Putting ANY money into goofy shit like hatchets is downright stupid.
Axe the $2500 frames. Hell, axe most of 'em and design some TIG-welded ones that retail somewhere between SOMA/Surly and the $850 ones they overcharge for now. Every fork gets a threadless steerer. NO exceptions.
Drop that $220 “Silver” triple and sell Sugino XDs instead. Kill the Sackville bags. Quit maligning proven, modern drivetrain technology and stop selling parts that can be had for 50% less from Jenson.
Done.
I feel like the people that would buy a Riv have already done so. For nice paint, MUSA, and your own special sauce there are many custom builders that will turn your $ into your magic sled. That wasn’t the case in 1994. For the rest of folks there are a raft of Tig-steel bikes that will work for throwing your old parts on with a basket and adventuring. Certainly Riv prodded that aesthetic along, but folks now have options. Rentable nails the modernization strategy.
For someone whose main selling point was ‘Bigger tires!’ he should have embraced disc brakes 8 or 10 years ago. Instead he just doubled down on the retrogrouch.
Yeah, the new Sam H is getting canti posts so that it can fit wider tires. That means more whining on the BOB list about setting up cantilevers and/or complaining about how v-brakes don’t play nice with brifters (their term, not mine).
Salsa isn’t immune to fuckery, but I’m pretty sure they sell out of every Vaya and Fargo that gets produced.
i found the writing style on that post to be almost unintelligible
No lies detected. It certainly doesn’t help him/Riv in his/their quest to stay afloat.
As always, Tarck Consulting LLC nails it. Instead of having a company dedicated to making bikes that are too expensive and no one wants to buy, Grant needs to pick an anachronism or two and make those his things (how about: long chainstays, quill stems) and design some bikes around those things, but with concessions to the market.
In a sense, Grant is a victim of his own success. Without him, I don’t think we’d be having the same conversation about low-trail bikes, 650b tires, flat pedals, and the myriad uses of old bikes. But because he reminded everyone that old stuff worked great for most purposes, a lot of us (myself included) just bought the old stuff. I appreciate the function and utility of a bike with a steel frame, stout wheels, upright, sweptback handlebars and a basket on the front, but I don’t need a Rivendell to get that when Craigslist and every thrift store is full of Stumpys, Fujis, Treks, etc. If you want a lugged steel frame with a quill stem and cantilever brakes, it’s really not necessary to get an Atlantis, when there’s an old Miyata that checks all those boxes and costs like $150.
I think that Rivendell is on the right track with the Roadini (the bike they should have introduced 10 years ago), and hopefully it’s not too late. More of those would be great, especially if Grant uses his leverage and Taiwanese know-how to make a more “on trend” frame with some geometry tweaks and maybe even disc brakes.
Wasn’t the SOMA San Marcos supposed to fill that niche? The double top tube probably killed any chance of that succeeding, though.
Yes, as was his deal with QBP a few years before that. It probably didn’t help that the Soma was A) Sold by Soma, B) Did not say “RIVENDELL” on the side. And then the gimmicky double-top tube for anyone taller than 6’ probably didn’t help.
Was the Saluki the model for QBP? I wasn’t paying attention to Riv during that period, but I heard that it was a huge fiasco.
It was the Blériot.
Rivendell has no unique value proposition in the contemporary bike world, a fact evident in the frantic spluttering on the company blog.
The Soma San Marcos seems pointless, they should have just pushed the Fog Cutter harder as a decent sport touring bike.
Double top tubes are a fantastic solution for preserving stiffness in big frames, because it’s literally illegal to make a frame with a sloping top tube and an OS seatpost (or just a regular seatpost because the only time you care about frame flex is pedaling out of the saddle).
edit: and I doubt that anyone has ever stood up to pedal a Rivendell
Sackville has less cachet than Carradice and less technical evolution than Revelate or [insert any bikepacking bagmaker here].
Rivendell could have been guided into the present day bike world by a competent brand / product manager, instead they had a guy who had two good ideas in 1992 and many many bad ideas in the intervening quarter century. He confused his aesthetic preferences with functional design solutions, and had the capital to keep pitching those ideas to successive generations of bike nerds, but it seems like that particular dance is basically done now.
I have Grant to thank for getting me into supple-ish 32c skinwall tires. I read the Grant book, decided it wasn’t for me, and passed it on to a friend who struggles with mental health and recreational cycling, and it seemed to do wonders for him.
Agreed on all points; it’d be nice to have a production steel option between SOMA/Surly and going straight to Gunnar. I don’t even care about headset threading. I like his silver parts, but the foray into hatchets was a huge misstep.
Ahh, OK. Thanks.
iwillbe nailed it.
Yeah, that’s the last word on GP shenanigans, as far as I’m concerned.
I am actually way onboard with the Rivendell vibe as I understand it. But the thing that’s always been at odds with the “don’t care how fast you go, have fun and ride places” ethos is that it doesn’t jibe well with the products he actually sells. I look at my LHT, which I like because it has big tires and I can carry all sorts of garbage on it and ride it up hills slow if I want to, but in the 5 or so years I’ve owned that bike it has taken a beating. Since it’s a Surly I’m just fine with that, but beausage be damned I would not want to subject an actual Rivendell frame to all that. It’s cool to go to his website and get ideas for things, but it’s even better not to buy the stuff he has there because most of it is too precious to actually use unless you are pretty well off shartmo
Petersen’s steadfast position that cycling should be more than racing was an important voice in the wilderness in the 90’s and 2000’s, when the dominant sales and product design concept for both road and mountain bikes was raceracerace.
In this decade, as the industry frantically scrambles to figure out what the hell the diffuse cloud of post-Boomer bike consumers actually wants, he’s just one of a million people selling “non-racing” bikes. you know, bikes for literally everything else people want to do with bikes. Like your LHT.
Like Campagnolo, he’s trading on a reputation built back when his product was more exclusive, and also like them he’s locked into a pricing model that’s wildly out of step with what consumers are willing to pay. If Rivendell’s financial straits are as dire as he claims, and he’s as close to retirement as I’d imagine a sixtysomething(?) man to be, then he’d probably do best to push for more licensing of his brand to younger, more in-touch ventures. Collab with Crust or Endpoint or whoever, pay UltraRomance to be photographed riding their bikes, sell off whatever Rivendell actually owns to some sucker who can’t see the train coming. He’s way closer to Bruce Gordon than Mike Sinyard, and he might want to start acting accordingly.
tbh there are few things i love more than a beat to shit rivendell
there used to be an old fixed gear atlantis with a heavy front rack and mustache bars around logan square
it looked like it had been to hell and back a few times
love[d] that bike
but i’m also the guy who had a stem shifter on my philippe
so don’t listen to me
Mr. UltraRomance has been posting a Rivendell road bike he just built up so maybe Peterson is trying to do exactly what you described.