by Chris
It'll be a busy couple of weeks at VO.
Scott is off to man the VO exhibit at Frostbike, a trade show for shops held in sunny Minneapolis. This is a great little show and if you own or work at a bike shop I recommend attending.
Igor is headed to Sacramento to exhibit at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, where he'll be joined by John and Kate of Grand Cruz fame.
Clint and I are leaving for Taiwan where we'll attend, but not exhibit at, the Taipei International Cycle Show, one of the big-three international cycling trade shows. We'll have meetings with several of the factories that make VO products, and we'll be looking for new products, technologies, and trends. The following week we'll head down to Taichung and visit four factories to chat about new racks, frames, fenders, and other cool stuff. In between we'll be sampling lots of the street food at the famous Taipei night markets and fantastic Taiwanese eateries.
I'll head home while Clint continues on to Tokyo to visit some VO dealers and ride his fixie around that amazing city.
Since we'll be at all these shows and meeting with so many suppliers and factories, I thought I'd ask what new products would you like us to find or make. Please e-mail suggestions to ideas@velo-orange.com; I promise to read every one.
Posts
21 comments:
How about VO disc brakes, instead of the VO six pack holder how about a rack designed for a growler?
A new Polyvalent - threaded fork, relaxed geometry, biased toward front loading - but with discs. Even better, a mixte with the same geometry. As much as I like Rivs, if I were to buy another Riv frame my wife would kill me quickly.
TA handlebar mount style water bolls cage
Creed LED headlight with shaped beam and a waterproof USB connector, like the German AXA 70 or high priced B&M Lucos U set ups for Dynamo hub powered lighting, the Shutter Precsion hubs seem to be good products, but there are no lighting systems that compare to the German products, even though the LEDS are made in Tiawan. Somebody must be working on these systems.
Front rack attachments that go over the brake arms, the tang under the arms collapses onto the tire even with care to minimizing weight in the front bag.
Shiny rims with internal width of 19 to 20 mm, a wider Raid rim with 32, 36, and (probably asking too much) 40 hole drilling
Black, Hammered, 700C, >=60mm wide fenders.
Mixte with discs, capable of front loading.
700c>=45mm gumwall tires for road/light gravel.
Bring bring bell (think Crane Riten) that can be mounted to the existing Spacer Bell Mount.
Porteur rack for mid mount forks.
I would love to see a low trail fork offered with a 1" steerer; similar to what Soma offers(http://www.somafab.com/archives/product/champs-elysees-low-trail-road-fork), their's is 1 1/8" only though....
1" threaded would be ideal, but I realize it would be impossible to adequately stock multiple steerer lengths. However, 1" threadless would suffice. There are many options, including roller bearing, 1" threadless headsets, unsightly as they are, shims do work well with 1 1/8" stems, 1" threadless stems can still be found on ebay fairly regularly, or perhaps offer a 1" threadless stem of your own. This supplier on eBay does, http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bi-King-UNO-Alloy-3D-Forged-Stem-25-4-x-80mm-1-Steerer-Silver-D-LT22H-/151154049721?hash=item23317bc2b9....
There are so may beautiful older road frames with decent clearances, but with high rakes, that could be easily modified into more practical commuter/sport touring bikes; if such a fork option were avalaible.
Resurecting quality lugged road frames, built with nice tubing, with said low trail fork, say in chrome, a pair of supple 28-32mm tires, a set of your 35mm fenders and racks, and you'd have a supremely elegant, accessible, and practical bike....
Thanks for providing the venue for such direct input, I really appreciate all of the niches you've filled in the last several years with your products. I can't begin to tell you how many old bikes I've retrofitted and breathed new life into with your parts!
27 inch 1 1/4 (630 X 32) and 1 3/8 (630 X 35) skin wall tires, the Kenda gum walls leave a lot to be desired, all of those wonderful vintage bikes from the 70s need great tires to come back to life. Now that we have gotten over the high pressure craze and have seen what wider contact patch/larger air volume tires ride like, can some one please bring back the IRC skin walls from those thrilling days of yesteryear?
More Noir! I'd love the 50.4 crankset (or some other lower-range option) in black. Also, your mini front racks would be great in black. Enjoy the travel!
Big size, short top tube, full step through frames!
welded steel stems, a la kelly or salsa stems. a welded steel stem can be much thinner, and would look better on steel frames with 1 1/8 forks and 31.8 bars. If done competently they don't have to weigh THAT much more
Bring back the roller-bearing 1 1/8 inch headset. There are few options in an anti-shimmy headset for bikes with threadless steerers.
I second a Polyvalent with discs!
+1 for Black Hammered Fenders
I need 650b x 52mm
Some time ago, perhaps last year, a photo of a reproduction Herse-styled stem appeared on this blog. Any chance this product might come to market? It would hopefully contain a housing stop for cantilever and center pull brakes, btw.
Here's an older post and photo than the one I'm remembering.
http://velo-orange.blogspot.com/2007/03/projects.html
Also, is there any chance Fairweather and Panaracer could produce a slightly larger (chevron tread, multiple colors) tire in 700c, something on the order of 700c x 32-36?
Thanks,
L.
How about a black/noir stem to match the handlebars? I think Gran Compe comes in black.
Thanks!
Thanks for all the ideas, especially those sent via email. Here are a few comments.
VO disc brakes are outside of our expertise (except the long-reach type). But we have talked about a growler rack.
We have started work on the next version of the Polyvalent.
We don't do lighting, or tires. It's simply a matter of not taking on too much.
We'll do some trial runs of forks soon.
Herse-style stems might look cool, but no one here actually liked using them, heavy, clamp is too wide, very expensive, etc. Not everything the constructeurs made was great.
We'll probably do some more fender models--that's one of the factories I'll visit.
Roller bearing headsets simply don't sell well, so we dropped the 1" version we had. That's the problem with so many niche products that would be cool to make--they don't sell well enough to cover development, prototyping, and a minimum production run cost. So we have to choose very carefully.
Chris
echoing geoff_tewierik... disc mixte = discxte!
another vote for a disc brake mixte. with the top tube(s) completely straight from dropout to head tube.
I already sent an email a few months ago, but offering one of your crank models with tandem drilling would be great. Currently the only viable options are from Sugino and the new Stronglight.
A saddlebag support that is a better engineering solution than the ridiculous Bagman....hopefully attaches to that nice big strong seatpost that's right there, instead of the saddle rails.
A decaleur that mounts on the stem bolt like the now discontinued model of a few years ago.
I'd also be interested in a 650b replacement fork similar to those thar SOMA sells , but with a1" threaded steerer.
I have been looking high and low for aluminum or stainless steel 20" (406) fenders for my Moulton APB. Any suggestions are welcome.Thanks, Dan
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