i believe they co-developped the VPP with SC
Specialized crushes Stratos *Unconfirmed*
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Glad the oozing stopped, now if I can just remove the mental image from my brain....
Stratos DID legitimately license the technology from the inventor. I know this because I once worked for the company that invented the stuff (Ricor). I don't know all the dirt on what happened since, but here's a clue. A bit cryptic, but you can read between the lines.
Shocknerd said:
The vpp linkage was originally brought to market by a now defunct company called "Outland". I think SC and Intense bought the rights together, and agreed to develop it seperatley for their own use.
yup thats it exactly. we've been through this years ago. can we please keep this topic on target.
Hmmm... I remember when Stratos had plans on making a new rear shock with that ID cartridge integrated into it. They had a pic of it up on their site but wasn't there for too long.
i think i may have heard here that the fsr patent is up next year. not sure of the truth to this so i figured i'd ask in this thread to see if anyone has any details? sounded like one of the many false rumors going around here, but this thread has made me kind of curious.
I haven't checked the dates, but most U.S. Patents are good for 17 years.
So when it expires, which will happen?
1) everyone will start using the totally amazing, solves all problems, all singing/all dancing, best suspension design ever, for FREE.....
2) or they won't give a shivt, and specialized will have to come up with some other so-called straightline wheel path, no pedal bob nirvana to market.
oops, sorry, drifted ot again....just as I'm bitching about it on another thread....
The axle path on a Demo8 is forward arcing. I traced it out a couple weeks ago. It's defitely not vertical.
yea, I know, I was hoping the heavy dose of sarcasm would offset marketing's ability to disobey physics...
I'm not sure they ever made mountain bike suspension.
Close. Yes, outland patented it and brought it to market first, but SC bought the patents and licenses it to Intense - they didn't buy it together.
Anyway back OT...oh wait, I have nothing to add on Stratos.
Yeah.
Good old Stump-dog. Pimped my AMP B-3 with that proto Helix Expert, pretty sweet.
Jeez, thinking way, way back to the good old SB days, I've known a couple of guys there.
Dylan hooked me up with another Helix for that first in the US DH Team frame I got way back when too.
Didn't you have that SuperStar 8 fork for a while? I seem to remember that for some reason...
JJames
I have a question. Around year 2,000 ~ 2,001 there sure were TONS of Stratos cheerleaders posting on the forums.
I see a few have jumped ship and are now haters. What ever happened to the rest of them? Hummm .....
I see a few have jumped ship and are now haters. What ever happened to the rest of them? Hummm .....
They probably all tried something of the Manitou Axel/Rockshox Judy level and realized their wrong doings :biggrin:
It's all part of the "Bandwagon". Back then Stratos could do no wrong, true "Nobody" played a big part in there popularity & excellent customer service, however I thought they made a nice product. Funny how in around 2001-2004 the Boxxers had the issue with seal leakage as did Stratos, funny how everyone bashed on the small guy and supported the big company.
Mainly because the MX6/S7 and whatever the hell else they called it-chassi sucked compared to the boxxer chasssis or others that were available in the same time period. If you wanted an 8lb 6-7" fork, you got the stratos. If you didn't care about having the stiffest fork, you got the stratos. The wrap-around/pinching brake arch was pretty bad, compared to decent one-peice mg and al lowers that you'd get from the other manufacturers. To put it simply, the stratos had a pretty crappy chassi, and they never really changed it. No wonder they fell out of favor.
I've used a Strata Shock Pro since 199... Never leaked, never blown, holds 150psi for months at a time.
I finally had some sucking sounds (air slightly mixing with the oil), but that sounds perfectly acceptable to me for a 9 year old shock. I believe it might have started after I "cleaned" it with WD-40... I know not to do that now... I talked with Mike at Stratos, he will rebuild it for me this week.
He sounded pretty bummed about the Specialized suit. I do feel sorry for the little guys that get beat up by the companies with all the money.
I know of cases where a large multinational sued a small speck on the wall company, and even though the big co lost round after round, they had the money to keep suing, and the little guys didn't.
Let's face it, the law is a weapon, the system is abused.
I finally had some sucking sounds (air slightly mixing with the oil), but that sounds perfectly acceptable to me for a 9 year old shock. I believe it might have started after I "cleaned" it with WD-40... I know not to do that now... I talked with Mike at Stratos, he will rebuild it for me this week.
He sounded pretty bummed about the Specialized suit. I do feel sorry for the little guys that get beat up by the companies with all the money.
I know of cases where a large multinational sued a small speck on the wall company, and even though the big co lost round after round, they had the money to keep suing, and the little guys didn't.
Let's face it, the law is a weapon, the system is abused.
RESURRECTION
Way to add to the thread.
Yeah it may be two months old, but I just spoke with Mike at Stratos friday.
Lets also face the Mike broke the law. I talked with him @ Big Bear in 2004, He's all hyped on the ID cartridge. I say "isn't that whole lot like the Brain shock/FX forks? What's Spec have to say?" He wouldn't give me very straight info, which isn't shocking when you are ripping someone off.
In short: Mike shat in the bed, now he has to sleep in it
mike didn't brake any laws. He legitimately licsensed the ID system and patent rights from the original inventor and patent holder. Maybe he was reluctant to go into details because Spec was giving him crap, but if anyone is breaking the law, it might not be mike.Lets also face the Mike broke the law. I talked with him @ Big Bear in 2004, He's all hyped on the ID cartridge. I say "isn't that whole lot like the Brain shock/FX forks? What's Spec have to say?" He wouldn't give me very straight info, which isn't shocking when you are ripping someone off.
In short: Mike shat in the bed, now he has to sleep in it
I don't/never have worked for mike. I barely know him, but I used to work for don richardson, and worked on some of the original patents, many years ago...
BTW, the original brain shock and fork had a very different functionality, that treally prevented them from working the way they wanted. If you acually took the time to read thru this entire thread (long, I know), you would probably gain a little more insight into what's really going on.....
Based on the info earlier in the thread, that seems to be about as wrong as you can be.
Have you any info to back this statement up?
Nope:biggrin:
that's cool and all, but I already added to the thread. I think two months ago, we also came to the conclusion that:
1) Nobody really knows the whole story, or they aren't going to say it.
2) This is a crappy thread because of 1).
If you have new and awesome info for us, let us know. Until then, more speculation is not going to get us anywhere.
I was just being sarcastic about your "RESURRECTION" comment.
I did have something to add in my experience with my 9 year old Stratos shock Pro.
New and awesome info for the day is: Get your Stratos shock rebuilt before they close doors soon... but not before me...
I did have something to add in my experience with my 9 year old Stratos shock Pro.
New and awesome info for the day is: Get your Stratos shock rebuilt before they close doors soon... but not before me...
Smack smack smacky smackity smack smack.
Okay, jumping to the end of the thing from the middle, I'm gonna miss [for this post] half the story, but here's what I can remember from way, 'way back:
Mike actually came up with the concept for the lockout in the "LockShock" that became the "StrataShock" in University Engineering. He was playing around with a compression locking circuit that he tested out with the infamous Bong.
Yep, the Bong was the first 'Shock' he actually perfected - it was part of his graduate degree project.
No lie.
Now, he takes the idea of the shock to some friends [guys who actually know more about business and such] and they get some local SB investors [Wright Watling - a guy I know for a completely different reason] and some other more famous names, and get some startup capital.
But, before the thing can go forwards, the Money wants to see some decent purchase orders. Demand. Gimme's.
So, Mike and Dave and the other guys go to Interbike. I'm thinking it's 1994.
They run across engineers from Trek, who are having a very bad day trying to figure out how to fix the main problem with the Y-bike.
They tell Dave and Mike "We know - it sucks - it's a yo-yo, for krissakes" and Mike and Dave say - "We can fix that" and the LockShock is born, fully grown, as the Strata Shock.
Orders pile in and the company starts to build up and yadda yadda.
Money becomes free **** growing on trees. They sponsor a Pro DH team with Shaums March and Mountain Cycle and some others. Leanne Hurtig takes over the management of the team [or the sponsorship management side of it] but things get fuzzy [for me] from there for awhile.
They design coil shocks [Helix] and the Killer Fork - Superstar 6 - for which i would whore myself out to do just about anything in order to get my hands on!
6" dual crown with compression and rebound damping adjustments, positions sensitive damping, 1 inch preload each leg, progressive double stage springs, etc etc. When the competition was Zyzzyx.
All machined from billet. The stanchions and sliders were gun-drilled. You guys have ANY idea how hard that is? How much material is used up? Not from Tubing [that was later].
Thing sold for around $1200. It was a work of art. I still want one just to put on the wall.
But - it cost about $500 to make - in machine time, materials, assembly.
I'm not getting into a manufacture cost vs. profit margin arguement - let's just say, that in order to cover design, maketing research [racing and the bike show and ads and whatnot] it should have sold for about $2000.
Not profitable. In fact, Money-Losing. The OEM pricing was also along the same lines of zero growth. The company went broke - the investors [see Money above] walked away. In their world, a write-off on investment was actually a break-even proposition.
Mike ended up with a free machine shop and a bunch of raw material, some good assemblers and a few machinists.
Oh, and John Stump, who did most of the design work from then on.
Now, Dave was the guy in charge of all major accounts. He made sure that Trek, Hotlines UK, Germany all got their products at the right time and in the right boxes.
He made the sales, soothed sore feelings, fixed glitches. His title was Director of Sales.
I worked for him. Domestic, Wholesale and Retail Sales. This was expanded to include Domestic Marketing, which was the entire race sponsorship program.
After the first year, I got a new title, from Sales to Director of Domestic Sales. I don't think I got a raise, but I did get a little bit of the pie.
It was the best year I ever had in the Bike Biz. That's when I ran the race effort and got to meet most of you guys. Thanks for all of that.
Mike met and married Catharine.
Business wasn't flying right - product kept changing but standards weren't being met - both Dave and I had to do a lot of dancing and jumping through flaming hoops to get what we could to the folks who wanted them.
It was a constant battle. Somehow, Mike got Catharine to invest her own money into the business, thus bringing in a new partner. Although she was a CPA, she had very little experience with this kind of business.
Problems arose between people. Apparently, both Dave and I were making too much money. We got downgraded from a salaried/bonus structure to commission only. However, no guarantees were in place that product would be improved or standards would be met.
We both quit. I think it was 2001/02
The revolving door policy began. So did the tailspins.
Lacking any clear corporate vision or market strategy, they lost ground in every arena.
Now, here's where things get even more murky.
Mike made some arrangement with the Patent Holder for a particular type of Inertia Damping [I met him, but totally forget his name.]
Do a Google on RICOR. Edelbrock uses the technology.
However, unlike some other posts I've encounter recently, talks with RICOR did not enter into an agreement until about 2002-ish.
The Patent was specific, however, and applied only to Motorized Vehicles - Mike was trying to work it into the bicycle side of things when I left town for the first jaunt to Mexico.
My best guess is that he failed in due diligence with the patents that Specialized held with Fox and the loophole didn't work in his favor.
On top of that issue, they came out with the El Jefe - a shock that they acknowledged to me at my very last Interbike as a reverse engineered Avalanche shock [with some variation in size and threading and such] but were totally out of the OEM market.
With a tattered reputation and a new guy on the phone every other month, people just stopped buying the stuff.
His biz that kept the lights on was mostly prototyping miscellaneous parts and churning out some proprietary helicopter bits.
Even that wasn't enough and he moved out of the joint on Quarantina and I have no idea what he's up to today.
Dave went on to get an MBA at Laverne University and is currently a Veep at a company that handles most of eBays online advertising. I think about 60 or more people work directly for him. He's got a nice house in Montecito.
John Stump is a design engineer in Santa Monica, I think. Certainly way up the food chain.
Me? Semi-retired in a foreign country.
Thanks for listening.
Some of the above may be wrong in their order, but to the best of my memory, that's what and how things happened.
Ultimately, it is a classical business manoeuver to press a smaller company into failure in order to absorb it's assets.
In this case, a paper asset.
Wow, great read. Thanks for taking the time!
You forgot to mention one big problem that came in with Stratos: Catherine.
That woman was an outright bitch everytime I spoke with her. She had the welcoming tone of a sawblade, and I know personally it turned off quite a few people.
That woman was an outright bitch everytime I spoke with her. She had the welcoming tone of a sawblade, and I know personally it turned off quite a few people.
Actually, I didn't forget to 'mention' it -
I've worked for Nazis before. It's awful. I just didn't want to open that particular can of worms.
We could always go for beers and I'll tell you everything you could ever want to know....
Ah, you are just far more diplomatic then me. 
I have to admit, I would be so curious. It seemed they had a solid product, just needed better marketing and a bit of refinement.
I have to admit, I would be so curious. It seemed they had a solid product, just needed better marketing and a bit of refinement.
she was the stiletto that stabbed right through the heart of the sickly body and finally killed it.Ah, you are just far more diplomatic then me.
I have to admit, I would be so curious. It seemed they had a solid product, just needed better marketing and a bit of refinement.
Good old Johnnie Stump. That guy made life interesting for sure. I remember giving him my AMP B-3 for them to build the prototyple Helix Expert for. Amazing upgrade from the little AMP unit...
Great read man, glad to see someone clear the air. Makes me miss SB...
JJames
Great read man, glad to see someone clear the air. Makes me miss SB...
JJames
Thing about John was - he kept getting the 'scut work' to finish up things... that is 'make it work' fixes.
I remember finding out that most of the 'look' of the Stratos line was designed by an Industrial Designer [name temporarily escapes me - but he went on to design Nokia phones and some parts of the new BMW 730 series and has his own design company now, wife's a Brazillian, etc] - all the tapers, dimples, curves - in short, all the cool appearances.
Then, making parts fit, valves rotate, indents plink and all that stuff was up to Stumpdog. His position was Production Manager, and he was supposed to make sure that parts were made to spec, showed up on time, got assembled, and went out.
Instead, when the lockout didn't lock out, he had to redesign it to lock out, or be adjustable or whatever. A lot of his time was spent correcting design issues.
As a result, he'd work 16 hrs a day trying to catch up and many's the time that it just didn't work.
I remember when we were trying to get a single crown fork out, something to compete with Marzocchi and before Fox came out with their own.
Mike ended up spending about 4 months refining a new lockout system for A-Pro so they could make their own locking shock for the Asian and European market. They in turn marketed it as the O2 X-fusion shock.
Meantime, no movement on the M3 fork except for a prototype crown and brake arch. I had a stack of orders for it, domestically, and Dave had a couple big ones from the UK and Germany sitting on his desk.
Stump had to make up from scratch the new product line that year [S8 for instance] and, quite frankly, was out of his element. I don't blame him for anything, except for putting up with very poor treatment from Mike and Catherine for years.
Oh, and the funny thing about the X-Fusion/A-Pro deal? The O2 performed better and more reliably than the Stratashock Pro so we lost almost all sales in Europe of one of our best performing shocks.
Mike personally got about $50k for the design [not Onsport,] the stickers on the shock had in tiny letters 'designed by stratos' and the company lost about $150k in aftermarket sales in the first year.
The single crown M3 never got to market, but the brake arch that Mike spent about 3 months designing in Pro-E and had prototyped by A-Pro showed up on the Fox Fork [which had the lowers cast by A-Pro, as I recall.]
No patents were ever filed by OnSport/Mike for that fork design, so it was just washed away.
But back to Stumpie - he could probably make anything fit anything. I'm glad he finally got a real job.
I remember finding out that most of the 'look' of the Stratos line was designed by an Industrial Designer [name temporarily escapes me - but he went on to design Nokia phones and some parts of the new BMW 730 series and has his own design company now, wife's a Brazillian, etc] - all the tapers, dimples, curves - in short, all the cool appearances.
Then, making parts fit, valves rotate, indents plink and all that stuff was up to Stumpdog. His position was Production Manager, and he was supposed to make sure that parts were made to spec, showed up on time, got assembled, and went out.
Instead, when the lockout didn't lock out, he had to redesign it to lock out, or be adjustable or whatever. A lot of his time was spent correcting design issues.
As a result, he'd work 16 hrs a day trying to catch up and many's the time that it just didn't work.
I remember when we were trying to get a single crown fork out, something to compete with Marzocchi and before Fox came out with their own.
Mike ended up spending about 4 months refining a new lockout system for A-Pro so they could make their own locking shock for the Asian and European market. They in turn marketed it as the O2 X-fusion shock.
Meantime, no movement on the M3 fork except for a prototype crown and brake arch. I had a stack of orders for it, domestically, and Dave had a couple big ones from the UK and Germany sitting on his desk.
Stump had to make up from scratch the new product line that year [S8 for instance] and, quite frankly, was out of his element. I don't blame him for anything, except for putting up with very poor treatment from Mike and Catherine for years.
Oh, and the funny thing about the X-Fusion/A-Pro deal? The O2 performed better and more reliably than the Stratashock Pro so we lost almost all sales in Europe of one of our best performing shocks.
Mike personally got about $50k for the design [not Onsport,] the stickers on the shock had in tiny letters 'designed by stratos' and the company lost about $150k in aftermarket sales in the first year.
The single crown M3 never got to market, but the brake arch that Mike spent about 3 months designing in Pro-E and had prototyped by A-Pro showed up on the Fox Fork [which had the lowers cast by A-Pro, as I recall.]
No patents were ever filed by OnSport/Mike for that fork design, so it was just washed away.
But back to Stumpie - he could probably make anything fit anything. I'm glad he finally got a real job.
...Oh, and the thing about the Seals on the S8
Two things:
Part One - we used to have these brilliant seals that we used on the Stratashock Pro - very high quality and very expensive. We started using them on the S8 and the first few hundred worked like a charm.
Then, before the second season started, all hell breaks loose. Leaks?
OMFG!
My beard went grey in one month.
It took months before we found out what was going on. We changed production on the housings, reduced diameters, tried and tried again and again to fix the problem.
This prevented the fork guards, btw, from ever happening. We made our own out of PVC and zip ties.
Turns out, the Seals we'd been buying for years from one company overseas had moved the production from one country to another. From Japan to China.
But, instead of sending the molds, they'd sent drawings. e-Mail! aaaaaaah! So the new molds were out of tolerance and the seal mfg'r didn't want to tell us.
Part Two By the time that was finally resolved, I was no longer associated with the company. They came up with 'Tiger' seals and some other company was making them.
But one year of bad seals is all it takes if the rest of the company is unresponsive to market concern! By ignoring it, and in many cases outright denying it, they poisoned the tiny number of bike enthusiasts that wanted to buy boutique-brand products.
Sure, Rock Shox could have faulty Ti-Ni coating on all their stanchions and have a recall and such. They could have bad seals for a season or two and just toss the entire event on the shyt-heap. Who cares? People bitch and complain about it, swear never to use it again, yadda yadda.
But Rock Shox's real market isn't 'Early Adopters' or 'Innovators' or the tiny 'Enthusiast' market. It's Gary Fisher/Trek and Pacific Cycles.
But Stratos - it had a worldwide market of about 8,000 customers and each and every one of them was a vocal and savvy bike beast who not only rode all the time, but also talked to other BikeBeasts all the damn time. Certainly not BikeFred out for one of the three 'trail rides' he'll have this year.
Two things:
Part One - we used to have these brilliant seals that we used on the Stratashock Pro - very high quality and very expensive. We started using them on the S8 and the first few hundred worked like a charm.
Then, before the second season started, all hell breaks loose. Leaks?
OMFG!
My beard went grey in one month.
It took months before we found out what was going on. We changed production on the housings, reduced diameters, tried and tried again and again to fix the problem.
This prevented the fork guards, btw, from ever happening. We made our own out of PVC and zip ties.
Turns out, the Seals we'd been buying for years from one company overseas had moved the production from one country to another. From Japan to China.
But, instead of sending the molds, they'd sent drawings. e-Mail! aaaaaaah! So the new molds were out of tolerance and the seal mfg'r didn't want to tell us.
Part Two By the time that was finally resolved, I was no longer associated with the company. They came up with 'Tiger' seals and some other company was making them.
But one year of bad seals is all it takes if the rest of the company is unresponsive to market concern! By ignoring it, and in many cases outright denying it, they poisoned the tiny number of bike enthusiasts that wanted to buy boutique-brand products.
Sure, Rock Shox could have faulty Ti-Ni coating on all their stanchions and have a recall and such. They could have bad seals for a season or two and just toss the entire event on the shyt-heap. Who cares? People bitch and complain about it, swear never to use it again, yadda yadda.
But Rock Shox's real market isn't 'Early Adopters' or 'Innovators' or the tiny 'Enthusiast' market. It's Gary Fisher/Trek and Pacific Cycles.
But Stratos - it had a worldwide market of about 8,000 customers and each and every one of them was a vocal and savvy bike beast who not only rode all the time, but also talked to other BikeBeasts all the damn time. Certainly not BikeFred out for one of the three 'trail rides' he'll have this year.
Lmao. We were "remembering when" the other day... good laughs.
Wow... really interesting.
I remember he lost the brake pivot bolt out of his brake lever, and hadn't realized until that AM, Dia Compe SS-5s I belive, and he managed to find an old wood screw and the top of a ball-point click-it pen, and fixed it.
Thing was, 3 months later, he was still rocking that setup. Funny stuff.
