Singletrack

Keith, we were talking about the continual pursuit of increasingly niche bits
of the mountain bike world. Is this because we’re running out of new ideas?
Or is there still room for innovation in the bicycle world?
It depends on what you consider ‘new
ideas’ and innovation. I get asked this
kind of question in every interview
I do. My response (in an interview
with another UK mag about ten years
ago) was that the improvements in
mountain bikes would not be in big
new ideas. It would be in refining and
perfecting the bikes we already have. I
think that’s still pretty close to right.
We’ve become convinced that
everything we use should be replaced
with the new and improved model
on a regular basis. Like cell phones.
But it’s not simple to improve bikes
continuously. They are not silicon
chips – they do not behave according
to Moore’s Law. Improving a
mechanical device becomes increasingly
expensive and complex as the design
approaches an optimal state, and
the incremental improvements in
performance get smaller and smaller.
Luckily the bicycle world operates
according to the rules of fashion (as
do most retail industries). The rules
of fashion offer a simple solution
– it’s about change. Change can be
innovative, but it doesn’t have to be. It
can also loop back on itself whenever
it has to. The clothing industry is a
simple example of how long that sort
of thing can go on and how weird it
can get. There is plenty to be done as
long as we are all willing to play along.
Playing along has been kinda fun,
of course. For decades cross-country
racing drove innovation and fashion.
Hardtails ruled. Light was right.
Climbing was what mattered. (This
wasn’t actually that much fun for a lot
of people who didn’t think climbing
was so awesome.) Then cross-country
wheel diameters got a lot bigger,
which didn’t change much but looked
different. Those eventually caught on
when carbon came along and the bikes
could be made light enough. Light
was still right. Then trail bikes with
6in+ travel took over. Light mattered
less. Big air was cool, especially when
it was someone else in a video.
Then the wheels on those got a
little bigger, or a lot bigger, which led
to a massive flushing – every one of
the original and still very functional
hardtails with smaller wheels was
sold off or given away by every
serious cyclist who still had one.
Then we decided really fat tyres
were cool. Handling in bumps was
goofy, like playing billiards with a circus
elephant. Weight and speed didn’t really
matter any more either. We could ride
on snow (sometimes). Then less fat
tyres were cool. Circus elephant light?
Cross-country instincts creeping back
in? Then, just to show that we still had
some racer in us, we decided that riding
skinny tyres on gravel was the thing.
And the skinny tyres are getting fatter
again (because riding skinny tyres fast
on gravel is incredibly hard to do). As
long as you are driven by curiosity and
have a fairly big budget to satisfy that
curiosity this all makes a lot of sense.
Having said that, e-MTBs and
e-bikes is a new category that is
going to change a lot of things. The
idea of a battery powered or assisted
bicycle is not really new. But the idea
of using the pedals as a throttle is a
novel complexity as far as I can tell.
These bikes have the benefit of being
on the coat-tails of developments
in motors, batteries and storage for
other industries. They depend on that
technology in fact. (This isn’t unique –
mountain bike frame development was
based on exotic frame materials during
the commercialisation of the defence
industry in the ’80s. Remember metal
matrix composites and beryllium?) The
niches for these bikes are still being
defined, expanded and sliced up at a
very rapid rate. They are already the
hottest thing in the bike biz. The biggest
developments are still in the pipeline.
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