Don’t most of these gravel bikes already have offsets of between 45 and 50mm? E.g. the Tamland. If I had a gravel bike, I wouldn’t spend $400 to get 2 mm extra offset. If you’re going with these offsets, the only differentiating feature between this and the Niner fork is an extra few bosses, although it sounds like you don’t think people want bosses? Imo 47 and 53 are negligibly different from the forks that are coming on people’s gravel bikes, and unlikely to make a difference or really help people front load their 71 deg HTA gravel bikes. Also, there’s a big difference between low trail (<40mm) and lowish trail. So it seems these numbers put the fork in a no-man’s land. I would caution you from trying to cater to the market that does want the true low trail carbon fork; their needs are so disparate as to make it a fool’s errand to try and serve them with a project like this (see: Rawland). I mean, look at all the different conflicting specs you already have to deal with:
fenders/no fenders
rack/lowrider/no rack
post mount/flat mount
9QR/12TA/15TA
47/53/other offset
No matter which configuration you choose, the majority of those NFE/650b Google Group people will find something that doesn’t agree with them, and not buy. I don’t know what the custom builders would need if your plan is to sell to them. So in conclusion, maybe there’s a market for a fork with 1.125 steerer and flat mount/12TA that has road+ clearances on its own, but I think it’ll be really difficult to roll different offset numbers into the design. You would need a lot of offset to help the road/front loading handling of a 71HTA gravel bike, and that crowd is unlikely to understand. But if you make it with that much offset, you will have a hard time selling it to the people who might actually want a low trail carbon fork, thanks to the brake/hub compatibility issues, especially with the dyno hubs. Rock and a hard place.
I don’t think you could go very wrong making a fork that’s 1⅛", has rack+lowrider+fender attachments, uses a 12mm T-A (can adapt 15mm down, can adapt a q/r to be an economy 9mm T-A), uses flat mounts (ditto for adapters to post &/| q/r mounts), and has a rando-wankish 65mm offset. The only people you’d leave out are people like me who make standard-tubing-sized lugged frames and who are irrationally wedded to rim brakes.
is the way to go. real low trail is the differentiator and everything else can be worked around.
idk what the deal is with a-c but I’m sure you can find a good middle of the road number there.
I’d probably / possibly buy one for my Steel District. If the color is good lol. The frame is decent but the fork is a hi-ten POS
You would need a flat face on the inside of the 12mm TA dropout to use the adapter sleeve. The majority of forks I’ve seen have a scallop sized to wrap around the end cap of the hub, and render the adapter useless. Otherwise sounds nice. Not saying you would “go wrong”, per se, making a fork as you describe, but you wouldn’t sell many.
Is already differentiating enough… there’s not a single aftermarket fork on the market that ticks three of those boxes. Add in optional rack mounts (rando rack and lowrider) and you’ve already got a unicorn fork.
Most custom builders and their customers don’t give shit about low trail. So I’m not sure if that’s really a necessary feature for this project
If you can tell me that you all really believe I could sell 100+ forks a year in a low trail version that would require it’s own mold then maybe it’s on the table.
Got crust behind it. I’m not sure how many bikes he’s selling but it seems like decent amount. He doesn’t seem to be that interested in adhering to any existing standards or low trail though, so that may be an uphill battle.
Get Endpoint behind it. I bet we could move 15-30 a year.
That’s still probably not enough though. It’s probably too high end for Soma (and they like their own cheapo IRD stuff and $400 for a fork may be pricey for their target customer. Low trail is too niche for any Q brand atmo. Same goes for any larger custom shops like Firefly or IF. Their target consumer won’t get it.
Which leaves you to really go hard after guys like Winter who might actually want to push low trail. Or possibly Breadwinner.
Who else is even flirting with small batch true front load?
Does Jan’s disc Ti Firefly indicate other like-mided customers who used to be into uber-reenactment Herse’s could be receptive to a nice crabon fork? Maybe.
Would Jan have gone for a carpet fiber fork over the steel on on the bike, if such a fork was available?
Keep in mind that for this product the primary volume of sales is going to be new bike builds. This fork is going to be sold to people building frames to go with it. The dust has more or less settled with road/cross/gravel disc. All new platforms and components are designed for 12mm and flat mount.
The non-low trail version of this fork I think can realistically sell the 100+ a year needed through mostly higher volume custom shops, some lower volume custom builders and a handful of aftermarket sales.
I think that target demographic would want a fork that also is as compliant as the steel forks they all love so much. That’s not impossible but definitely beyond the scope of this project.
I know people who designed and produced such a fork on a production bike… if it was an aftermarket product it would have hd to sell for $1000. That bike was scrapped before a full product cycle.
TBH, I don’t think the delusional “compliant as the steel forks” crowd would touch a carbon fiber fork at anything other than gunpoint. Don’t even try to market to them.
Yeah I think I’m pretty much in on this project. I think the return is there.
I’ll post when things are further along. I’m headed to Asia for a few weeks for a work/vacation combo trip. I may even be able to scout out potential vendors for this project.
to Taiwan and come up with a whole line in a year