Let's talk about trials parts availability

[Sam Song]

Anyone else finding it challenging to source new trials parts/frames nowadays? 

Even going through Tarty, it is hard not to notice the lack of stock on parts. 

There is only one 26 frame available for instance 26" Frames (tartybikes.co.uk)

I remember at one point, there was such a large selection of different manufacturers from Zoo, Echo, Gu, Onza, Ozonys, Diamondback Ashton, etc. 

Outside of Inspired, it is getting harder to find replacements for trials specific ISIS BB/cranks. Right now, unless you want to get a street trials bike, it is very hard to source all the parts to build a "pure trials" bike from scratch even if one had the money. 

Also would love to find a decent trials specific v brake booster too, which seems to be impossible to find these days. 

Do you think the trials parts availability will improve any time soon? 

 

[DYAKOV]

Without being in the trade, my understanding is that the big companies like echo, monty, koxx (including all their other sub brands) realised that trials is a niche sport and will never be as popular as downhill even in its peak (around 2006-2012 I’d say). So, some of these companies were either liquidated or shifted their production to downhill and other mtb.

Now we have much smaller companies who produce in smaller quantities and charge higher. I doubt that any of the new companies have their own factory, so the problem is (and especially during and after Covid, where there was a lack of materials and labour + a massive backlog of orders) to get hold of a decent factory in China. I suppose that mtb brands who use the same manufacturers are in a better position of placing an order for say 20 mtb frames as opposed to 2 trials frames and manufacturers maybe don’t really bother with trials as much.

Then you add Brexit into the mix.. I’m surprised how there isn’t a uk Marino guy at this point (like jaff and dob years ago) but then - who would buy a chromo frame over a carbon frame….

[Mark W]

10 hours ago, Sam Song said:

Anyone else finding it challenging to source new trials parts/frames nowadays? 

Even going through Tarty, it is hard not to notice the lack of stock on parts. 

There is only one 26 frame available for instance 26" Frames (tartybikes.co.uk)

I remember at one point, there was such a large selection of different manufacturers from Zoo, Echo, Gu, Onza, Ozonys, Diamondback Ashton, etc. 

Outside of Inspired, it is getting harder to find replacements for trials specific ISIS BB/cranks. Right now, unless you want to get a street trials bike, it is very hard to source all the parts to build a "pure trials" bike from scratch even if one had the money. 

Also would love to find a decent trials specific v brake booster too, which seems to be impossible to find these days. 

Do you think the trials parts availability will improve any time soon? 

 

So firstly, just as disclosure, I left TartyBikes 8 months ago so things might/will have changed now...

I think there's been a gradual thinning out of brands simply because things started getting expensive to make. Fundamentally it costs more to get products made now, so the days of being able to lash out a load of random samples and see what worked are kind of over. It's also not quite as easy/profitable to just rebrand existing stuff and keep things affordable or hit price points people used to be able to hit, which is how a lot of brands bulked up or filled in their parts lines. I imagine that that extra margin helped them keep the 'core' bits going too, so might have played a part in some brands disappearing in general.

There have been two main shifts that have very much impacted the industry, and will play a part in why you can't necessarily find parts at your preferred shop these days. As of now, I believe the only brands you can't buy direct with are Inspired and Trialtech. Every other brand gives you the option of buying direct from them, through their own websites or through social media. As a shop, it's extremely hard to compete with that. Whether it's the specific version of a complete bike or an obscure proprietary component for it, a brand has the huge advantage of having all the product lines under one roof and ready to go (assuming it's in stock, naturally). From past experience, it's not unheard for brands to actually over-sell to direct customers, then take those over-sold products out of a shop's order. Brands know that their dealers/shops are 'stickier' than direct customers, so it's in their interests to keep direct customers sweet if they want to keep them coming back. Brands also make way, way more money on direct sales than they do selling to dealers, so it's also very much in their interests financially to prioritise direct sales (fun fact, while I was at TB still a brand DM'd me on Instagram asking me to share their post that was about a site-wide discount they were offering - they didn't seem to understand that as a shop, we might not want to drive sales away from us to them). That extra margin also gives them much more leeway to offer discounts and reductions. In comparison, the margins that trials shops make are smaller than ever, so often it simply won't be possible for them to discount in the same way. This dynamic means that a lot of the 'power' in the relationship between brands and retailers shifted to the brands, so it became pretty hard/virtually impossible to work with some of them. If they don't have any real interest or need to keep a shop on board, they don't need to offer particularly good service or good pricing to them as it doesn't matter if the shop walks away. It just means the brand has more stock available to then sell at those greater margins. For brands entering the trials space who were selling direct to begin with then tried pursuing shops, they'd priced their products at such a point where it wasn't really viable to have a margin for shops big enough that it was actually worth selling them. A lot of those newer brands don't really seem to understand the extra costs involved in actually running a shop legally (e.g. actually using legal/accurate customs declarations, taxes, etc.) so what they considered acceptable margins didn't/don't factor in the real costs a shop faces.

The other thing has been covid. China are still pursuing their zero covid policy, so that has meant a significant amount of disruption in factories over there. Echo own their own factory, and those lockdowns have basically kept them closed (or at least their production lines closed) since mid-2020. It sounds like it might have put them under, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's the end of Echo now, which would be a real shame. Not all brands get their parts made in China, with a lot of them being made in Taiwan. Taiwan aren't pursuing the same policy as China with covid, so they have been operating somewhat as normal for most of the pandemic (AFAIK). The problem though is that the big name cycling brands that got their parts made in China then had to switch to producing them elsewhere, and Taiwan is the only other option for the most part. Taiwan was where most of it happened years ago, but gradually brands started pulling production from Taiwan to other places like China where they could get things done for less. That trend over time meant that operations scaled down a bit in Taiwan, so although they still had some of the best production facilities in the world and very experienced staff, the overall capacity reduced. This was then totally overwhelmed when all those brands suddenly came back in, and it led to a lot of the smaller players (e.g. trials brands) getting bumped down production schedules to make way for these huge orders coming in from big cycling brands who were responding to the pandemic cycling boom. Even that wasn't enough though, and lead times even for those big brands with huge chequebooks were super long. To use one example, pre-pandemic the lead time for something like a SRAM GX mech would have been 30-40 days. At one point in the pandemic it was 470 days. Those long lead times also affected parts that trials riders do use though, e.g. SRAM GX/Truvativ Descendant cranks. Brands had to prioritise their biggest selling product lines so that involved either reducing or totally cutting production of other, less popular product lines (which include the random bits and bobs that trials riders might have used from them, hence it being super hard to get hold of Maxxis Holy Rollers or Kenda K-Rads for ages).

The upshot of that was that the relatively small orders trials brands place got pushed down the queue, and in some cases I expect also lost some production time entirely meaning that the quantity of parts they received were reduced. The way that brands have to pay for their production orders can also lead to cash-flow issues (if you've got to pay for your production months before it's going to ship to you, let alone from you to your dealers/shops, you effectively have to pay for it all out of pocket with nothing to actually sell to offset it), which I think is probably a big part of the reason that most brands now focus on complete bike sales vs. just selling frames and parts. As anyone who's tried selling a complete bike in the FS section will tell you, as soon as you offer to split them you always end up with random stuff hanging about because people don't/won't want it. I expect that's also what the case is like for brands too, so being able to order 50x all the products you need for a bike then sell them as 50 complete bikes will mean they get a bigger injection of cash and also get rid of their stock cleanly, simply and more efficiently than if they had all those bits for those bikes available separately. Forecasting sales in the trials world is a nightmare, and it's pretty easy to wind up sitting on a load of stock that was either desirable a month ago and out of fashion now/people said they really wanted but then when it came in stock they didn't want/is superseded by a new product. That's easier to control as a brand (because you control some of those variables) but it's still not easy.

Specifically on experience with V-Brake products in the trials world - the phrase 'vocal minority' comes to mind. Whenever we'd mention V related products at TB, there would be so many people saying we should get them in, that V-Brakes are the best thing ever and that they'd buy them as soon as they were available. That almost never translated into actual sales. V-specific stuff was often the hardest to sell, and I think that will have put off a lot of brands from making V-specific stuff. V users are a very small subset of what is already a small market, so it just isn't really in their interests to pursue it when there are generally lacklustre at best sales. It's also worth noting on the booster front that most trials brand boosters (Trialtech are the main exception to this) are basically shit, and if you can source some carbon or aluminium of your own you'll be able to make one that is just as effective yourself, with minimal tools.

Just to wrap this up, the cycling bubble has definitely burst and those big brands I mentioned are suddenly finding their sales are plummeting. Orders are being cancelled so production spaces are opening up, so I think we'll start to see greater availability of trials products from the brands that have managed to tough it out. It probably won't be instantaneous, but I expect over the next 6-12 months it'll go back to being somewhat more normal, although realistically the higher prices that increased shipping, material and production costs have generated aren't likely to go away unfortunately.

 

3 hours ago, DYAKOV said:

Without being in the trade, my understanding is that the big companies like echo, monty, koxx (including all their other sub brands) realised that trials is a niche sport and will never be as popular as downhill even in its peak (around 2006-2012 I’d say). So, some of these companies were either liquidated or shifted their production to downhill and other mtb.

Now we have much smaller companies who produce in smaller quantities and charge higher. I doubt that any of the new companies have their own factory, so the problem is (and especially during and after Covid, where there was a lack of materials and labour + a massive backlog of orders) to get hold of a decent factory in China. I suppose that mtb brands who use the same manufacturers are in a better position of placing an order for say 20 mtb frames as opposed to 2 trials frames and manufacturers maybe don’t really bother with trials as much.

Then you add Brexit into the mix.. I’m surprised how there isn’t a uk Marino guy at this point (like jaff and dob years ago) but then - who would buy a chromo frame over a carbon frame….

Just to go through the brands you mentioned specifically:
- Echo: had their own factory, mentioned their story in that wall of text above.
- Monty: ran out of money, think they went into administration and got bought out by a brand who wanted to maximise their return. That's why they basically don't do any trials stuff any more but do random 'city'/hybrid bikes and awful looking BMX and kids bikes.
- Koxx: they had external investors keeping them going, but also ran out of money and declared bankruptcy, with Dominique Hermance immediately forming Hashtagg. I believe some of the product/engineering guys at Koxx went over to Jitsie.

The materials shortage you mention is still a real thing, especially with steel (which is why Alias bikes and frames have been out of stock for a year or so now). When those materials are available they're just a lot more expensive now. You're on the money about MTB vs trials manufacturing, although you could probably add "00" to the end of the MTB figures and maybe one or in some cases 2 0's at the end of the trials figures...

I'm not really sure we'll see another JAF/WIP/whatever custom steel frame builder again realistically. It's just really expensive to do now, and hard to do well, so to keep costs vaguely close to what people could spend on a random Chinese carbon frame would be tough. I believe all those smaller brands had issues with their frames in one way or another, and as soon as you're starting to go down the path or warrantying or repairing frames what little money you might have made on that original sale is effectively gone.

-----

If anyone's made it this far, kudos to you.

[Luke Rainbird]

38 minutes ago, Mark W said:

I'm not really sure we'll see another JAF again realistically. 

Sadface

38 minutes ago, Mark W said:

I'm not really sure we'll see another WIP again realistically. 

Thank f*** face.
 

38 minutes ago, Mark W said:

If anyone's made it this far, kudos to you.

Sometimes I get a bit sad at the way forums have gone over the years. Occasionally, just occasionally, a wall of text like that gives me a glimmer of hope. Props for spending some time laying it all out for people who may stumble across this down the line 

 

[Maintenance Justice]

On 9/20/2022 at 12:43 AM, Sam Song said:

 

Even going through Tarty, it is hard not to notice the lack of stock on parts. 

 

So @Mark W has done an excellent job of covering the situation in frightening detail (my eyes hurt now) but to weigh in as one of the new owners of Tarty & as someone able to give a current overview of the stock situation...

You're absolutely right @Sam Song - availability is a real issue at the moment. As Mark alludes, there are multiple factors in production, COVID, cost / profit etc that are stifling parts availability, however what we're finding is that a core group of brands are continuing to supply the market or are prepared to do so. The choice is admittedly less, however what we're left with are products made by companies that have a long history in the sport and are invested in it as a core part of their business, so what is still available is well suited to meet the demands of modern riders.

What we're trying to do at Tarty is to bring in the brands who we can work with to form a reliable selection of product lines - this has to be more than great products from a supplier, but also a solid system of supply and business relations. It's no good bringing in a brand that disappears after 6 months, releases products ad-hoc or is generally difficult to source products from, it's a nightmare to merchandise these brands and there is very little back up for customers or us. We're reaching out to new brands and brands we've worked with in the past to try and bring the biggest selection of quality components and bikes out there under one roof, as is the original goal of Tarty. It can be a bit like herding cats at times, but the brands we have are the ones who really put the effort in to create good products and are prepared to listen to us / you in developing them.  It's harder now with supply issues from Echo and the death of Onza / Monty - those brands could supply a huge range of parts but now, except for a handful of suppliers, we need to source many parts from individual suppliers.

We're acutely aware of the lack of choice on many parts, it sucks, but we're doing our best to drip feed replacements or alternatives that are equal or better and crucially we can continue to supply hopefully for years to come. Behind the scenes, we are continuing to communicate with manufacturers direct to have parts made -  specifically for us in some cases.

Supply and manufacture is showing signs of easing in terms of stress and backlog so we're confident that things will improve in the coming months / years. Much of this is supply and demand, so the more people we can get into trials then the better for all of us! South Coast bike trial and the Bike Trial Federation with Clydesdale Colts is doing a sterling job in hosting regular competitions / club rides and we hope to do the same here with TNT over time. The best thing we can all do is try and get mates / kids to ride and we'll look to support genuine endeavours by anyone in the community who tries to facilitate better participation.

Ben

Edited September 21, 2022 by Maintenance Justice

[Chakers1998]

It's going to be hard to get the younger generations into trials considering that we live in an instant gratification society, and trials is in noooo way a quick skill to learn. 

[porn*]

On 9/20/2022 at 11:03 AM, Mark W said:

.I'm not really sure we'll see another JAF/WIP/whatever custom steel frame builder again realistically.

Is there realistically even a market now for a custom trials frame builder in people’s opinion? 
I’m genuinely interested in thoughts on this. 

[Sam Song]

Thanks for everyone's input on this. The moral of this thread is: Hold on to your existing bikes until things get better!

On a humorous note, Zoo Trials Frame Vintage Zoo! Bicycle Silver Boa Pitbull Echo FSA Pig 135 mm | eBay 

It wasnt that long ago these things were being sold for $50 USD. Hahaha

[thousandwords]

51 minutes ago, Sam Song said:

Thanks for everyone's input on this. The moral of this thread is: Hold on to your existing bikes until things get better!

On a humorous note, Zoo Trials Frame Vintage Zoo! Bicycle Silver Boa Pitbull Echo FSA Pig 135 mm | eBay 

It wasnt that long ago these things were being sold for $50 USD. Hahaha

 

Yup, I almost bought that frame (not knowing where to start), but the Onza popped up for sale when I was looking and the price differential was too big to ignore.

Was also considering this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394044763000?hash=item5bbee5eb78:g:AqkAAOSw7JFiZeOm&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4O5FtAikzlhjamlDoCfnw66bHauIKcKxhE7TetEKwsgGxk8RfjcX%2FQ395VgiIcN1m7qEw8pMb6F5HEB9BX45AReK6T3gBBX7yjqKTmLxm5sqKs4bNPCjyLvfDFB3o%2F4NG9R4P3FX%2FdzIziIzztj1R6oDOMqk4A%2BXGSWLesvpPDwc5RqaSPZxq2zRJLcHSLC3IqhskMurCDAvj1gl4uKspEmLvjzICpIespAmQQHlVU4ZiUWW6za8x36cGlR6kR4%2BdGTlBajtAdqE9rUlZOk8NNkhq1EuqoOmnRcIbf%2BfQlwh|tkp%3ABk9SR5jL2KPsYA

 

Edited September 21, 2022 by thousandwords

[Mark W]

12 hours ago, porn* said:

Is there realistically even a market now for a custom trials frame builder in people’s opinion? 
I’m genuinely interested in thoughts on this. 

I think there will always be a market for a custom builder of some sorts, but it's inevitably going to be a very small market. Even when there was good availability of frames from a whole host of different brands with different concepts and geometry people would still buy Marino/JAF/WIP frames, so that would suggest that now trials frames are much more homogeneous there would still be some untapped interest in a more bespoke frame.

This was typically more from the street side of things rather than the comp side in fairness - nobody has really put out a light, comp-orientated custom frame. The extra weight doesn't really matter as much in the street world, so that might explain a reasonable part of that.

Probably less of a factor, but I expect that with how easy it is to get "sponsored" by street brands now that some of the more experienced riders who would have previously gone custom are now happy to just ride something they can get cheap or free.

[Mark W]

14 hours ago, Chakers1998 said:

It's going to be hard to get the younger generations into trials considering that we live in an instant gratification society, and trials is in noooo way a quick skill to learn. 

Possibly, but then I think some of it is marketing in a way. A look on Instagram and TikTok shows there's no shortage of young riders getting into street trials - there's a lot of well known riders who do a good job of publicly making it look good/fun/cool/exciting that helps get people interested in it. I'm sure some new riders will fade away, but it seems like there's a decent amount sticking with it. 

I'm not really a fan of them as a company, but Jitsie have undeniably done a good job of promoting the more biketrials-y side of things too. When they first got into the biketrials space, they made things look much more professional than other brands had before. The budgets they appear to be working with have meant they can really push promotion of comps and events too. 

Trials will never be mass participation, and it seems to appeal to a certain type of person, but just by helping raise the profile of trials in general I think it'll allow those who are more likely to want to do it and stick with it to get involved. "A rising tide lifts all ships" and all that. The main issue now is just the lack of affordable bikes, but hopefully once things stabilise and the second hand market gets a bit less insane it might be easier for people to get hold of them.

[Alyksett]

It's fun ripping on younger generations, but there's still mass appeal for skills that take a long time to develop. Trials develops really slow but most people cant kickflip after 6 months of skating and I see skaters all the time here in the US Skating culture is really attractive for young people so that's probably why

It's a shame trials probably won't catch on in a massive way- it would have happened after Danny- but I don't think there's any less young people nowadays that would stick to trials versus back in the 90's/00's.

[DYAKOV]

6 hours ago, Alyksett said:

It's fun ripping on younger generations, but there's still mass appeal for skills that take a long time to develop. Trials develops really slow but most people cant kickflip after 6 months of skating and I see skaters all the time here in the US Skating culture is really attractive for young people so that's probably why

It's a shame trials probably won't catch on in a massive way- it would have happened after Danny- but I don't think there's any less young people nowadays that would stick to trials versus back in the 90's/00's.

I think you said it there - skating culture.

In my opinion it’s so popular because it’s trendy and not that much because of the actual sport itself. You know what I mean - listening to certain types of music, wearing certain types of clothes, being cool essentially. It’s a lot more street oriented and a way of expressing yourself on multiple levels at the same time, teenagers love to express themselves.

When we’re speaking about trials, the street element (incl clothes, music, behaviour) has massively diminished in the last 5-10 years in favour of the sport developing in a different direction. And here I’d disagree with most people who say that trials is a very slow developing subject. If you think about it, trials hasn’t been around for too long, we’re talking about 30-40years history. And in that time you can compare bikes from different eras which look completely different to one another. Have a look at a skateboard or a bmx from the same eras and they won’t have changed that much visually.

To further prove my theory, I’m thinking of the peak times of trials: 2000-2006 when trials was a lot more street oriented and closer to the skate/bmx scene in terms of styling. That attracted lots of people into the sport. I remember seeing the logos of Pleb. and ZS clothing brands sponsoring some of the riders; followed by another surge in 2008-2014 when it kind of overlapped with the emo era, pretty much all trials videos had screamo in the background, black and white clips, fish eye lens, riders wore skinny jeans, had emo hairstyles, etc (talking about Damon, Danny Swindlehurst, Ben Lazenby at the time). That’s when bikes were predominantly Deng - heavy and bomb proof. So, we can see that the culture element was strong and it brought lots of people to the sport but the bikes needed improvement. From then on, lots of new brands started exploring alternative designs and started building lighter frames (talking about rockman, because, breath etc). And that’s the latest stage of development in terms of product lines which has eventually led to the creation of the carbon bikes we have today (that’s how I see things, might be wrong).

Only the issue here is that by developing the bikes, the accent shifted from the key word culture to another key word comp (dictated by the new shape bikes) and comps are very niche. Now we have great comp events like never before that only people who are already involved with trials know or care about. Speaking about pure trials and not the “inspired trials”. And even then, I feel like “inspired trials” isn’t that street any more. On that note, I love what the shindig guys are doing because they’re promoting that street culture element in parallel to the comp scene. I think that we need more of the street CULTURE and less of the comp if we want to get more people draw into the sport.

[Chakers1998]

9 hours ago, DYAKOV said:

I think that we need more of the street CULTURE and less of the comp if we want to get more people draw into the sport.

I think that the street rides are certainly good for getting other adults into trials. It isn't what got me into it originally, as me and my dad started riding trials at home watching Ali's videos (first trials video watched was Danny), but I certainly progressed and decided to stick with trials because there is a group here in Swindon with regular rides in the town and surrounding places. Whilst organising group rides on Facebook is fine with us adults, it is not going to work with parents that have young children who want to get into trials. Can you imagine how it sounds to parents who don't know anyone in the trials world to be told to meet in a random car park in Reading with their kid? That's why we need more formalised club comps, like the Weightman's DBT, Bike Trial Academy, SBT, SCBT (big up Shaun), and hopefully TNT to get the youngest riders into trials. 

[Alyksett]

Admittedly the history of trials does seem like it's had big cultural waves compared to other sports, but I think in terms of skill progression it is pretty slow. Skating is also really cheap- 50 bucks or whatever for a decent setup that will last you a long while versus many hundreds on top of repair costs which will shut out a huge demographic.

Another issue is I think digestibility. Comp riding I feel is hard for people to get their head around so for the laymen it can be really foreign. Anything street oriented is better publicity IMO because it's so much more understandable. With the newer street moves it attracts younger people even though it can be tiring seeing another FJ whip. In order to grow it has to be sexy and street is just much sexier for people. The grungy TGS stuff and Danny was pretty easy to understand for people and it still hasn't caught on massively so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯