Well this is the bike industry. Not big pharma, software, tech, etc. It's not like they invented an electric car. I doubt they got much of a payout. At least in my sense of the number of a "sizeable payout". Matt's smart. He'll land on his feet. Glad to hear he got the summer off to spend with his kid. That, is actually priceless. I quit my job and have been doing that too. Giddy up!
Guerrilla Gravity, badass frame manufacturer in Colorado
- Thread starter mtg
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Fair points, but I don't think this is the bike industry we're talking about anymore. Complete speculation on my part, but I'd wager whoever acquired them plan on using Revved carbon for much more profitable products than bikes (e.g. dildos that even Kidwoo would trust).
Regardless, stoked AF for Matt and hope he kills it (again) with his next endeavor.
A friend of a friend of a friend got a forward of a forward of a forwarded email from someone who had an outstanding order with GG, saying they suspended operations as of Sept.1 and they will not be building any new bikes. They were offering any complete bikes they had around at a deep discount, or an order refund.
Totally legit -- or one of those those you-won-a-Yeti-cooler \ your-Nigerian-cousin/prince-has-a-cool-$64million-with-your-name-on-it emails? Who knows. This is the internet. Nothing is real.
Totally legit -- or one of those those you-won-a-Yeti-cooler \ your-Nigerian-cousin/prince-has-a-cool-$64million-with-your-name-on-it emails? Who knows. This is the internet. Nothing is real.
you've said too much.
What is this weird black helicopter doing buzzing my terrace
I’ve seen this email via my brother in law who had a hot AF green smash on order. I’m sad but good they are handling outstanding orders as well as they can.
I got this email too, last night. I had a shred dogg rear + shock on order. The email looked legit to me. Still bummed about this but taking the refund and moving on. Ordered a Propain Tyee over the weekend to take advantage of a Labor Day sale.
Matt has posted about the end of his time at GG on Linkedin. If i could remember what my password is I would log in and read it.
Guerrilla Gravity, badass frame manufacturer in Colorado
Wow. Well, my experience with GG has been positive. I used to tell the riding bros that if I had an issue with my GG, I'd just take it down to them, and they'd take care of me. No questions. I'm local, of course. But same can be said for Commencal, who now has an HQ here. I was coming down...
ridemonkey.bikemag.com
There's multiple reports of this in the GG Facebook owner's group
man, I really wanted that yeti cooler.
swiped from vital:
sad day for sure. given their level of engagement with the riding community over the years it's certainly disheartening to find out about the end of the line this way.
Dealers have been told to order spare/warranty parts asap, no more parts are going to be available.
Not good for current owners or the market value of a used GG frame.
Not good for dealers with a few of these bikes sitting on the show room floor that they will likely have to sell for a loss (if they can sell them at all).
RIP
Not good for current owners or the market value of a used GG frame.
Not good for dealers with a few of these bikes sitting on the show room floor that they will likely have to sell for a loss (if they can sell them at all).
RIP
It took me a little while, but I’m here to say: present!
that vid is also one of my favorites
I can’t really blame them. Hell I did the same thing. Couldn’t lie to people but couldn’t tell them the truth either. So I dropped off the face of the earth. Ya capitalism sucks but what’s a motherfucker supposed to do. At least assuming they sold out.
I am bummed though, I got an OG megatrail and a revved megatrail, I fucking love these bikes and I won’t be able to get a new one. Wish I had ordered a spare frame and parts a couple months ago but I didn’t believe the rumors. I’m just glad I was a long for the ride.
I am bummed though, I got an OG megatrail and a revved megatrail, I fucking love these bikes and I won’t be able to get a new one. Wish I had ordered a spare frame and parts a couple months ago but I didn’t believe the rumors. I’m just glad I was a long for the ride.
There were dealers? I thought it was all direct to consumer. When I was interested in demoing one I was directed to some weird local guy whose business seemed to be welded custom cargo bike racks and fixie handlebars, who of course had no demo bikes available.
what i don’t understand, didn’t they developed a machine to automate their revved frame production? which produced one version of main frame for all their different models? and they couldn‘t compete with hand build china frames that needed to be shipped around the world?
I got a sqweeb to sell.
my guess is that they weren't hitting the sales volumes they need to stay in the black. even with the automation they may not have been able to keep up on their model of having iterative models (like santa cruz) rather than yearly based updates.
pure speculation but: If GG sold part of itself to venture capitalists to help finance Revved production, that probably explains A LOT. “Money got a lot more expensive”… and VC people are vultures who expect outsize short term profits, combine that with the “downturn” after the Covid boom and It’s bot hard to imagine some clueless patagonia vested bankers wanting to pull up stakes.
Local shop currently has 2 on the floor, heavily discounted.
I could definitely see something like this. I've seen this happen in biotech as well. VCs are frequently not good at aligning their expectations for profit and timeframe with the realities of a company they are investing in. They believe that with their ingenious management, they can beat the odds. For example, we want 10X in 3 years from a preclinical drug program (which will always take 5 or more likely 8 years to have a value inflection). The best part is VCs seldom value domain expertise (ie knowing about the bike business) and start making calls that can backfire based on hypothetical considerations learned during their MBA. Why on earth anyone would expect to strike it rich in the world of bikes is beyond me.
Compound all that with shitloads of money that they must invest out of their fund when things were going well followed by our current economic climate and it's a recipe for this kind of thing. I will say that venture capital and private equity for all the downsides do finance the development of many things which do in fact improve our lives. Just wish they had stayed away from GG or that GG would have stayed smaller and accepted that the jump from small to medium sized bike company is too risky.
Yes and no. Most start-ups fail. VCs mitigate that risk by making a lot of investments on tight time frames with high return expectations knowing that only a small percentage of their investments will pay off.
I doubt they came knocking on GGs door, rather it was the other way around.
I'm aware of how VC investment works. In my experience, many start ups fail because they didn't have the product or team to succeed. I've seen good products and teams shit the bed due to mismanagement from VCs just as often.
Obviously an evil VC firm didn't come and execute a hostile takeover of GG. But there was no way in fuck any bike company was going to hit the marks for a VC. The COVID boom was obviously not the new normal for anyone with real analytical capabilities. Greed plus invincible ignorance is a powerful force for suboptimalness.
Yup. I've been on both sides multiple times (start-ups failing and succeeding). The biggest differentiator has been the teams in my experience.
Word. Bike industry is already a shit industry to try to make money in without taking on VC level return requirements.
I have worked with a few startups but over 20 years I did witness the US machine tool industry completely disappear after what were family owned businesses got bought by corporations and then slowly starved, disassembled, and sold for parts. As far as I know the majority of remaining businesses are still privately owned or just recently bought out.
I am hoping someone will acquire the GG remnants and fire it back up again. Keep it smaller and be OK with that.
For those with frames I successfully ordered and received some back up hardware items this week.
For those with frames I successfully ordered and received some back up hardware items this week.
Managed to get a few spare geegaws, trinkets, fiddly bits and tchotchkes to hopefully keep me running for a few years from the service parts site. Still no hardware kits, so buying a metal detector to carry around on rides in case a proprietary bolt, nut or fasterner backs out somewhere on the trail
Orly?
I need a bike to assemble like a hole in the head, but what size frame and which version?
Large, one of the last that they made V4.
Damnit, was hoping it was a small so it would be an easy decision. Let me ponder it, really no reason to get rid of my Pistola at the moment, and it’s probably worthless as a used frame from a defunct company, but on the other hand, Sqeebs are pretty sweet
Might be easier to unload than other models since it's a Pistola
First year of the carbon frames with aluminum seat/chain stays, so 3rd gen, I think? Size 3, if I were to sell it it would just be a frame more than likely. Pretty sure I’m going to hang onto it another year or so though
