Shocking Riv-ish developments at an LBS near me...

[lungimsam]

I was at the local LBS Trek/Felt/Bontrager racy shop. Since I got into biking a few years ago, they seemed to always sell drop bar bikes with race geometry and low stems/short steerer tubes.

In the last year I have seem them carrying Surly's.

 

Today, I stopped in looking for some accessories, and I overheard a salesman telling a guy who was looking at a bike that "we have the stems high because 95% of the people who buy bikes here are not racers."

 

I had noticed that the sterrer tubes were looking alot higher than usual, with a lot more, and thicker, spacers than I usually see on the average race bike over the last few years in shops in my area.

 

They were even showing a full fistfull of height on a Trek Madone (6?) that was in its own display area. Looked like electric shifters, too. I was so pleased to see these changes. I wonder what prompted it? Reading Riv-readers? Too many people complainging about low bars that cannot be remedied?

 

I looked down a whole row of race bikes, and they all had high stems. They look kinda like miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa's with the bars and stem clamped onto the top.

Far out.

 

 

 

[lungimsam]

Sorry for the typos. I wonder if quill stems will be coming back anytime soon.

[Tony Lockhart]

It's nice to hear LBS folks saying that their sales are coming primarily from regular people. Kinda makes me wonder if more and more people are realizing the enjoyment that comes with cycling. Surlys are great bikes and it makes sense that they're increasing in popularity.

I have a conjecture about the high steer tubes. I speculate that the bikes at your LBS are built up with uncut steer tubes so customers have the option of fine tuning their handlebar height. Perhaps potential buyers get the opportunity to mix and match washers to find the ideal height when going in for a fitting.

[lungimsam]

I noticed a few colored spacers thrown in with the regular silver spacers, too. So I guess a customer could get some customosation bling that way, too.

[Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery]

Just this year, Surly removed any restrictions on steerer tube length from their warranty language. The old warranty was invalidated, supposedly, if the steerer protruded more than 100 mm (4") above the headtube/headset. We at HC have been ignoring that for years, but this year Surly gave their blessing to long steerer tubes with the phrase, IIRC, "go nuts". LHT steerer length for 700C wheels is 320 mm (about 13") and for 26" wheels and 56cm+ frames, it's 380 mm (just over 15"). For most people, the full-length steerer is plenty to get the bars high enough. Even when we cut some off, I always leave an extra 10-15 mm, just in case the rider wants to go a little higher someday without a new up-angle stem. Anyway, this is a case where the conventional wisdom about threadless steerers being universally too short is wrong. Incidentally, I don't believe this is a case of "the industry" seeing the light as much as a case of saving money by not pre-cutting the steerers.

It's really nothing new that bike shops are selling non-racer bikes. Everyday Mongo and I fix up old bikes made in the past 1-50 years. Most are hybrids or comfort bikes or mountain bikes or 1970s and 80s 10-speeds or English 3-speeds and the like. The fraction of older racing-inspired bikes that come through for service is tiny. I suspect this means that people have mostly been buying non-racing bikes for the past 50 years. Of course, the shops like to push the sexier stuff. When I worked at Freewheel, which is a big Trek shop (and former BStone dealer) in Minneapolis, we had lots of racy bikes on display to greet customers when they walked in, but I sold probably 2-3 Trek 520 touring bikes for every racing-style bike, and probably 20 $400 hybrids for every race bike. I don't recall selling even one $5,000-10,000 Madone, even though we had them to sell.

[Peter Pesce]

I was just thinking about a similar thing. I seriously doubt Trek keeps the lights on at Trek world HQ selling Madones. For all the angst over the race-centric bike industry I'd guess 99.9% of the 15.7 million bikes sold in the US in 2011 were comfort, hybrid or MTB. Heck, 4.7 million of those were in the "under 20" wheel" category, which I assume is mostly kids bikes, not Moultons!

Pete in CT

[Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery]

It is true, however, that until somewhat recently if you wanted to "upgrade" yourself (from the entry-level hybrid, etc) as a "serious" cyclist, your typical LBS would have pushed you toward a race-style bike, complete with the performance-oriented fit, team kit, clipless pedals, and all the rest. To a large extent, that's still true, but it is improving! Rivendell led the way in showing the rest of the bike industry that there was demand for an upscale version of a practical, comfort-oriented bike that had nothing to do with racing. Surly wasn't far behind, and now numerous smaller companies offer a wide variety of flavors in this genre. Even the bigger companies are starting to respond. Cycling clothing comes in better variety now, too. And the biggest growth in QBP's catalog in the pedal section is a new kind of "clipless" in the numerous brands and models of wide, grippy platform pedals that work well with normal shoes.

IMO, we are several years into a golden age of non-racing cycling.