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Mike Poyzer @ Onza

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Everything posted by Mike Poyzer @ Onza

  1. The Mini Master was a concept which achieved production but never achieved large scale sales. I don't really anticipate that it will find a place in their next range. The Sting is a short Rip. Do you consider the Rip a competition model or a beginners mass market model which competent riders inevitably move on from. We know that the potential younger riders market is not big but we are interested in supporting it. We don't think that other manufacturers (those that are left) will be interested in it.
  2. As I stated earlier, I have now sold the Onza brand to Moore Large & Co. who have been our UK distributor for the past six years. The brand is in extremely good health and is in good hands. The buyers are one of the best financed and managed bicycle distributors in the UK and will go from strength to strength. At the same time I still retained the Tensile, Araya, Conspiracy and Unofix brands which I still operate along with Rock'n'Roll Bikes. I would not dream of going into direct competition with the bicycles which Onza sell. Image is NOT yet a brand, merely a project. We looked at the youth trials market and thought it was badly catered for and was too niche for Onza to get involved. I still retain the services of frame makers in Taiwan and we use parts that have already been developed by ourselves. Image is very much experimental and if we achieve some success then it could grow into a micro brand but as yet there is no commitment.
  3. I don't know where you heard this MIS- information. We sold the worldwide Onza brand a few months ago to one of the biggest and best financed bicycle distribution companies in the UK. We continue to develop parts and bikes for all disciplines and in the Trials market, we are particularly keen to cater for the younger elements. It is an area which is badly catered for in general and it is from where the future of the sport will develop.
  4. I think that Mark is probably referring to me. Although no formal announcement has yet been made until all the formalities are completed, it is no secret that I have sold all my worldwide rights and intellectual property for the Onza brand to Moore Large, who have been our UK distributors for the last six years. The difference here is that I have not left the business. I have sold the rights of a flourishing brand to a company who will build on that success and have a commitment to growing it. I will still be heavily connected as my son Joe works for them and will take control of the Onza side of their business. The video he recently completed is testimony to their dedication to its future development. In the meantime, as I approach 65 in July, I am still retaining the Tensile brand and several other brands, so will continue to be involved in the world of Trials as well as many other aspects of the bicycle industry. I suppose I ought to change my TF name to Mike Poyzer@ Tensile. Mike Poyzer
  5. A much better and clearer range of photo's now uploaded onto tensile.net.
  6. They had advanced tremendously by 1993. This is from the 1993 catalogue and they clearly had a lead which was squandered. Probably too niche for them or they were just pandering to Hans Rey.
  7. Just selling a few early catalogues on Ebay and I came across this. A 1988 GT catalogue detailing Hans Rey and his 1987 GT Ricochet. Thats 25 years ago. Anybody got any earlier references to trials.
  8. Just a reflection on some of the comments on here. We'd love to fit a Tensile freewheel on everything, but its just too expensive. At least the freewheel we fit is a good strong one and handles the abuse of new riders very well. Even top class freewheels have a limited lifespan. It was felt to be a good place for your first upgrade. As stated, the Rip is always the best seller, but we haven't just repeated it. We have looked very carefully at geometry and improved it greatly. The new Rip handles much better than any previous models. The Ska has never been for the timid and its colours and graphics are definitely in your face. Last years Ska was universally slagged off on the forum, and it turned out to be the fastest selling bike we ever produced being the first to completely sell out before last Christmas. So this sort of citicism is music to my ears.
  9. Very nice work and well done for producing such accomplished drawings and good looking prototypes. Its not new however. I have three sample prototypes somewhere knocking about of three variant prototypes with the same idea, which we produced in about 2004. The stumbling block was always the variable width between mounts. First prototype also included a hose splitter. Our final prototype was in 2 halves with a dovetail sliding centre section so that you could vary the width and the middle prototype had slotted sideways holes for the same purpose. General lack of interest from riders at the time made us shelve it. This is my sketch of first prototype. Afraid all the follow up CAD's are now deleted If I remember correctly, did not someone from Russia or Ukraine produce something similar 3 or 4 years ago as well.
  10. The Frewheel is 108. Lockring removal is under review. With threadlock there should be no problem. Don't forget that with the splined interface, the lockring is not under any torsional load. The Tensile Cranks will be a brand new design to go with this freewheel. There may be more than one new Tensile crank, several designs have been under test and review.
  11. Just thought I'd show you this new project we are working on for a new trials freewheel. 108 clicks with a splined interface and lockring. New custom made Tensile cranks to follow shortly. No more stripped threads on your cranks and no more freewheels wedged on so tightly that you cant get them off. Coupled with a fully servicable design with all parts available, there will be no excuse for not maintaining them. Availability probably mid summer.
  12. This is the new Genesis 26" bike. Almost all new parts. Kenda Nevegal kevlar tyres. Stem and bashring are anodized although they look baby blue in the photo. Weight unknown at this stage but its very light. RRP is about £999.00. Geometry 1085, +55, 380 stays, 73 head. We are only making small batches and demand looks high. Available in about four weeks. Also coming in at same time, Genesis frame, Limey 4 26" Frame and the front rims as shown with or without side drilling. Pictures of frames in about a week.
  13. I don't think there would be any geographical boundaries, but clearly where Onza has a distributor in your country, there may be a requirement to do some sort of joint promotion. I haven't really thought this through yet, so I am shooting from the hip a little.
  14. New models from Onza, due in first week in October. New Mini Master, significantly cheaper than old model. New Pro with Hydraulic Discs. Also new Zoot. Also watch out for Genesis before Christmas, new 26" comp bicycle and Limey 4 Frame.
  15. This posting was just to throw up some ideas and hopefully some discussion. We have already got people sending in video's and putting themselves forwards. Please do not do this as you are wasting your time. When our plans are finalised we will make proper arrangements and establish an e-mail for this purpose. Obviously any scheme will require the use of Onza and Tensile and any other Rock'n'Roll Bikes products.
  16. The new Onza Mini Master will be available in about a month. Lower spec. than previous model and considerably cheaper.
  17. We are looking at the ways we sponsor riders in 2012 at both Onza and Rock'n'Roll Bikes. As well as an Onza team we are looking at ways to introduce a Rock'n'Roll Bikes academy style feeder group for riders of the future. The idea is that you send us video's of your riding and if we feel you are good enough you become a Rock'n'Roll Academy rider with a sliding scale of benefits starting at a free academy tee shirt. The more video's you post and the more proficient you become then you move up the scale with discount benefits. We then have a pool of up and coming riders from which to select full Onza team riders. I stress that these are just ideas at the moment, but we want to try and promote trials at grass roots level. Any ideas and input would be welcome.
  18. I think the reason that we produce the Rip in the way it is has been well documented and as many have said, its up to the seller to try and up-sell to a Bird. In terms of re-selling the Rip for 'pence' as somebody said, I would have thought that the market for re-selling Rips was quite buoyant, as we never seem to get it right on producing new ones. (we are once more out of stock till May). As some of you will remember, about five years ago we designed a Magura mount on the Bird which allowed both 20" and 19" wheels but that only suited Maguras. As you might expect we have looked at all sorts of ways to make the Rip upgradeable to 19" wheels but it always comes down to cost. We do have a design for a brake booster which bolts into the existing pivot holes and has new pivots for 19" wheels but nobody has convinced us yet that there is a market big enough for us to stump up the tooling costs for production. We made a similar one years ago for converting 26" frames to take 24" wheels for dirt jumping etc. and it was a flop. In terms of smaller pitched chains, Shimano tried it on Track Bikes 25 years ago but they produced very few of them before discontinuing. You can read something about it here. http://cyclingwmd.blogspot.com/2009/07/vintage-dura-ace-10-inch-pitch-track.html Sets of these are now as rare as hens teeth and are very sought after but opinion seems divided about the increased benefits. As is often the case, the rarity of them is more responsible for the value than any of the improved performance aspects. I realise that the arguments in favour of smaller pitches are slightly different to those of track machines, but I can't help feeling that had the improvement been great enough then they would have become the industry standard. (As in a-headsets, cartridge bottom brackets etc. etc.) I do posses a brand new full chainset, chain and sprocket of one of these, which I intend to put on Ebay shortly.
  19. Its interesting for us to read a topic like this to check out peoples wants and idea's. We already produce a four arm adapter for Tensile cranks, but that fits on the bash spline with a lockring on the threads. The problem with a screw on spider is fixing its position so that you don't get one of the arms behind the crank. (difficult to fix the radial positioning of the screw thread.) Splined freewheels are also not a new concept. We have drawings dating back about four years with a splined freewheel. The driving force at that stage was creating a freewheel which you could run on the R/H or L/H crank using a lockring. The consensus at the time was that there was no issue in general with right footed or left footed riders so we abandoned it. (too many issues to convert it to a BMX project). I would like to see further things on peoples wish list.
  20. There is no Anti Dumping duty on bikes from Taiwan, only China. The full cycle duty however is 15% not 4.7%. That is only for parts.
  21. As Joe said, it is illegal to insist that your retailers stick to RRP. Moore Large in common with many cycle distributors ask that retailers maintain a maximum discount of 10%. However, they can only suggest that retailers stick to that and there is no way that it can be enforced. There are measures and sanctions available if they feel that a retailer is destroying their products reputation with pricing which is unsustainable, but to a large extent maintaining prices at a mutually acceptable level is all down to trust and relationships. Watermarking pictures is not to do with maintaining prices, but is a way to stop the use your pictures by unauthorised users on the Internet. It is an intellectual property issue, not a price maintenance one. Witness all the pictures on Tarty's website.
  22. First of all, we did not sell Onza to Moore Large, we appointed them as our UK distributors, in the same way that Tarty Bikes are distributors of every other trials brand. Rock'n'Roll Bikes is a website which we have set up to protect, promote and sell Onza products and also many other products. They buy their Onza Bikes and all other Onza products from Moore Large and they operate pricing policies in line with those recommended by Moore Large. We would love to sell them at recommended retails but we always follow the market prices and I think that Ali C is deluding himself to imply that everyone else sells at RRP. We do not set the trend, we follow it. As a separate issue we also distribute our bikes throughout the world from Taiwan, other than Europe which we supply from here in the UK. This gives us many 'demo' models and occasional frustrated or cancelled orders which we have to dispose of. In addition we handle all mail order and shop returns which may be only minor faults or sometimes even no faults at all. All these items we tend to dispose of through Ebay. When we get a frustrated export order we always offer the stock first to our distributors but they are not always in a position to take it, so we have to dispose of it ourselves. This is in no way an effort to destabilise our own market, but an unfortunate necessity on occasions. When we get a cancelled export order we are always ready to listen, should anyone want to buy that excess stock from us, but we do have to take into account our position of not being our own UK distributor, and would not want to jeopardise our UK trading position.
  23. Correction. The rear hub on the standard Zoot is SEALED bearing.
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