Velocipedestrian wrote:

AgrAde wrote:Yeah. Investors pulled out cos of the whole covid thing. Shame I reckon, I wouldn't have bought one myself but I did like it, and it definitely had benefits that others would gel with enough to buy.

Enough to buy at twice the price of Fox / RS? I understand there are compromises with telescoping forks, but that price jump was big.

A factory 36 is $2k RRP, and with, for example, a Smashpot coil conversion it's almost $3k. that's the sort of buyer that I think Trust were aiming at with their $3k RRP.

Dougal wrote:

AgrAde wrote:Yeah. Investors pulled out cos of the whole covid thing. Shame I reckon, I wouldn't have bought one myself but I did like it, and it definitely had benefits that others would gel with enough to buy.

I don't think Wuhan Flu was the problem here. Selling just over 1000 forks total was the bigger deal. That's probably $1.5M total sales income.
Their tooling costs alone (two fork designs) possibly ate that. Let alone salaries, facilities, production costs, shipping, marketing etc etc.

If they'd been selling like hot cakes then the virus wouldn't have caused investors to pull the plug, of course. I would have loved to see how it would've played out in a good market. Probably still end in tears, but I would have liked for them to find their stride. I think a refined Message from what they learned from the Shout would have been really interesting.

As wonderful as these techno front ends might feel box fresh, I wonder how sketchy they feel once there's a bit of play in the system?

Rik wrote:As wonderful as these techno front ends might feel box fresh, I wonder how sketchy they feel once there's a bit of play in the system?

I think (irrelevant now) they had a lifetime bearing warranty. A telescopic fork past due for service doesn't feel great.

AgrAde wrote:If they'd been selling like hot cakes then the virus wouldn't have caused investors to pull the plug, of course. I would have loved to see how it would've played out in a good market. Probably still end in tears, but I would have liked for them to find their stride. I think a refined Message from what they learned from the Shout would have been really interesting.

Until a month ago it was a roaring market. Probably the best time ever to introduce the fork.

Without the covid, and with a bunch of sales, eventually wouldn't their price have maybe been able to come down?

Too late now. I'd love to have given one a try.

swtchbckr wrote:Without the covid, and with a bunch of sales, eventually wouldn't their price have maybe been able to come down?

Too late now. I'd love to have given one a try.

I think if they had released an aluminium version they could have sold far more for a palatable price and saved probably $1M on tooling and design of carbon fibre moulds.
Then used that to fund the more expensive carbon version.

But anyway. They're around second hand if you wanted to buy one. Looks like there were several demo sets in this country.

From the weirdest to the most conservative bike I've ever owned. Short reach, steep head angle, front derailleur, and I even took the dropper off it.