warranty concerns on these factory-direct cheapish rims. Enve needs to think about what they can do to get down to the $400-500 range. I'm not running carbon rimz on my DHR or Truax, but if Enve dropped prices to that level I would. I'm not yet prepared to run mystery brand carbon rims like LB on those bikes, just my Bronson. Enve's marketing should realize that they don't have to match the price...just come down to some more reasonable level, like 3X the price of the mystery brands.
he won't be the first person to see an opportunity to provide a NA-based face for a product to handle warranty concerns on these factory-direct cheapish rims. Enve needs to think about what they can do to get down to the $400-500 range. I'm not running carbon rimz on my DHR or Truax, but if Enve dropped prices to that level I would. I'm not yet prepared to run mystery brand carbon rims like LB on those bikes, just my Bronson. Enve's marketing should realize that they don't have to match the price...just come down to some more reasonable level, like 3X the price of the mystery brands.
Why should they? People are buying their rims anyways.
because maybe they could sell moar?
You never know though, they could be at or close to their max production levels even while selling them at their current prices. If they lowered prices and had 2x the demand and couldn't meet it, or had additional unseen costs of production increases they could see diminishing returns. They could have found their sweet spot with their current level of pricing and production. Items are no longer "boutique" if every other joe blow on the trail has them.
production of carbon fiber components is still a largely manual process, hence the drastic cost difference in enve stuff and the catalog stuff from overseas (despite the increases in labor cost there, it's still insanely cheap in AP).
not sure if you're being sarcastic. ?
the whole point of these recent carbon rim threads on ridemonkey and elsewhere is that compared to a year or two ago, there are affordable options emerging that some people are trying, with various degrees of success. just like in every industry (similar examples are all over the place), this will put pricing pressure on Enve.
Just like in every other similar industry example, initially Enve will try to bank on the fact that people will pay extra to not risk breakage...or will just stick w/ their alu rims. over time though, it's pretty likely that the chinese (or taiwanese in the med price range) alternatives will get to a similar level of quality & strength.
Stan's has announced their carbon rims, and the whole marketing message they're using is 'we've been looking at carbon rims for years now, and now we've found a source that can offer quality better than those mystery chinese brands'. premature to say if that's what they will deliver, but Enve is no doubt reading that and getting a little nervous.
Easton only sells complete carbon wheels, afaik, but their haven carbons have gone from 2800 $/set to what, $1100? E13 invested a lot in their so-called Scandium rims but from what I've seen, haven't sold a whole lot since they came out when carbon rims were starting to get more popular. I'm sure E13 is looking at what kind of high quality carbon rim in the $400-500 range they could offer.
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not really. carbon road wheel prices have more or less stayed consistent (or even increased) over the years.
nervous? doubtful. stan's business is more or less solely wheels & wheel related. enve has and is expanding into other components: forks, bars, stems, posts, etc.
Enve isn't trying to compete with budget or mid range companies. they are competing with companies like Zipp, Rolf, Reynolds, etc.
they are also doing a good job of it too. im seeing their hoops on a lot of high end builds.
a lot of boutique frame builders also use their forks and wheels for their build kits.
good point.
i saw someone mentioned the derby rims in the last page. when i first herd about em, he was only making 650b stuff. now i see he's got 29er stuff as well.
sent him an email asking if theres any plans for 26". dont have enough monies for enve, but i think i could swing some derby hoops when mine crap out on me.
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will let you guise know what he says
i saw someone mentioned the derby rims in the last page. when i first herd about em, he was only making 650b stuff. now i see he's got 29er stuff as well.
sent him an email asking if theres any plans for 26". dont have enough monies for enve, but i think i could swing some derby hoops when mine crap out on me.
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will let you guise know what he says
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why is that? you don't think the arrival of quality carbon rims at half the price (I'm think Derby, Stans and Superstar, and potentially others as technology and demand catch up) will cut into Enve's market share?
I'm no expert in this stuff, but I know that I'm waiting for a carbon rim to come along in the $300-$400 range that has demonstrated reliability, and proper UST function. When that rim comes along, I will find it hard to resist. Currently I find it easy to resist a rim that is over $400. very easy. I'm guessing there's a whole lot of people like me out there.
reading the word(s) 'superstar' and 'carbon rim' in the same conversation is quite scary.
i tried to buy something from them not too long ago (glad i actually couldnt, now that i think about it), but they wouldnt let me cause im from a 'sue-happy country'
i tried to buy something from them not too long ago (glad i actually couldnt, now that i think about it), but they wouldnt let me cause im from a 'sue-happy country'
Reducing pricing w/o reducing cost structure can be a fool's errand. Reducing cost structure while maintaining high-end quality, and maintaining market share by being able to sell at a lower price than before while still maintaining a decent profit margin, is the secret to longterm success in a global economy.
I should know, I've been living this situation for 15 yrs now. ANd it started back when my company thought they could stick w/ their high prices since 'our target customer is the one who is willing to pay a lot more for quality and reliability'. yeah, that mindset can be a recipe for disaster.
No one is expecting Enve to sell for 150 or 250 bucks. But if they can't figure out a way to hit a price around 400-500, their longterm market share will erode. it's Science!
They will expand the market for carbon rimz, which will effectively reduce Enve's market share, but they won't necessarily hurt Enve's business.
Enve will become the XTR/XX1 of carbon rimz; what those with no financial concerns and/or seeking the highest quality aspire to own. People like yourself will fill the void that currently exists in the market.
Market Share, like gross sales, is a metric of Ego not profitability.
But in, say, 2 years, what will 'highest quality' even mean for an Enve rim? For XX1 or other high end components, the market message can be about performance and low weight. But when other rims offer similar stiffness, weight, QC, width, and (eventually...don't think they are there yet) reliable strength, what will Enve offer to justify the extra $1,000? Moar rounderer?
I can confirm. My boutique steel road frame has an enve fork.
he's stated a few times that if he gets enough interest he'll do 26". how he's measuring interest i have no idea, but i imagine the more people who email or post in his thread on mtbr, the better.
carbon road wheels have been selling well north of the $3k price point for over a decade. hell, there a still a number of offerings north of $4k. Enve isn't hurting for business in their pricing category, they are by far not the most expensive option on the market. They don't hide the fact that they compete in the market based on high quality, NOT price.
got a reply
Hi Brandon,
Many are asking for 26" x 40mm rims now. By far more requests than other new rim sizes, such as fat bike and 29+. So stay tuned, I think I can do this in a couple months. I have a mold design ready. RIght now it depends if the factory can produce rims faster than they have been for me. I will know in about 3 or four weeks based on proof, evidence supporting the factory's promise to increase the speed of production of Derby Rims, and then I can add 26" x 40mm wide rims.
I had wanted to do 26" and 650b, but my insider industry friends thought 29'er rims would sell better these days, and they are selling very well, but it's about 50/50% order rate for the two sizes, I thought 29'er would sell twice the rate of 650b. I think there are more advanced riders on 650b with 26" wheel experience on wide rims already knowing the huge handling advantages. The 40's are amazing!
Thanks for your interest!
the company that produces the rims i posted in my link also produce Derby,s rims from what Trevor at NOBL Wheels told me when he was showing the ones they offer . Trev also mentioned they are designing some different width rims as well . from the sounds of it in the next year or so there will be several more variations of carbon rim sizes and widths from multiple companys at several different price points .
I think they pursue the Chris King strategy. When he started it was basically THE headset, later THE hubset if you want reliable high end stuff. Now there are tons of alternatives (especially for headsets) and CK still ask the same prices for their stuff. But they (slowly) diversified their product range (similar to what Enve is doing) and seem to get enough business to stay afloat.
I think there truly are niche companies that can charge what they want, in many cases it's what it takes to bring the product to market with their costs, manufacturing, distribution, and so forth. Other companies could do the same thing for cheaper, but they stay out of it because the start up is too much or they make more money selling higher volume stuff. Heck, that's kind of what Cane Creek (Aheadset) did, waited until they could put resources into a real nice product, the 110, and then produced it, but they had a huge amount of manufacturing support to fall back on.
The companies that are truly niche companies though can get by just fine, but you gotta REALLY stand out and there are probably a lot more of these companies running around that THINK they are well protected and have the "best" stuff vs. in reality they aren't anywhere near as good as they think they are. There are several high end auto makers that are absolutely "niche" products, yet they are beaten all the time by race-teams (auto makers) that have almost infinitely larger production base and manufacturing.
Look at how many DH bike companies have come and gone. If you want to hit closer to home, just look at how many component companies have come and gone. Envy won't survive unless they reduce the cost structure of their products.
The only constant in business is change and someone will always find a way to come along and do what you do cheaper, quicker, more efficiently, better, stronger, lighter, and so on. The only way you stay ahead is constantly trying to make your stuff better, finding new processes, finding new markets, etc. If you stagnate and think you can just "ride" on your past success, you'll quickly find yourself passed up by everyone else IMO. The idea that you can just crank out a widget almost indefinitely is inherently flawed IMO. Business must be constantly refreshed to stay strong. Yes, there are some niche markets and manufacturers out there, but not nearly as many and as big as most people think.
are you fvckin for real dude?
enve is selling their sh*t hand over fist. they literally cannot make some of their components fast enough to keep up with demand. in the last 3 years the company has grown 349% and tripled the number of employees in order to keep pace. 2012 revenue was over $12 million. hardly "niche market" numbers. granted, this kind of growth isn't sustainable long term, but it certainly doesn't mean cost structure will be their demise. do remember their primary business is road, not mountain, and their product portfolio reflects that. they've positioned themselves as a company that offers premium products and they compete on quality, they are NOT a budget-priced (or even mid priced) wheel company.