Sea Otter 2026 - Pt. 1 - Hooked on Road Wheels

Episode transcript: 

Hottie (00:33)
Okay, we're in this Sea Otter booth for ENVE I think you guys are always in the same location Which is great makes it easy to find Neil Shirley, Jake Pantone, both with ENVE here both my contacts here at ENVE for quite some time ⁓ Guys, I wanted to stop by and get caught up with ENVE on a number of topics first of all ⁓ The star power that is Pogacar now you folks supply his wheels, in fact the whole team wheels. And I'm curious about like when that guy wins and he wins a lot, what is the trickle down effect at ENVE and Ogden? How do you guys feel that in a week to week basis?

Neil Shirley (01:19)
Yeah that's a good good way to start this conversation Michael. ⁓ Well I mean it starts with us all being super fans and watching watching the racing watching you know Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Strada [Bianca] whatever you know wherever the team is at and Tadej. ⁓ And there's you know when when he wins there is a significant commercial ⁓ impact from that. ⁓

We've seen it for really the last two to three years. This is year four with the UAE Team Emirates sponsorship. anything we develop with the team and anything that Tade rides, we see really a global effect on that with the success of Poggy, but also the entire team. But I'd say even more than the commercial impact, it's that working with him and the team is really driving all of our R &D on the roadside. And that is as impactful for us as a brand as the sales that come from winning on Sunday, selling on Monday.

Hottie (02:31)
And what specifically on the engineering side has he helped with as as an ENVE product?

Neil Shirley (02:39)
It really started day one when we first Jake and I and Kevin Nelson our lead engineer showed up at team camp of one month after signing, you know the contract with these guys so going into the the 2023 season and ⁓ We we got to team camp and they said hey You guys make handlebars, right? You know, we had signed a contract as a wheel partner and they said you guys make handlebars, right? And we're like, yeah like we we need handlebars and you know we need one piece arrow bar essentially we brought some different variations and they came out three months later we had a one piece arrow bar which we sell today and you know it's made in Ogden and a fantastic bar but that that was the first project and then it it turned into arrow extensions because they under the team knows that ENVE has R &D ⁓ and kind of a works workshop element to it where we can create things. We have the ability and we have the desire to do things that other brands cannot. so we, you know, we develop solutions for them and that's really what they come to us for. So arrow extensions, disc, disc rear wheel, 100 millimeter front wheel, which will be going to market this year, developed with the team.

4.5 Pro is really another example of a huge commercial success for us that was entirely developed with the team.

Hottie (04:15)
Do you have to have somebody full-time over there? At least one person or is it more than one?

Neil Shirley (04:19)
Yeah, so we have an interesting structure. mean, ENVE is a global brand, based in the US, ⁓ there's obviously so much happening in Europe on the racing side that it's easy to miss out on. So we have a full-time person in Italy that manages all.

All team wheel builds, going back and forth to the service course and attending a lot of the events. And then we have, we brought on a new sports marketing manager, Matt Shriver, who had been with Trek for 15 years, ⁓ you know, a lot of experience working with the team. So we brought him on a year ago and he's doing a great job managing that partnership to ensure that, you know, the day-to-day needs are met.

Hottie (05:07)
Speaking of the Pocotar effect and UAE, Jake, we're coming up on the one year anniversary of the wheel that they kind of helped push forward and that is the SES 4.5 Pro. ⁓ I don't know if you guys call this a semi-hooked wheel, a partially hooked wheel, just another iteration of a hookless wheel. So give me an update on that wheel in particular. How has it been doing as a... ⁓ product within your line and what exactly do you guys call it? Is it semi hooked? What is this thing?

Jake Pantone (05:40)
Yeah, I mean to answer that question directly we would say it's and I can go into that a little bit more in a second. mean the the cool thing with the 4.5 Pro is that it it's a product that was really derived based on feedback and demands from the team. So it really you know there's there's progress in like the discomfort that the team put the team the team's request from the R &D team you know to constantly be I mean we have to be as competitive as they are.

That means we're constantly iterating and figuring out how to make a stronger faster product everything from aerodynamics to The weight of the wheel itself. So the 4.5 Pro was a full I mean, it's definitely built upon what we'd say is like the platform of what's been a successful 4.5 But it was it was a rim up laminate development or ground up rim laminate development It was a hub development that you know was based on our Inner Dry platform, but it was really like, it's really a completely new hub. Everything from the bearings to the actual ratchets, everything was designed to achieve a specific weight ⁓ that was basically going to allow the team to have lighter bikes and lighter equipment and better performance at the big races they participate in. so ⁓ with that wheel, one of the opportunities we had to reduce the weight of it was to basically take weight out from underneath what was the hookless bead. And it's kind of a circular story to explain it fully, but with hookless in the early days, they had very narrow leading edge. So there's a couple things that the narrow leading edge of the rim would do is it was being thin. So you had a higher propensity for pinch flatting and cutting the tire if that carbon edge was sharp or narrow. And so we created what we've called the Wide Hookless Bead and it was originally developed for mountain bike, but we gradually introduced it and put it on all of our wheel products. It's scaled for the demands of the application. ⁓ But by making a thicker, wider leading edge, a broader impact point, if you will, you do reduce pinch flatting and you've seen this technology permeate throughout the bike industry and the wheel sector. A lot of brands are doing something similar at this point.

But what that does also is it adds weight because now you have more carbon in the rim itself. And when we were looking at the 4.5 Pro rim design concept, we looked at it and said, well, we need the leading edge to maintain the pinch flap protection. But there is the reality that underneath that leading edge, there's material that's not necessary. And so we challenged ourselves to remove that material and create a hook bead in the process.

It did require a completely new manufacturing technique. So the beauty of Hookless is that it does allow you to have an efficient manufacturing process that delivers, most importantly, very precise and consistent bead seat diameter, which is critical for tubeless performance. And so what we had to challenge ourselves to do is

Introduce a new molding technique that allowed us to maintain those precise bead seat diameters using hard tooling instead of soft tooling and to be able to remove that from between the hooks that's that's really the challenge with like using machine tooling to Have hooked beads in a rim. And so there's a lot there's a lot of talk out there about like a micro hook and things like that we We don't really believe in like a micro hook per se like it's it's either hooked or it's hookless and so

Our rim and that's not defined by ENVE that's defined by ETRTO so there's specific dimensions and there's a range of those dimensions that defines what a hooked bead is or not and so the 4.5 Pro is a full hooked bead and it is you know if you look at the specification defined by ETRTO we're at the lower end of that that range as far as like the width of that that hooked bead but it is as far as The standard is concerned a hooked bead. ⁓

Hottie (09:58)
One of the benefits of that hook bead is that UAE or anybody who runs it can run tire pressures a little higher than they would on one of your hookless setups.

Jake Pantone (10:10)
Yeah, I mean that is a benefit especially with the team where at times they they you know for lighter riders in certain applications or if they're trying to save weight with tires they on occasion it's and it's reduced quite a bit but there was times when they would maybe run a 25 millimeter tire ⁓ it seems like that's kind of gone away at this point but if they are to run a smaller tire or you know they does allow them to run upwards of the ETRTO max tire pressure that is defined for hookless. And so there are a few cases. It's pretty rare and rider specific, but yes, in effect it does allow them to run a higher pressure than that 72.5 sort of hookless.

Hottie (10:49)
As far as manufacturing is concerned, it's the same process as making a ⁓ hooked carbon wheel as we've traditionally known it.

Jake Pantone (11:00)
You mean hookless or?

Hottie (11:01)
No, hook. The old hook, the original hooked wheels, I think you folks even made them for a long time. Is the manufacturing essentially going back to that idea with the Pro?

Jake Pantone (11:12)
No, it's well, our original rims with hook beads ⁓ were, you know, the pre pre tubeless days ⁓ use a soft sort of silicone tooling to create that hook bead. We never some brands would machine that shape into the rim. We never machined it or cut it out. It was always molded in. ⁓ And then that when we introduce hook beads and tubeless, was really challenging to maintain a really consistent bead seat diameter with the soft

know, pliable tooling that you needed to be able to extract the bladder from between the hook beads. Because once the rim cures, you've effectively locked that molding piece in. And so there's our process with soft tooling didn't yield the most consistent ⁓ bead seat diameters. And so when we switching to hookless ⁓ and using hard machined tooling, it allowed those bead seat diameters to be super precise. And so we've basically created a bit of a hybrid that allows us to still use the machined ⁓ tooling or mold and still be able to extract it from between the hook beads. So it's a different manufacturing process but the end result is sort of get our have our cake and eat it too which is like you get the really precise consistent bead seat diameter that's required for good tubeless performance and we also get the extra retention that the team may need if they're running higher tire pressures.

Hottie (12:38)
[What's] reception been on that wheel on the pro is it a leading seller is your top seller okay I want to talk about while we're on the topic of ⁓ road hookless I think it was here at Sea Otter you guys announced one of your first road tubeless wheels I remember being at a press event it was off-site you guys had ridden down the coast

Jake Pantone (12:40)
It's been fantastic.

It's a top seller for sure.

Hottie (13:04)
But I want to talk about the future of road hookless. There's been some pushback in over the last year or so about hookless. There's been some very public blowoffs that have happened ⁓ on other wheel brands. You guys were out in front of this idea of hookless technology on the road for sure. So how do you see it now? Where do we stand with road hookless? Is it going to continue to go forward?

As far as ENVE and the industry is concerned. Should we have concerns about writing it? Let's start there.

Jake Pantone (13:39)
I think there's a there's a recipe for success with tubeless that needs to, all the ingredients have to be ⁓ present and accounted for in order for road tubeless to perform properly, whether it be hooked or hookless. ⁓ There has to be, ⁓ the bead seat diameter needs to fall within spec. ⁓ The tire bead itself has to be within a certain spec ⁓ in terms of its stiffness.

And when, and then the rim itself has to have structure and stability, stiffness, durability that ⁓ ensures that the pressure is exerted on it from the tire itself and the tire pressure. So when I say the tire itself, the actual bead stiffness of the tire exerts a force on the rim ⁓ that, you know, it compresses the rim itself. And so you sort of need all those, those components to work in.

In unison to deliver good tubeless performance, whether it's hooked or hookless. And it's important that people understand that the hooked bead itself doesn't have a role in tubeless performance. The ceiling surface is that lower shoulder in the rim. So when we talk about the bead seat diameter, this is a little technical, but the shoulder that below the beads is where the ceiling happens.

Hottie (15:09)
[What's] initial shelf as you come out of the channel that's where the that's where you want your lock

Jake Pantone (15:12)
Yep, when you inflate your rim and you hear that when you inflate your tire and you hear that snap that pop You know when that tire bead seats that's that's those beads popping up over onto that shoulder where? Where the where the secure attachment and interface between rim and tire takes place? And there you know it's it's been a it's been a little bit of an emotionally charged Discussion at times over the last few years seeing those those incidents where the racers on the side of the road and the tires off

But in all those instances, what you're seeing is the rim itself, the structure is failed. So whether it be hooked or hookless, if you break a rim, if you crack a rim, ⁓ that bead seat diameter is no longer secure intact. And when that happens, all bets are off. So for us, it's really critical. And what we put a lot of pride in is the durability of our rims, ⁓ ensuring that they can handle impacts.

In the race scenario, right? So as long as the rim itself is strong enough and you can minimize the risk of it breaking, know, hooked or hookless, you have much better odds of the tire maintaining its retention. And so I think that's a critical, you know, that's a critical component is like the rim. If the rim breaks, your tire is going to come off. That's possibly not all the time, but then then you get into failure mode. So like, You don't want that first break to, you don't want to break a rim and have it break that bead seat diameter if possible. It's like, it's best if you can isolate, you know, an initial crack or failure on the rim to be just the leading edge of the rim and not have it propagate into that critical surface where the, where the tire itself is retained. If that makes sense.

Hottie (16:58)
I think what I've seen over the last year though is this increasingly has become a narrative about tire pressure that somehow road tubeless, well, hookless road cannot handle the higher pressures that a hooked bead can. There's a less margin for error, for user error, and we know that's gonna happen out there. Like people are gonna say, they're gonna look at a rim and go, oh, I can go up to 72 or 75 or 60, whatever it is, pump their tires up in the cold morning.

To 70, go out and ride and suddenly the tire pressure goes from 70 to 75 or higher depending on where they live and boom, you might have a blow off. Does your engineering match that theory?

Jake Pantone (17:38)
In earlier years, this is an area where the bike industry, well specifically the wheel and tire manufacturers have made great, great progress. ⁓ This gets back to what's another critical component to tubeless performance and that's the bead stiffness of the tire itself. And so early on we realized that there is a critical component in that like the tire beads themselves have to be strong enough to not stretch off of the bead seat diameter of the rim under pressure. And so we implemented and developed our own protocol for tire qualification to ensure that the tire itself was capable to maintain that tubeless sill.

Part of that is an established margin of safety that we can say, okay, yeah, if the wheel sits in a hot car or if the tarmac's hot that day or if somebody's pump gauge is a little off or 20 % off that, you know, they're not gonna be always walking this fine line of will the tire all of a sudden rupture because it's exceeded its ability to maintain retention on the rim. And so there's a, what we've seen over the last years is the modern tubeless road tires have appropriately built beads to maintain pressures far beyond the ETRTO maximum recommended pressure of four and a half bar 80 psi or 72.5 psi. So in our test, in our testing, we, we, we have had to do much less of it in the recent years, but you know, we,

We very regularly see tires that basically achieve 140 PSI ⁓ before they come off a rim. there's a large margin of safety with a quality built tubeless tire ⁓ that gives us a high level of confidence in our testing protocols that ensure that when a customer buys an NV rim, ⁓ and pairs it with one of the tires that we have approved for use on a hookless on our hookless rims that the customer is is ⁓ going to have a good experience and be safe ⁓ as long as they follow the general tire pressure recommendation guidelines.

Hottie (20:19)
Yeah, it feels like people are walking up to the edge a little too much with not just tire reels but a lot of bike products that just weren't engineered for that level of stress or what have you. You wouldn't take your road bike and ride it down the chunkiest single track in the world, right? Just be careful with your tire pressures, please. No matter whether you're running hooked or hookless, you kind of got to watch them.

Jake Pantone (20:40)
Yeah, and I think that's an important consideration for a consumer. There's a couple things. If you're a larger rider that is walking up to the line of that, let's just say 72.5 psi and you feel like you need more, there's a couple considerations. Usually it would be recommended to go up entire volume. So if you're running a 28, for example, and you feel like you need to run more than 72.5 psi in a 28, it's probably...

a better idea for you to be on a 30 millimeter tire for example because now you can now you can bring that tire pressure down ⁓ you know a little bit and still get that get the and get probably get more performance out of it better traction more comfort all those things

Hottie (21:26)
This may be a comment, no comment question for you. Boy, I haven't hardly been on the Sea Otter grounds here yet, so I haven't seen everything out there, but betting I'm gonna see a lot of 32 inch product, wheels, tires, bikes. You're a big time wheel maker. What do you see here? this a part of ENVE's future? Is it part of the future period? Give us your take on 32 inch.

Jake Pantone (21:55)
Our take on 32 inch is in the world of marginal gains, it's very interesting. And it's something that we're evaluating this time.

Hottie (22:04)
And well, do you think it has a future then? Does that mean yes, there's a future there? There's growth, there's a reason to be in this.

Jake Pantone (22:16)
Yeah, I would say we're pretty early days in our exploration of what 32 inch is really going to mean to ENVE, but in the limited experience I have with it personally, I see it as part of the future of the bike industry.

Hottie (22:33)
Alright Jake, thanks for the bit. We lost Neil. had to... I guess he got bored with us.

Jake Pantone (22:36)
Yeah, he went away got pulled away All our tech

all that talked to all that talk about the hook list just he's like I'm out

Hottie (22:45)
Well,

I appreciate your time and have a great show.

 

Hottie (00:23)
Awesome. Jeff, thanks for coming on. I know you've heard about our show. Yeah, I know you've heard you times. I know you've heard about some of our claims about hookless. So I thank you for coming on. We're going to talk about ⁓ hookless technology with Jeff in a bit. But first of all, just CADEX. think some people may know it. They probably see it on giant bikes, but they also see it kind of working on its own. So tell us a little bit about CADEX.

Jeff Schneider (00:48)
Yeah, so to start off, mean, CADEX for the old timers, they're going to know CADEX from back in the 80s. Our founder, our CEO at the time, Tony Lowe, Carbon was just coming in line. He had a dream and he called it a moonshot. He wanted to be the first company to do full production carbon bikes. So CADEX was that brand. It only lasted for a few years because then carbon went mainstream into all bikes.

Back in the day, CADEX was our moonshot to do something different. So back in about 2016, 17, we were working with the Sunweb team. We had them on all of our products and the thought came up, let's make the ultimate race wheel for the team. So the same moniker as a product, this is obviously a fun one because it was a blue sky project. We don't care how much it costs. We don't care how much the price is at the retail. We don't care if you make money.

In the first several years just make the best product. So our tagline became the pursuit of Pinnacle product. That was our goal. We wanted to make the best possible wheel we could. So we started playing around with different things. Technologies that came out was our dynamic balance lacing or DBL. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But being somebody who's been in the industry, I've worked for Shimano, I've worked for Easton. I can't believe nobody thought of this.

But it's changing the pushing and pulling spoke ⁓ leverage angles on the hubs so that you don't get the wind up in the hub. So what happens is efficiency wise, and this goes back to steel spokes when we started, would stretch the pulling spoke quicker than the pushing spoke could actually decompress and allow the hub to rotate before it dragged the rim around. So great noticeable difference in steel spokes, but once you jump to carbon,

And this jumps ahead when we were doing K-dex. In 2018, we were supposed to launch. We moved it to 2019. I wasn't happy with what the result was to that point. I said, no, we need to come up with something different. We started doing the carbon spoke development. ⁓ And the benefit there was the elongation properties of carbon, obviously, are way better than steel. They don't stretch. So. instant notification. it's the first thing that when riders get on the wheels and ride, and I know it's hard to say you have to ride them to understand them, but when our pro riders would get on them, that was the first thing they noticed is like, you got to tell me about this because when I push, I go. And so that's the biggest moniker. On top of that, you're reducing the weight of the spokes by about 48%, 50%. So we don't really factor in the total weight of the wheel for us.

It's rotational weight because that's what adds to efficiency of the rider. If we can make it lighter, we will, but I'd rather have a durable hub at the center with a good spoke and a lighter weight rim that brings it around so that you're actually pedaling less to move the bike.

Hottie (03:54)
So Cadex does have, I mean, how would you describe your association with Giant? Is it, you're owned by Giant, is it brother-sister, how does that, what's that relation?

Jeff Schneider (04:04)
We are owned by the giant group just like we have giant we have live we have momentum Those are brands. We own now stages. They're a brand Cadex was started as its own independent brand within the company We limit the amount of spec that can go on giant bikes and lib bikes We limit it to their top-level bikes only because our target is aftermarket and we want to get into the bespoke frame builder business, okay?

Hottie (04:31)
So the bottom line is these wheels can be purchased no matter what bike you ride. If you want a kit, I've set of wheels on it. You can get them. How broad is the line as it stands right now?

Jeff Schneider (04:43)
So we started off with Road. We launched with two wheels initially. A lot of people might remember we launched in 2019 at the Tour de France with CCC. We had a 65 and a 42. They were narrower. They were 19.5 because that's what everybody else was doing. But very rapidly, we changed the setup and we started launching wider rims. At the time, 22.5 was considered wide for Road. I'm a huge proponent for bigger tires.

Wider widths, I come from mountain biking. So I'm a believer in efficiency in that direction. And I know aerodynamics is efficient. But I do believe that for most riders, what they notice the most is the efficiency they get out of a proper wheel and tire setup. Because when you get on a bike, it's all about position of the rider. Not everybody can hold that position. So we came out, we revamped the line, changed a few things, went to wider rims.

We were already starting to see the move into like 25 and then 28 millimeter tires. So I was tooting the horn back then we should go 30 and 32. But you know, get a lot of tire with tire tire with lies. So, and so we started in road. That was the premium area because we saw the biggest benefit there about four years ago. That was during COVID. We launched our first gravel wheel.

Which is a 25 internal width, 35 deep wheel. And it was good. We came out with tires, but our tires rapidly became not good enough for the gravel guys, because they were all riding 50s, 45s and 50s, and we made a 40. So it was too small. So that's where we're at today. We have some new stuff that we're working on for gravel this year that will launch later this year. You know, with the end game, if you add it up, we've signed on giant Alan Hatherly, two time world champion for cross country. We are working with him on finding the optimal wheel, but we rapidly found that maybe the technology we use on the road is not what they need on the mountain. So we're now modifying the wheels and hopefully you'll see it later this year.

Hottie (06:57)
You're under the Jayco team on the pro tour. And as far as the road lineup goes, you have, as we see here, kind of two 40s, two different versions of a 40 mil, two different versions of a 50. There's a disc wheel, I imagine.

Jeff Schneider (06:59)
Correct? Yep, we're with the Jacob. Okay.

Disc wheel and then we have a four spoke both front and rear but that's more prominently used in like triathlon.

Hottie (07:21)
So within the 40 or 50 depths you have two different types of wheels. have the Ultra and the Max. What are the differences there?

Jeff Schneider (07:30)
So Ultra is a carbon spoke, but it's traditionally laced up. It's still a spoke that you can replace the spoke if you break it. The Max is a one piece flange and spoke system. It just, it maximizes that transmission stiffness that we're pushing for to get the efficiency. It doesn't affect the comfort of the wheel at all, but the lateral stiffness to make the bike snappier. ⁓ Like when I talked to editors, the first thing when they rode the 40,

The best description was a guy named David Arthur. I don't know if you know David. David said, he said, the Cadex Max wheel is to Cadex what the Cadex wheel was to a standard steel spoked wheel. It just, he said, it's a completely different game. We're keeping him in the lineup. We now have him at different price points. Ultimately, you're probably gonna see the pure spoke system go away and we're exploring other technologies to try to come up with new ways of lacing the wheel.

⁓ And it depends on the discipline, really.

Hottie (08:34)
And your pro riders, they will ride either.

Jeff Schneider (08:38)
They will ride either of them. ⁓ Right now for the team, the Ultra 50 has been the wheel of choice. It's aerodynamic, but it's light. You can climb with them. It gives them everything they need. They ride it on the Giant Propel, and they just like the setup. ⁓ They just got at Paris-Nice. They just got the 50s for the first time with the new Propel, the team launch. ⁓

you'll probably see a pretty rapid push to that. We had a few guys that stuck on the 65s for a while, but I kept telling them, guys, you got to ride this one. It's faster than the 65. It's just aerodynamically is a better wheel.

Hottie (09:18)
Okay, I want to get to aerodynamics. These wheels are premium wheels. The price that price tag says that like we are nothing is below $3,000 here.

Jeff Schneider (09:29)
No, no, we, and that was, that was our goal. It was going to be the best. Maybe somewhere, I want to establish the brand. I want to establish our position. Maybe down the road, we'll do a third tier, but right now the goal would be, we would have two tier. We would have the max and the ultra. And then a lot of people within the company think Kadex has to be carbon. And I said, it doesn't. If somebody can make me a titanium rim today that beat these, I'd go that route because it would make sense. But until that happens, we'll stick with carbon.

Okay.

Hottie (09:59)
⁓ Tell me where the aerodynamics thing fits into your folks testing and development. How does that how does that plan?

Jeff Schneider (10:08)
So every bike and product that we develop gets tested pretty thoroughly in a wind tunnel. We used to have a contract with a company called ACE in France. ⁓ We hired the aerodynamicist out of that and he works full time within the giant group and he supports all brands. So we're in wind tunnels. I would say on average, every month we've got something going through the wind tunnel. Whether it's Giant and Liv helmets.

Giant, even shoes we do testing on. It's our handlebars, it's our wheels. Everything goes through the wind tunnel and gets validated. And we typically will compare that. Normally it's like three or four different brands will pick the top three or four like with when we did the ultra 50. We had 11. Well, we had we had 12 wheels in the test. The benchmark was our four spoke because that was the fastest in the test. So we benchmarked the 50 to the four spoke wheel, and then everybody else.

To that same standard. ⁓ Obviously, tires make a big variable. A lot of people don't think of this, but the tire shape makes a massive difference in what you could do in the tread design makes a big difference. ⁓ We started doing shaping of the tires, ⁓ actually almost egg shape, and that made a massive difference. We were seeing like five, 6 % gains in improvement on just aerodynamics by doing that.

Now we have our new aero tire which couples with the new Max 50 which has the same shape but at the same time we've totally changed the tread design. We have 64 perpendicular sipes in the wheels that makes a big difference and what that does, because we test all of our wheels plus or minus 20 to 30 yaw angle. We don't care, we know everybody can kind of focus here. It's the side yaw angles that really start to affect you and what those sipes do is they actually reduce the lateral so when you see a normal bell curve of a Tested tire when you get into the wider your eye angles your wattage goes up and We started to flatten that curve now

Hottie (12:18)
With aerodynamics in mind, you were telling me before we started recording that you thought the gains in aerodynamics when it comes to wheels were reaching, were getting down to very minuscule points and you think there's some other bigger gains to be had when it comes to wheels and tires?

Jeff Schneider (12:34)
Yeah, I mean, everybody's testing in the wind tunnel now and what we started seeing and there was a point in time when we were testing that if we were two watts faster than the best competitor, you're like we're fast because the wind tunnels at the time that we were working with AC, their margin of error was like plus or minus one watt, plus or minus a half a watt, I think is what they would try to tell you. But we knew it was around one watt. We were seeing that a lot of the shaping of the rims was it was pretty much the same across the board. ⁓ That's where we started getting in to the tire development because we were seeing jumps that were significantly bigger with the tires. Like when we launched the Ultra 50, like I said, we tested that against 11 other competitor wheels. We went out and them, put in the wind tunnel, tested them. We tested them. If the company didn't make a tire, we used either a Conti, if that's what their team rode.

Or we used a Vittoria if that's what their team rode. In that test, we did all the comparison of our system to their system. Once we did that, we took all of their wheels and put our tire on their wheel and compared them across the board. And it was pretty interesting to see that once we put our aero tire on other people's wheels, the gain in aerodynamics for their wheel went up. Probably shouldn't be saying that, because then people just buy my tires.

But I mean, it's crazy the advantage that you get from the tire. And it is the leading edge of the system.

Hottie (14:11)
A wheel company doing tires has been seems kind of hit or miss. We know Zipp tried it early on. I actually like their tires, the Tangente or whatever they call that. I like that thing. Enve has tried it. Where is it? How are you feeling about Cadex and trying to combine tires and wheels together as a package?

Jeff Schneider (14:32)
Well, so that comes into, if you want to go into hookless now, that comes into the complete package. ⁓ Obviously we don't make our tires. Nobody makes their own tires. There's only a handful of manufacturers, but we partner with people. work very closely in what we're trying to accomplish. So when it came to hookless, we knew we had to make our own tire because we had tolerances that we weren't seeing in the industry for tires. I know a lot of people like to blame hookless.

for any time there's a blow off or saying, well, have to run less air pressure. And if you look at ETRTO standards, it's driven by the tire industry. It's not driven by the wheel industry. It is a tire, I'm gonna call it a standard or a guideline. ETRTO is, if you take the measurements, it's plus or minus, it's 622 plus or minus 0.5 millimeters. All of our wheels are made 622 plus or minus 0.3 millimeters. And when we... first started Cadex, we knew we couldn't just make our tires. We had to be compatible with everybody else's. So every manufacturer, not, I'm not saying, we didn't give a tire to Specialized because they don't make their tire. They're like us. We didn't give it to Trek, but we went to Continental, we went to Schwalbe, we went to Vittoria, we went ⁓ to Hutchinson. The guys that make the tires, we said, here's our wheel, here's our tire.

We can run 125 PSI in our tire if you really want to. Our bead doesn't stretch, we don't have that stretch. And every wheel that we gave them was the minus 0.3 millimeter, because we wanted to test the worst case scenario. And we said, if you can make your tire pump up to this pressure and stay on our rim for this long, then all you gotta do is send us six of each model you want tested in each size. We will do our test and we will approve your tires. There wasn't a lot that passed the test in the beginning.

I would say now today pretty much everybody meets that standard and there's one or two that don't. And I'm not going to mention names because I don't like doing that, but there are one or two that we have that problem with. But most of them have really stepped up to the bat. mean, giving an indication, Vittoria did not pass our tests at the beginning. We now partner with them to make our cotton tire because they made the changes and they understood what we were trying to do. The rim is not the problem because all rims, whether it's hooked or hookless or micro hooked, they all have to be made at their manufacturer to pretty tight tolerances. So and there's variables that might change that. But if you have a proper bead seat and if you think of pneumatic systems, it's bicycle is the only one that requires a hook for history, but that you also had an inner tube that held the tire onto the bead and as a counterbalance to that. So

But when you look at a tire, a tire is a composite product and one batch to the next, your bead can be very, very different. It can shrink, it can grow. And we've all experienced when you put a tire on your bike, it's impossible to put on. You're out on the road and you get a flat and you go to change the flat and it just falls off your rim. like, what the hell? wasn't that easy before. And you can put it back on by hand. So I think the design of the rim makes a big difference. Like every Kadex wheel.

I can hand mount our tires by hand on the tire and bump it up with a floor pump. I did that when we launched, I did like 45 sets of wheels by hand with a floor pump in Brussels. But you have to maintain that shelf that the tire has to lock onto. That's the biggest variable.

Hottie (18:16)
How about messaging over the public? Like, you know, it seems to be a constant battle, especially for the wheelmakers who believe in hookless, that they have to constantly be educating their users on how to use the product, how much error it can handle. Is that still a thing? Like, do you still have to maintain that level of...

Jeff Schneider (18:39)
It's still a thing. We're trying to get off the defensive side of it and be more proactive in how we do it. Like I said, a Kadex tire that we have have been tested to 125 psi. And I feel confident. Why on God's earth anybody would ride a 125 psi tire? I don't know today, but believe it or not, there are people that still do that. our stance and we just updated on our website is it.

If you stick within the ETRTO guidelines for hookahs, you don't go above 72.5 psi, pretty much every tire will stay on our room with no problem. But you have to get people to understand that. If you want to use our tire, we do have weight guidance. And it's like, if you really want to, you can run more air pressure, but we don't think that has to happen. I would say the biggest move in the last year and a half to two years as we're seeing tires get bigger, even in the pro peloton, I mean,

Our J.Co. team has asked me if we'll have 32s of our Aero cotton because they want to start racing that every day. mean, so the Peloton is moving and if you understand tires, the pressure at 32 can be significantly low and give you the exact same ride feel as you would get out of a 25 at a much higher air pressure. So people have to understand the volumes there, but the surface pressure remains the same. A lower air pressure and a bigger volume gives you the same surface pressure on the tire.

Hottie (20:03)
Right, so in other words, if you go with bigger tires, you need to drop your pressure. That's the math.

Jeff Schneider (20:08)
Yeah, I don't have the exact numbers in my head right now, but if you, let's say you run a 25 at 80 PSI, if you go to a 30, you probably can get down into the low 70s or high 60s and you'll be fine. Should.

Hottie (20:20)
But not only could, you should. You should.

To stay within the spec that you folks and other folks have set, right? Yeah. The safety spec. I'm talking. How much does impact and changes in road surface or surface at all change a pressure within the tire? Does it have that much of an effect? Whenever you push on an object, if I pick up this bicycle wheel over here and push down on it, I would think the effect of pressure would get higher in the tire.

Jeff Schneider (20:28)
A safety spec, yeah.

Hottie (20:50)
Is that happening? Is that oscillation occurring?

Jeff Schneider (20:52)
It gets higher, but the tire is deforming to absorb that object where normally you would hit it and go over that object. I we were talking about aerodynamics and efficiency. My background is structural engineering and physics. So if you understand vector movement, the goal of a rider is to always be going forward. And we've all experienced that when you hit a rough road, chip and seal gravel or cobbles, you have to pedal harder to go faster or to maintain your speed.

Why is that? It's because your vector of movement is no longer going forward, it's going slightly upward. So you're constantly fighting that motion of being forced upward as you ride the bike. So the beauty of a supple casing, and I'm not against rolling resistance, and I think rolling resistance has a play. But when you look at rolling resistance, there's also negatives to rolling resistance, because in order to reduce the friction to get lower rolling resistance, you have to give up grip. And yes, you can.

You can compensate that with different compounds and multiple compounds, but you're still giving up something, right? And so a supple casing, larger air vol- or larger tire with higher air volume but lower air in it, helps you fly over the stuff. And actually if you can shorten that contact patch and widen it, it makes a big difference in rolling resistance. The cool thing is we've kind of steered a wave because, let's face it,

Our earlier tires, like the classics in the early races, sucked on rollingresistance.com. We got hammered. The new Aero Cotton tire just became the number one cotton tire on their website. And it makes me feel a lot better because our new nylon casing Aero tire that we just launched is, we know is better than that tire. And even Vittoria has done the test with the team, testing our tire to their team.

but their tire, because the team rides both, depending on availability of product and everything. And they even said our tire beat their tire. So I'm not saying rolling resistance is negative. I'm just saying I don't think it's everything. And if I surmise in everything, aerodynamics is a part of it. I think that vibration reduction or I call it vibration acceleration is a part of it. And I think the compliance of the tire and how it reacts to the surface is the difference. Then you toss into that the complete wheel system and what we do with our dynamic balance lacing to stiffen up the pedaling of the bike. All those things add up. So it's not just, if you focus on aerodynamics, you might fail here. If you focus on just this, you might fail in aerodynamics. You got to look at all of the variables that I think create efficiency.

Hottie (23:41)
Do you see a point where, I I've noticed in the last year though, getting back to Hookless, a lot of pushback on Hookless Road technology. And it felt like the public were starting to really turn against it now. I can only read what I read and see what I see. I can't talk to every writer in the universe, who knows. Is there a point you think the wheel industry would have to go, okay, we fought the fight, but the public has spoken?

Jeff Schneider (24:08)
I'm going to say I hope not, to be honest with you, in our world, we're so focused on what people are saying in the industry that I think we get muddied. I'm out in the field talking to dealers and consumers. I don't get those questions. Like we prepared a full two page thing that we wanted our staff to use in case consumers or media ask questions. And I asked everybody yesterday, nobody's had to use it yet. Nobody's asking us.

Except for you. think there's a lot of myths about hookless and why we do hookless. And I know it's been said we do it because it's cheaper. It's not cheaper. You still got to cut a steel tool to mold your tire or to mold your rim. But what it does do, and if you understand how rims are made, now technology is getting better, but in the old school way, in order to form that hook, you had to have a piece that you had to extract out. So you had to break the fiber to extract that piece out that created that shape.

So you didn't have a continuity of fiber going up and over the bead wall. We can create a lighter, stronger bead on our rim. So it has nothing to do with cost. It's about making the best overall performing product. Maybe slight cost is a benefit and somewhere in the lineup, but maybe it lets us invest in our carbon spokes and make them better. It's definitely not, it has never been a discussion.

We can make these for cheaper and then sell them for a lot more. That's not our goal. ⁓ We believe it makes a better wheel.

Hottie (25:41)
Well, Jeff, I want to thank you for addressing the elephant in the room. I appreciate that and giving me a little lesson on ecatix. This is my first real in-depth exposure to the brand. It's ⁓ been a good story and an interesting one. Thanks for coming on the show.

Jeff Schneider (25:55)
Yeah, love it, thanks.

 

Hottie (00:14)
Josh, I think you get a kick out of this. ⁓ I did a Mavic count, my personal Mavic count over my life as a cyclist. And here's what I came up with. I have owned three sets of Ksyriums, two custom open pros, one set of Cosmics, and I still have a set of all roads. And I don't know that I've remembered it all.

Joshua Saxe (00:40)
Right? That's a lot of wheels.

Hottie (00:42)
That's a lot of Mavic wheels over a fair, 22 year span or so. And I think a lot of people would have a lot of serious cyclists kids tell a similar story about their experience with Mavic over time, right?

Joshua Saxe (00:56)
Absolutely, there's a lot of history with the brand. It's 137 years old this year. So it's hard to say that at some point ⁓ in a history cyclist career, they haven't been on Mavic at some point. And those who are coming in newer maybe haven't discovered us yet, but we're present everywhere in the industry. So it's hard to stay away.

Hottie (01:19)
Right, and that gets me to my first question. It's like, okay, where Mavic has been, where it's now, and kind of in between. know, you know, again, for a while, OEM, even aftermarket wheels, like you were really gravitating toward Mavic. And then there seemed to be a...

the space got really crowded and decisions got to be harder about what wheels to go with. And it kind of put Mavic kind of elbowed it aside here in the States, at least I'd have no idea what's going on in Europe up here in the States. Mavic got elbowed. Is that a fair assessment of what happened here?

Joshua Saxe (01:53)
I think a little bit, a large part of Mavic's presence in the US is a result of the company going into receivership in 2020. ⁓ The company effectively filed for Chapter 11 and was purchased out of the receivership by a French family investment group, the Borlai Group, heavily invested not just financially but personally in the company that participate in meetings and development in strategy in Europe.

But in that purchase, was effectively a mass contraction of business. So global subsidiary is closed except for France, except for Japan. And about three years later in 2023 was the point of expansion. So we're following COVID. We're following, you know, being able to put a wheel outside of your door and somebody saying, I need to buy that wheel because demand was so high. And in 2023,

Mavic opened a new US subsidiary, ⁓ which I now ⁓ lead and manage along with our Mavic service center so that we can service, warranty, have support parts. That was our phase one. know, US had been without that support for three years. Some felt like maybe it felt a little longer in that limbo. ⁓ But that was the first thing we brought back. And in our scale up, we now have somebody who manages our e-commerce, our marketing.

And they're a specialist in that. So they're making sure that we're advertising in the right places, that it is becoming visible. It's why we're here at Sea Otter. This is a large part of our activation and our visibility for the brand as we rebuild. three years into that new subsidiary, things are going OK. ⁓ I think the market's in some difficulty and there's a lot of choices out there. So from the Mavic perspective, we need to make sure our technologies are valid and are known.

And our innovations are continuous. I really like to joke Mavic's reinvented the wheel hundreds of times in 137 years. Let's do it one more. You know?

Hottie (03:57)
Just give me a quick thumbnail of the size of the brand now. How many different types of wheels do you have and what areas are you all trying to cover?

Joshua Saxe (04:06)
Yeah, Mavic is in every category of cycling right now, aside from maybe 20 and 24 inch wheels. We still make a 26 inch wheel, but we are doing cross country ⁓ enduro downhill trail. We are in gravel. We are in road. We are in road race. We are in gravel race. We are in time trial. We are in track. ⁓ We play everywhere. We are the wheel brand. So there's nowhere we can't play.

Hottie (04:35)
And I can still get my open throws.

Joshua Saxe (04:36)
You can still get your open. yeah, you can still get.

Hottie (04:40)
By the way, what caught my eye here in the booth folks is a set of siriums that are silver. They're really beautiful.

Joshua Saxe (04:46)
Silver, Siriums are back. It's a limited edition and I hope they're popular enough we can keep them around. We even introduced a yellow D-Max in 2024 that was so popular it stuck and now it's a permanent part of the lineup.

Hottie (05:02)
Well, let's talk about going fast. We're going to focus a bit on road wheels here. Give us Mavic's idea about ⁓ building the fastest wheel, the most aerodynamic wheel possible. What kind of steps do you folks get through in developing a fast wheel?

Joshua Saxe (05:16)
Yeah, so Mavic does a lot of aero testing at the wind tunnel at Geneva University, which is about 30 minutes from the headquarters in Chauvinot. We have our own standard of testing, so it's really a point of validation that we will bring the competition in. We will set some benchmarks and make sure that in our aero testing, in this case, that we are matching or exceeding at all yaw angles possible.

So we do a lot of that type of aero testing. We're looking at practical matters too. So making sure that things like the tire is lining up with the rim in the right way. And then looking at the tire profile. So historically we've used the NACA aero profile as our basis for our rim profiles and then adding different feature X like internal width, external width, ⁓ spoke styles and dimensions. We use an elliptical spoke that's proven to be faster, but we forgo internal nipples for the sake of serviceability. So we do make some sacrifices in ⁓ honor of having practicality, serviceability, and effect on real-world performance.

Hottie (06:28)
Let's now talk about an area that has increasingly become a hot topic in the road space and that is hooked versus hookless. ⁓ You know, it seems like a divided world out there and I wanted to make sure I come by and talk to a heritage brand about this and see where you folks stand on this area. What does Mavic use as far as helping secure a tire to rim in a road setting?

Joshua Saxe (06:54)
Yeah, everything Mavic does for the road is hooked. Whether it's tubeless, whether it's tubed, it uses that hook. ⁓ It effectively offers an extra point of retention when the tire and rim mesh well together. That bead is sitting at the lowest portion of the rim bridge. ⁓ But when certain elements begin to exceed, the tendency is for it to try to hop up and it likes to slide up. And if there's nothing to catch it, it's going to exceed over the edge of that sidewall. So we retain hooks on all of our road product. When we look at our gravel product, I like to say drop bar product. ⁓ We go to hookless because the pressures are lower. We're comfortable with what we have when the standards and tolerances and recommended use cases are followed. But we will be rolling out hooks in the future on gravel product. ⁓ We recognize its importance there and multi use of that.

Drop bar category of product that it is often used on the road at higher pressures that will often exceed what a perfect hookless system can operate in. We do retain hookless on our mountain bike product. We believe at lower pressures it's perfectly fine. It's really a non-issue. We do implore something called pinch flat protection, which does offer sort of a micro hook on our aluminum product, but it's not a full hook setup. ⁓ And that's more to help prevent against sidewall pinch flats in the tubeless setup against high impact.

Hottie (08:30)
is hooked more expensive and harder to make as some might say.

Joshua Saxe (08:36)
⁓ I don't believe it is. think in the early onset of hookless there was a less expensive way to do it because it requires it requires less. It doesn't have a hook. So you remove a part of the system. Yeah, it's going to be less expensive to make. But I think when you weigh in volume pieces and how the manufacturing goes about, it balances out pretty well. So if you're doing all hooks, that cost is... well balanced. ⁓

Hottie (09:07)
You know, when I first interviewed Mavic several years ago, I think it was the launch of the Allroad that came out, I spent a lot of time talking with Mavic about their belief in standards. I think they were some of the first with UST mountain bike wheels, and they continued to back the ETRTO standard when it first launched the Allroad. Is that Mavic, are they still a proponent of standards and sticking within standards?

Joshua Saxe (09:33)
Absolutely. ⁓ Mavic is a proponent of what we like to call a global wheel system. As you move up through the ranks of Mavic's ⁓ franchise names and models, the system becomes more apparent. So you have your basic pierced and laced traditional nipple spoke interfaces. As you move up, things become more proprietary and work well together, creating a standardization that is meant to have integrity, durability, and make a better, faster, safer wheel. So when we look at things like tubeless, the ETRTO standard is largely based on the work that Mavic did with UST in which the interface of the rim is meant to be dynamic with the tire. They're meant to match. if they don't, that's where tubeless typically can go wrong. That's where hookless could go wrong. If everything matches, works great. If we're within pressure, it works great. But when elements don't match up, whether it's a tolerance issue, whether it's it's been overinflated, that's where the problems come in. So we do believe in the global system. ⁓ We do put forward standards and following ETRTO on all of our rims, we print this is the minimum tire size and the maximum pressure. ⁓ And that's a safety number. And then there's maximum pressure and a minimum

Sorry, maximum tire size and a minimum pressure ⁓ and that's more of a comfort, you know There's no real point that a minimum pressure is going to be a safety concern. You're just you're not gonna have much fun So if you're actually going out to ride you're gonna have air in your tires

Hottie (11:17)
There's a good portion of folks, and understandably so, hear the word standards or rules and say, well, those are in conflict with speed and going fast. Like the UCI allows the lay down rules, some of them kind of bizarre, that can restrict innovation and going fast. I think several years ago when I was here talking to wheel makers about standards for tubeless, one of the arguments against was, or one of the holdups was, we're unable to innovate. under the guise of standards. What is Mavic's view on that?

Joshua Saxe (11:52)
I think we've been able to innovate in different ways. look at, you know, I think when we hit those types of roadblocks, we look at how the system interacts with itself, right? There are all these different elements that we want to operate effectively as a single unit. So that's where we start to look. We look, you know, what can we do with shape of the rim? What can we do with different shaped spokes, different types of nipples, different interfaces and connections of the hub?

And ultimately how you land on something like an elliptical shape spoke is a small marginal gain that gets you forward in your product without exceeding the limitations that have been put on by a governing body.

Hottie (12:33)
Tell me about this spoke by the way you've mentioned it a couple times I mean the serum spoke I remember was the one that all blew our minds because it was that bladed look it was very cool we all suppose it was working to our benefit what's the elliptical spoke?

Joshua Saxe (12:46)
So an elliptical spoke ⁓ utilizes an elliptical shape to the spoke instead of being just a pressed flat blade. It has quite literally an elliptical shape to it so it looks more like an airplane wing than it does anything else. So you can feel that that has an elliptical spoke to it as opposed to this is our SL level aluminum that I earn S level all-road aluminum wheel that I have my hand on.

This is perfectly flat. It's just a pressed steel spoke. Elliptical requires shaping that does reduce the drag because an elliptical shape is more aerodynamic than just a flat profile. ⁓ Originally, that spoke was only available with our four systems, so either for aluminum or for carbon, which allows tubeless, tapeless technology. ⁓ What we now have is if we look at something like our Allroad SL, this is traditional Pearson lace.

With a traditional nipple and an elliptical spoke. And we're able to do that because of the innovation of the hub and how you slot in that flat blade into the hub itself.