Mountain Cog
Mountain bike podcast that will make you laugh and learn. Featuring a wide range of passionate guests.
Mountain Cog
096 - The Art and Science of Mountain Bike Design: Faction Bike Studio's Design Lead (Guest: Julian Richardson)
The Mountain Cog Podcast welcomes Julian Richardson, Lead Industrial Designer at Faction Bike Studio, for an in-depth exploration of bicycle design. Julian explains how Faction operates as design consultants for bike manufacturers, handling everything from initial sketches to final production support. The discussion clarifies the often misunderstood difference between industrial design (focused on user experience and aesthetics) and engineering (focused on developing and validating the functional, structural, and kinematic elements), while detailing their collaborative process that transforms concepts into rideable products.
The episode covers crucial industry topics including the challenges of managing intellectual property between competing clients, the influence of geography on design decisions, and how designers balance innovation with practicality. Julian shares insights on material selection, frame construction techniques, and the growing integration between traditional and e-bike designs. Listeners will appreciate the candid discussion about design trends, from the problematic internal cable routing that frustrate mechanics to the industry's gradual shift toward more user-adjustable bikes that can be customized to rider preferences without requiring multiple specialized bicycles.
Faction Bike Studio - https://factionbikestudio.com/
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why don't female deer sleep properly? Oh man, this could go like so many thing, this could go. They don't have enough dough oh yeah, that's it. Well, they just doze they just doze.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I almost got it, I almost got it. You're on, you're on it I knew dough was in there somewhere.
Josh (Magellan):I just couldn't figure out how to fit it in so so yeah, they just doze. They just doze. Nice, I like it so Wednesday night here on the MCP and it's not too bad for Dane and I. It's 7 o'clock, yep, long work days. You'll probably hear it in our voice, but it's a little later for our friends over in Quebec. Yep, and uh, like to William, welcome, uh, julian Richardson, who is the lead designer? Is that the right title for you, lead designer, do I?
Julian Richardson:got that right. Lead industrial designer. I lead the industrial design team. There's a bunch of us, so, uh, yeah, thanks for having me guys.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, absolutely I've been, and he's with.
Josh (Magellan):Faction Bike Studio.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yes, Faction Bike. This is our second episode.
Josh (Magellan):You might remember, we had Adam on previously and we promised you all a second episode with Faction, and they were nice enough to agree to talk with us again. We didn't drive them too crazy, and Julian's here to tell us more about Faction and a lot about industrial design.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yes, yeah, I've been deep diving into industrial design versus industrial engineering, which are different, and uh and so we were. We were researching that a little bit because, uh, I listened to another podcast with another manufacturer and they're they always have guys on their their industrial engineer and I thought they were the same thing, but they're not, so so yeah, maybe that's a good place to start.
Josh (Magellan):Man, yeah, could you help like for our listeners? Could you help us under you know, uh, differentiate between like in a bicycle company or a bicycle design company? Um, what's the difference between an engineer, industrial engineer and an industrial designer?
Julian Richardson:Yeah, yeah, so myself, industrial design, um, that is kind of the more artistic side of things. We do a lot more of the visualization, a lot of the drawing Uh, I happened to go to a school for industrial design uh in within a faculty of engineering, so it is a little bit more technical than some industrial design programs, um, but I think that lends itself pretty nicely to working in this industry, cause it is still kind of that perfect marriage of, you know, industrial or uh technical and kind of artistic elements too Uh. So, yeah, we do uh all of the drawing, we do all of the CAD as well. Uh, some companies will have separate uh titles for CAD modelers.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Do they call them CAD CAD jockeys? Yeah, that kind of thing.
Julian Richardson:But they're actually it's a really important role and uh, you know, obviously that person is kind of sculpting the bike and our industrial designers actually play that role as well. Oh, wow.
Josh (Magellan):Okay, so for the uninformed, what's CAD?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):CAD is computer-aided design, and is that correct, right, that's an old term, right, because I used to think we used what did we use? Shoot. I just spaced it. What's the old one? Autocad AutoCAD is what I used and I hear that's not the main thing.
Julian Richardson:go to go to anymore yeah, that's uh not as much. Autocad is kind of the older 2d ish version right. Yeah, that's what I used a lot, man, I loved it I loved.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I self-taught myself how to do it and I just I enjoy, I really enjoyed it, but then it got way complicated and too time consuming.
Julian Richardson:So yeah, but it's true, and with bikes now, everything's so complicated, you kind of have to do everything in 3d. So yeah, yeah, we do use solidworks for all of our 3d cad yeah, I remember solidworks coming out.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):This is a long time ago before I did that. Like it's, it's been 20 years probably.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, so it's been a while so so I'm addicted to artificial intelligence and specifically the large language models at the moment and more specifically anthropics tool, claude, which is just amazing.
Josh (Magellan):So it's like a chat, chat, gpt, competitor, um. But we asked claude earlier today what was the difference between a industrial designer and industrial engineer? Um, and it gave us a real big summary, but it had some interesting questions. It said that the industrial designer would ask how can this product delight and satisfy the user, where the industrial engineer would ask how can we produce this better, faster and with fewer resources? Gotcha, what do you think about?
Julian Richardson:that. I mean that seems like a pretty good summary. I think another element of industrial design is kind of like user-centric design, so like we're always designing things that humans will be using. So the electronics you hold every day, you know the, even the fixtures in your bathroom, the tools that you work on your bike with, are all kind of worked on by industrial designers at some point. So the user-centric element of it is how does a human interact with it?
Josh (Magellan):right, so you're thinking about like ergonomics and then like how does it? Feel in your hand tactile, you know like you know, is it?
Julian Richardson:is it intuitive to use or is it confusing? Um, you can go all the way down to like really fine details, like textures and materials and and how that affects how you use it. You know, does the plastic wear out before the metal bit does? Should we adjust that or is it meant to do that?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):that kind of perspective okay, I have a serious question, uh, that you just triggered. Okay, who's been triggered again? Who is responsible for matte finishes on bikes? Because I want to talk to that person.
Julian Richardson:Yes, you probably want to shoot them right.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Like is that an industrial designer or is that some guy named Larry who just had extra paint left over? Like what happened there?
Julian Richardson:I think it's Larry.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, it's a pitchfork or white bar tape. That's another one Like yeah, it looks great on a computer, but who puts it on a bike Like white bar tape? Do you know what I'm talking?
Josh (Magellan):about yeah, but I mean in all seriousness, like the finish of the bike is in your job jar, is that right?
Julian Richardson:Uh, not all the time. Uh, so, like larger companies will have kind of color material, finished designers who are more focused on the graphics, the paint and those types of things. We've certainly worked on that element of bikes quite often, but it's not something that's like an everyday thing. We're more focused on designing the frames themselves and creating the 3D models for them themselves and creating the 3d models for them.
Josh (Magellan):You know, I just realized that we're. You know, we're getting new listeners every day. Yep, and there may be some that didn't hear the first episode with faction bike studio and we jumped right into the meat with with julian here.
Julian Richardson:Uh, julian, could you take a minute?
Josh (Magellan):yeah, could you take a minute and just explain to like maybe some of our new listeners that haven't heard that previous episode. Like what is faction bikes?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):yeah, just a quick summary on what you guys do and for for bike industry.
Julian Richardson:So yeah, so we're a design and engineering firm and we primarily do uh design and engineering for bike frames and forks. Uh, we do work on components too, but a good meat of the work is is the frame and the fork, and we're talking kind of start to finish from like the original uh, from the brief and the project definition all the way to the handoff to the factory and the support through production.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So and so you're not doing this for some individual like bob doesn't call you up and say, hey, I was thinking about buying a bike, can you design me one? He's, you know that's not what you're doing. You're doing it for the actual bike manufacturer, like, so if I mean, we don't know, let's say we just make up a name and call it brand X, you know, calls you up and says, hey, we're, we want to come up with a new bike. We don't want to. We don't have any idea, is it? They're out of ideas or they're in a new scope? How involved are you? You're not full-time with them, right?
Julian Richardson:Occasionally we act as a full R&D department for smaller companies Smaller companies that don't really have the funds to start their own R&D company or sometimes the know-how they can rely on us to be kind of like the full turnkey r&d. And then for larger companies we tend to be more of like the overflow support. So say, a really big company is trying to develop like a carbon and an alloy version of a mountain bike to release at the same time. They only have the bandwidth to do one.
Josh (Magellan):We can do the other for them okay, that's super cool and and one of your, I think, ethos of your company, or one of the ground rules of your company, is that you don't disclose like which manufacturers you're supporting on what products yeah, exactly so, where it's mostly silent stuff.
Julian Richardson:If you see us online, we do have some kind of marketing partnerships. Um did some really cool stuff with Frameworks last year and this year ongoing, and then we're doing some really cool stuff with Danger Home as well, if you guys are aware of him.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So those were brought up in the last podcast so.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I encourage anyone who's interested to go check that out, but I don't think I brought this up yet. So I have a a frameworks at the shop. Uh, right now one of our listeners is got a frameworks. He's been um contacting me and he was talking to me about various things and I had seen his frameworks and I was like hey, as a joke was like hey, whenever you're ready to get rid of that thing, let me know. And sure enough he's like you can borrow it. Just take it, build it up and ride it. Just let me know what you think of it. And so now it's at the shop and we're gonna pimp it out and go test it up against a couple other downhill bikes. So I'm stoked to ride that thing and to try it out and shout out to to brian for letting me try it out. Uh, so we'll have some some info and we'll do a podcast on on how that goes yes, I mean seems like they're doing pretty good.
Josh (Magellan):Uh, I think in hardline right, didn't uh a rider on that one of the frameworks riders qualified the fastest time in hardline this year, I think I saw yeah, asa is an absolute bullet on that bike it's.
Julian Richardson:It's pretty wild and it's super awesome to see them him hitting the podium. I know he's only the end of junior or start of elite, I'm not too sure.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):But I wonder if he's who was at bootleg. We there was a framework frameworks young athlete at bootleg one time when I was racing that was just smoking. Everybody I bet you that's who it is could have been so bootlegs in nevada?
Josh (Magellan):so okay, I'm not sure yeah, it's just outside of las vegas yeah, literally like 30 miles or something.
Julian Richardson:So I know they're all down there training all winter, so yeah, yeah, uh so so that's awesome, so there's.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So you guys are kind of like hired guns for the bike industry, you know yeah, yeah, it's a good summary, for sure, yeah so you come in and kind of fit what they need and and so you don't have a, you don't have a product that you sell. You see, you accept yourselves so yeah, yeah.
Julian Richardson:The only other thing that you'll see online, of course, is that we've been really involved in like bonded frames. Yeah, with Loctite. Yeah, loctite was the one that we did. That's part of the framework sponsor with nico um, but we've used all kinds of other, uh, bonding materials in order to put them together. So did you guys?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):uh, did you guys deep dive into the pivot?
Julian Richardson:uh, debacle with bernard kerr's bike yeah, I mean I think adam might have touched on this too like we definitely were interested in what happened and any type of like failure there is is something that you, you want to learn from. So yeah but it sounds like they understand what happened and why it happened, so I think that's a good starting point at least, for they're still doing that process.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):The new trail cat has a was developed with that process too, and that bike's amazing yeah, we were actually in the pivot r&d lab like a couple weeks after that happened yeah and got to see it and talk to them about it and they got I think they got a good handle on it yeah, oh yeah, they sure they definitely like and honestly, you know, uh, bernard, from what I know I don't know him personally, but from what I know he is hard't know him personally, but from what I know, he is hard on stuff, so if somebody is going to break something, he's a good one to do that.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, these guys. It's pretty intense how the forces that they put on these machines. It's amazing. It's unlike anything else right yeah.
Josh (Magellan):Hey, so okay. So maybe you could take us through, like step-by-step for our listeners, the process from, like you know, you get the initial inquiry from a bike company. You know how does that? What are like kind of like the steps that you guys go through leading up to you deliver your final design and they go manufacture it. Could you help maybe walk us through that?
Julian Richardson:Yeah, of course. So we have, like you know, pdp product development process. It's not too, it's pretty standard, but we have adapted it to, obviously, the cycling world. If you're familiar with that whole thing, we start with creating the brief with the client and that's kind of the whole agreement of what the project's going to be and adding as much definition to it as you can. So, what material is it? Where are you going to manufacture it? Of course, like the hard requirements, like what category is it? How much travel does it have? What is it compatible with? Call out anything that's unique. Is there something that's going to be super kind of uh, unique to this bike that nothing else does? Um, and of course, there's all kinds of other technical requirements there. What sort of like safety and uh tests does it have to pass right?
Julian Richardson:That's kind of like the phase where we agree on that uh, and once we've kind of all gotten comfortable with what it is, we move into the concept phase. So that's when we're doing a lot of the the most exciting stuff, which is the sketching and the early 3d models, and kind of really defining what this thing is going to look like. Yeah, that's when the engineers also develop the kinematic and the geometry. They do the calculations on the hardware to make sure that all of the you know bolts and pivots and everything are going to stand up to the forces that we expect for this bike. And once we kind of have that, it's more of like the definition. The math behind it is all complete. That's when we get into the detailed designs. That's when we actually make the SOLIDWORKS model and we would run FEAs, so like the finite element analysis, which is basically simulating wear and forces on the bike on the computer before anything actually exists in reality. We'd also do 3D prints.
Julian Richardson:Then At that phase you could also do kind of like a glued together mule if you wanted to, in order to actually get out and ride something that is very close to what the real bike will be like. And then the following phase is kind of like production support. So that's when you release it to the factory and you start getting their feedback and you work towards like the first prototypes with the factory and eventually into production. So there's not really anything like super surprising there. This is very similar to the process that other bike brands take. But that's our advantage is that we we do have a similar process. So we can kind of jump in with other companies and we're already up to speed. We're already doing the kind of the same things that they're doing.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So that's awesome, that's yeah.
Josh (Magellan):That's like a skill set that you can keep using for different people, but you learn from every client, uh how to make it better so um, one of the things I struggle with I can't wrap my head around is how you guys manage like the intellectual property containment from project to project. That seems like that would be a really tough challenge.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, it can be a bit of a challenge. For sure, you have to make sure you know who has partnerships with what other brands, and there's a bit of file management there to make sure that there's no spillage.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, that's the best word. So you know, as long as I've been doing this, that's something that I need a little bit of explanation on. So, intellectual property so you're saying that if you guys come up with a design, you guys have to figure out who owns it? Or are you saying that if you're using somebody else's design, you've got to make sure that you have permission, or what are you saying?
Josh (Magellan):Well, the standard way, at least in the United States I'm not sure what it is in Canada, but the standard way that intellectual property law works is that the person that actually creates the design owns the design.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Gotcha.
Josh (Magellan):Unless there's a term and condition between the two companies that stipulates something different. Yeah, I would imagine that your companies, probably the companies that you work with, you guys? Probably have some type of intellectual property agreement and they probably own the design that they're paying you to develop.
Julian Richardson:Okay, property agreement and they probably own the design that they're paying you to develop. Okay, yeah, so we uh, anything it's in our contracts, anything that we create, is theirs.
Josh (Magellan):Okay, within the scope of that project. So what I'm talking about is like if you've solved this nice little problem on brand x's or brand a's bike, yeah you can't actually take that solution to brand B? Unless brand A says it's okay.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Gotcha, okay, so let me put this in like layman's term, because that's what I'm good at. So, like I'm going to use pivot an example and you guys don't work with pivot, but I'm just using that because I know them real well they have these cool little cable covers for their frames that they've made pretty universal on every bike and almost every year, and so they rarely change it. They just change it on the new trail cap. But those little covers, if you guys had designed that and said, hey, this will work, you know, and it's universal and you can put it on every single one and it works great, then if you used it on another brand, then you'd be.
Josh (Magellan):It would be they would be violating the intellectual property, gotcha Okay. And it gets super tricky because when you get down to the nuts and bolts of that and the engineers are just designing, sometimes it's like, oh, I know how to fix that, and then it can be really, really difficult. Yeah, I work in an engineering company, so we deal with this all the time.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, yeah, it sounds like you're familiar and it you know it's it's more like you're familiar and it you know it's it's more it's for us we don't really like. There's really no chance of cross contamination, I guess is what I'm trying to say, we're not going to throw parts from another project into another project's 3d files, because it's just kind of irresponsible. Yeah, um, it can be challenging when we know we've kind of solved something before, but there's always many different ways to approach something. That's crazy.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, okay, you can know the answer and it's like I can't tell you.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, yeah Right.
Josh (Magellan):That's an interesting thing with engineering consulting.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I got a question on something you said that again I've tried to deep dive on. I'm in this industry. I hear it all the time. I feel like I know what it is. It comes up all the time, this term, kinematics. Okay, it's very hard to go find out what actually people mean by kinematics. What, what is so like? Sometimes they use it as a noun and sometimes a verb, and like it gets used all over the place. So what would you say kinematics means or what it is uh.
Julian Richardson:Well, this is again. This is the bridge between my expertise and the engineering expertise. So, like, the actual creation of the kinematic for a full suspension mountain bike is not something that I have to do. I can have influence on it by uh asking the engineers to kind of change points around. But essentially it's creating all of the pivot points on the bike that determine how much real, weird real rear wheel travel. Try saying that 10 times uh rear wheel travel the bike has. Uh, where the pivot points are how many links it has, what length or stroke of shock it has. That's kind of.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So it's like a, it's like a one word, you know, um like description of, like, the how, the suspension, the suspension, like it's just it's basically an easy suspension design is, and so it's like a one word Okay, that helps.
Josh (Magellan):So Claude says yeah, yeah.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):What does claude say?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):claude says how parts of a system move relative to each other okay, yeah, and see, that is very hard to wrap your head around because somebody will say something like well, the kinematics of the bike or the kinematic design, you know, they'll use it in different terms and throw it around and it's like really confusing sometimes and again I've been in this. I understand that what they're trying to say is that how the bike works, but is there some sort of actual goal, like, is it? You know, it was really tough because it was kind of had to do with geometry. People were using it in a, in a geometry term, like a front, rear, center and a front center and a rear center and things like that, and I'm like so now we're getting into geometry too, so, and that was getting.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):And then they were talking about the front of the bike and how it changes the geometry and that affects the kinematics, and so it gets a little weird when you start using the that term.
Julian Richardson:So so yeah it's true and and when you do, look at it excuse me as a whole system, the. Maybe the term kinematic makes more sense, but I'm not too sure.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, it's, it's, it's. I think it's an easy word Like it's just hey, this, this is easier than trying to say oh yeah, it's the, the high pivot or how far away the links are, if it's walking bar or if it's you know. I mean you can just say kinematics.
Julian Richardson:I know that you guys have talked about having Simo on my colleague. He is probably one of the more guru guys for suspension and kinematic. I mean there's there's a bunch of other them in our company, but obviously I'm kind of more on the visual and 3D side of things rather than the engineering. So that's kind of why I'm saying it's not exactly in my jurisdiction, but thanks for trying to set us straight.
Josh (Magellan):man, we appreciate it. So you guys are in Quebec, yeah, and you guys have obviously some pretty harsh winters and some pretty gnarly terrain up there. Do you think like where you're located influences the design of your bikes?
Julian Richardson:at all like kind of extreme terrain. In a certain way it helps us that there's a good variety too. We're kind of right between Appalachian Mountains and Laurentian Mountains, so there is a good diversity of types of trails. It's not like we're only designing for steep loam or some specific type of trail. We've got it all around us, which is kind of cool of trail. We've got it all around us, which is kind of cool. So I think that definitely plays into the DNA where our bikes tend to be really good all-rounders. But it's not just us right. There's a handful of bike companies out here that kind of end up having that same approach. But it is really cool to see things tested to absolute limits and it's kind of right outside your door. Yeah, it's kind of right outside your door yeah, it's simple.
Josh (Magellan):I think the only the only thing that you're missing is that all year round riding that we have here at the future location of faction bike studio south.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, I'm always I'm always amazed, like um tucson, in general uh, we have low cost of living, uh, there's tons of land, it's fairly cheap. I'm always amazed that more companies aren't here when they spend as much money, as they do in some places, and I know there's kind of shipping and logistics that cause some of that.
Josh (Magellan):Although I can't imagine shipping into Quebec is is simple.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Well, they don't need to ship their, their shipping themselves.
Josh (Magellan):They're shipping digital digital files.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, I mean, you got some 3dD printed stuff, but really it's just you. You need some flights, and flights are cheap to Tucson.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, there you go. Well, I mean, the second office is a possibility there, yeah, I'm trying to will it into existence.
Josh (Magellan):I might know someone that can help you get it set up if you guys are interested, so please keep us in mind as a business expense.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):It's a necessity, so yeah but uh, I had a question on the design aspect, because, uh, there's a, a particular bike that we sold in the past. That just made me frustrated. Uh, because it was a good working bike. It did a good job at roadwell, but it was overly heavy and the design of the tube set. It was a carbon bike. I don't know if you've heard of a brand called eminent.
Julian Richardson:No, I don't think so.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, so this is a, as far as I know it's, it's gone out of business. Um, it was a smaller company. It may have been something that you guys may have worked on. So I was a little worried about.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):But but the engineer who kind of started it kind of looked at bikes and was like I think I can do a better job, right, and so he took basically kind of a horse bar link and modified it quite a bit. It looked like an old I don't know if you know the old Schwinn Ladwell design bikes where they had the four bars were really at the four bar. It wasn't like this distorted look of a four bar, they look like an A-arm and it's a similar design to that. The bikes that he made worked really well. They actually rode, pedaled great. He had a system where you could change the travel by changing the stroke of the rear shock and uh, and a bar that basically mounted it to different lengths so the same frame could do a 120 travel bike, then a 140 and then, I think, a 160, and so you could. It was a good design he. He was really talented.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):But the thing that he did that drove me nuts is he would design the tube set squared off like a think stealth bomber or you know those real rigid sharp angles, and the bike had this potential, but it was kind of portly, you know, a little bit heavy, and I'm like that's not a good. I mean, he had such raised edges I know those are stress risers, you know and so um how? From what I heard, it was because he liked the look of it and so okay, so that's the question, right.
Josh (Magellan):So like, yeah, like, how often do you run into conflicts between, like, some of the design requirements around? You know? Strength? Yeah weight, um safety, and like the aesthetic of the bike. Yeah, like, do you have any examples of like conflicts and like where you've run into that? Like, hey, they wanted to do this but it doesn't look cool, so we gotta, we gotta change it.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, it looks like everybody else's bike. You know how do we make it look unique? So exactly.
Julian Richardson:There's.
Julian Richardson:There's always a little bit of push and pull between those characteristics because, uh, you know, we are trying to create different things and in order to do so we'll sketch something that maybe is a bit wild.
Julian Richardson:And there's always a challenge where we kind of look at this and it's not just me, I'll look at it with my engineer co-worker next to me and we see, like you know, you can tell me if I'm crazy. But what if we did this? And it's kind of like this collaborative thing where we're trying to figure out okay, it probably won't look like the original sketch, we're probably going to have to soften this radius and we're probably going to have to, you know, make this taper less dramatic or something. But the process is kind of, it is highly collaborative and it is trying to come up with something new, but it has to be something that works in the end. Like you've mentioned, we've done like a ton of project 300 something projects of those like it's in the nineties, the percentage of of what ended up hitting the market. Uh, so our goal is always, like successful products to market Okay.
Josh (Magellan):Wow, that's a crazy success rate actually.
Julian Richardson:Well, I mean, it's actually insane how many of it and a portion of that that isn't in the market is because it was always meant to just be a test meal, kind of thing.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, I didn't see that statistic on your website. Maybe you should put that on your website.
Julian Richardson:Cause that's not there.
Josh (Magellan):We should, yeah, maybe take a note Cause, like I studied your website pretty deeply, I'm going to feel bad if it's there.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):But I feel like if you had an in-house R and D, you would be more accepting of them farting around trying new things and seeing what sticks, and. But when you go outside and hire somebody to do it, you're probably much more motivated to have that product actually make money to pay back that expense.
Julian Richardson:Exactly that's kind of at the core of it being a consulting service, is that, uh, the the people who hire us want it to happen, and there's really no excuse to go through that process and not have something that's successful.
Josh (Magellan):Okay, I just confirmed. It's not on your website. What?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Oh.
Julian Richardson:I don't know what the number is, but it's very high.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, that's pretty amazing, so I'm not even using this list that's fine.
Josh (Magellan):I'm just walking all over.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):That's a matter of good um, we did talk about visualization and software tools, but, um, I was just going to ask you really, what is the, what is the part of the job that makes you want to go to work every day? Like what is it that? I mean, you were saying that there's all this process of figuring out what you can and can't do. Then you've got to work through the process the sketching and the kind of design is really fun and then you've got to get to. You know, does it actually, is it going to actually work? And things like that. What is the particular process in there that really brings you back every day, that like really just kind of does it for you, where you put up with all the other stuff just because you get to do that? You?
Julian Richardson:put up with all the other stuff just because you get to do that. So I think at our core we're a bunch of bike nerds and we just really love to spend our time on this stuff. I think that's kind of the generalization for everyone at faction. But for me specifically, I think the refinement and the and the refinement of the process as we go through to see something go from a sketch to a foot, first 3d model to a detailed 3d model, and then eventually it shows up in the mail on your desk and you get to see it, uh, and you get to ride it I think that's the most satisfying process to go through and for a bike nerd to be able to be involved in that, I think that's kind of like it's the ultimate, it's the dream job, right yeah, do you.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Do you get? So? Is that in the contract where they got to send you a bike? Is it always your size? I wish.
Julian Richardson:No, I'm six, three, two, 20 and I'd never get to.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, they're always coming in mediums, aren't they? They're always mediums or large.
Julian Richardson:I'm worried I'm going to break it. So no, we try and get a model of everything we work on.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):When you say a model, is that like a production, like?
Julian Richardson:rideable Ideally rideable.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, that's maybe not the end color and fit and finish, but rideable?
Julian Richardson:Yeah, it might be like a prototype, where there's no paint or it's got the wrong components or uh, whatever, but um, it's actually. It's worse when we get the prototypes that you can't ride. Yes, yeah, because it's just a tease. They, they can only sit there and sometimes they actually meet the bandsaw to be cut up and analyzed, which hurts even more.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):But oh yeah, destructive testing is really a double edged sword, because breaking stuff is fun, but then you're breaking something and you're like I could have used that.
Julian Richardson:And then, and then, and then, if you see something fail a test, you're like, oh, I'm glad I didn't ride that yeah.
Josh (Magellan):So do you? Do you own any bikes? That faction has helped design.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, right now.
Josh (Magellan):Is it that specialized right behind you? That was. My next question was like what bikes do you own?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Well, actually I had a question that I thought would be kind of fun is do you ever walk like at a bike park or something and see a bike that you worked on and like I? I mean, I feel like you have to keep secrets all the time. It's got to feel good. Does that bottle up? Do you ever go like go out in the backyard and just yell that I made that.
Julian Richardson:You know it can be challenging at times. I was riding out west with some friends, uh, last spring, and I was riding a bike that I had rented and they had. They just insisted that I had worked on it. They wouldn't let it die. No, I swear to you, this is not mine. But uh yeah, no, that I mean that's a challenge. You. You gotta hold your tongue. Of course it's part of the job.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I know we were watching videos off your website and, uh, everybody would show like, oh, maybe it was Facebook, I don't know. But you'd see people with their bikes and I'm like, oh, that guy's on a that guy's on a and.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I'm like oh, they must make that one, you know, and I think Adam said he didn't say that, you know, he just said that he's an ambassador for GT, I think at the time, like he was riding GTs and we're like, of course, we're like, oh, you must make those, you know. So something that always track cracks me up in the bike industry is that people, my bike rep, one of my reps, comes in and I think I can say this he's not going to get mad at me, but he's my Shimano rep and he's like hey man, can you get me a pivot?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):You know, and it's like you forget, because he's in the industry, you forget that he only can get one part of that. You know, I can get only the bikes we sell, you know, and uh, so you kind of forget that we are all bike nerds and we're having fun with this stuff and so, like you know, like uh, brian loaning me that, that you know, um, frameworks, I was like super giddy because I'm like I don't think I would have had an opportunity to try one of these out if it weren't for that situation, even though i'm'm in the bike industry.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):You know, I don't, I don't think even I could call him up and be like, hey, can I have one of your bikes? You know, call up Nico or something, but uh, so yeah, it's, it's kind of weird, uh, what we choose to ride and even though you may make it, you may not be able to have one. So, absolutely, and in our office I feel like everyone reaches for those really niche bikes.
Julian Richardson:So if you're seeing a lineup of bikes that are that are belong, belong to us, then uh, it's, it's probably also people just finding weird stuff that they really want.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):A lot of them are old pictures of 26 inch bikes. I can't remember where it was, but yeah and like uh, it evidently a lot of people at faction do like ultra cross country in the mud kind of rides. I don't um, there was like, yeah, endurance stuff. Yeah, like endurance stuff.
Julian Richardson:So yeah, yeah, there's definitely. It's really cool to see what everyone's into, cause it's not it's not all just mountain bikers or enduro riders. There's people who are into bike packing and ultra distance, and there's some roadies and some guys who live for their fat bikes and it's it's a real diverse bunch.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So that's pretty cool, so you can bring a lot to um the. The design process for bringing that experience In fact that was one of our questions that we were going to talk about is like uh, how, how many hats does each person wear? Like how.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, I had a hypothesis that in a in smaller companies sometimes you wear more hats than just yours, and so I was. I was just speculating that you probably get more involved in like specific design than maybe a cut. Like my company has 16,000 engineers, right?
Julian Richardson:Yeah, and a huge design organization.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, we definitely try and match the people with the projects that are most appropriate. So if someone has a ton of, you know, enduro or gravity oriented mountain biking experience and the project comes through the door, that's that topic. We'll try and match it up, but it's not always the case. I've worked on basically every genre of bike out there. Um, even though you might match me up with the mountain bike stuff a bit more, uh, and vice versa, there's some industrial designers on our team who are more road and gravel oriented, but they can work on mountain bikes just as well as I can. So, um, we do our best to kind of optimize our, like uh, experience and our knowledge. But, uh, there's, there's kind of there's always a sharing of knowledge too, where if, if you're working on a project where you don't know as much, you can always call over that engineer who does kind of thing.
Josh (Magellan):That's cool, yeah, hey you mentioned that you know human factors, or you know, like the, the bike body interface, ergonomics, whatever is, is kind of part of part of what's in your job jar. And also you said you were six, three and two, 20, and I'm six, three and more than two, 20. So, fellow rock crusher like I, so fellow rock crusher like um, just interested in like how much like, uh, focus or attention is applied to, like the non medium 180 pound, five foot 10 rider, like, do they, as you're going through this process, I mean, are they thinking about guys like you and me, or girls that are five foot tall, weigh 110 pounds?
Julian Richardson:Yeah, it's, it's's becoming much more of a factor. I feel like you've probably seen it in the marketing of all these bikes, where we are getting a bit more specific with the geometry for the larger sizes, with size-specific chainstays. Chainstays and uh the layups are being applied more specifically for larger bikes so that uh, the larger ones aren't don't ride uh less stiff compared to like the medium size. You lay it up, uh say, like the carbon layup or the tube thickness on the aluminum um gets ramped up through the sizing in order so that all the bikes kind of like feel proportionate. Uh, through the size range. We of course, like the the size medium ends up being the one that's on the website.
Julian Richardson:That side view of the size medium ends up being kind of the visual that everyone locks into Um, but we definitely spend a lot of time early days when we're sketching uh, figuring out how that size range is actually going to work. So is the extra small going to look kind of gorky because the top two best do this k? So is the extra small going to look kind of gorky because the top tube has to do this kink? Or is the extra large going to look really silly because the head tubes, you know, twice as long as the medium or something Um, and we definitely play around with those variables to make sure that it feels cohesive and one doesn't feel like it's a totally different bike than the medium right like what are the extremes, what are you designed to for for height and weight?
Josh (Magellan):like what's the max, what's the min, and then what are the the weight parameters?
Julian Richardson:well for we, for adult bikes, uh uh, this is off the top of my head, but a lot of the size range is like 410, 411 up to 6667. That's kind of like the max 99 percentile. So 99 of the population fits in that size bracket. Um, there's certainly people who go a bit further with double xls and triple xls, but that's kind of a bit even more niche.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah.
Julian Richardson:You probably know how many double or how many XL bikes do you bring in versus mediums.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Not nearly as many, yeah, and and some companies extra large is another company's extra extra large and vice versa you know, so that's kind of weird too.
Josh (Magellan):So what about? What about weight? How is that factor in the rider weight? Is there like a standard?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):you know like it has to take this much weight.
Julian Richardson:Yeah.
Julian Richardson:So, the safety standards have a certain amount. Usually I don't know off the top of my head exactly what it is. Again, that's more engineering realm. But we have worked on bikes where we've pushed that a bit further, knowing that you know someone who is six, six is probably going to be over two, 50 kind of thing, um, so the. And then we have worked on bikes where we're trying to make sure that the size range feels proportionately stiff. I think that's one of the cool newer innovation things that people are working on these days.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So so your, your, your specialty is not so much in like you know what parts are on it or where the suspension is or anything. But you're looking at, we're going to make a double diamond frame. How do you make it distinctive? You know what? What do you put? So you talked about radius. Diamond frame. How do you make it distinctive? You know what, what do you put? So you talked about radius. You know, do you change the radius? So like that would be like where one tube meets another.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):You're kind of trying to blend that art with function. How often do you butt heads with those engineers that are like Nope, just stick it together. You know, like, how often? You know, like, how often do you know? Because I know, with carbon and as you layer carbon, it makes a different stiffness and it can affect the stiffness of the bike. So, to achieve a certain look in the carbon that you may want a deeper head tube or something, and and then you have like UCI rules. I don't know if you know this, but UCI has like a certain depth from the head of the tube to the back. You know to be qualified aero or what have you, and so I'm, I'm out of my depth, but I just know it exists and so, like, how often do you have to like fight for something that's going to look so cool? But then it may really affect the the way that the bike turns out yeah, there's.
Julian Richardson:There's definitely a lot of tuning knobs.
Julian Richardson:I mean you, you said you're in a old music theater it's like your big soundboard, right, you've got all these dials in front of you and you get to play with which ones, to kind of come up with the bike so that one dial that sharpens all the radiuses.
Julian Richardson:I'm gonna maybe push down a bit. It is like a bit of negotiation there, but honestly, we've all been down the road so many times where we try and push things a bit too far and you know where things end up. Right, you know what manufacturers are capable of doing in terms of, like, how tight a radius could be for a carbon bike, how you know what is the uh manufacturing limits of, say, a hydroform tube, uh for an aluminum bike, and you know not to push it too far because ultimately you still have to make it so you're, you're using your experience to narrow that down, so you just don't have those conflicts yeah, basically, and sometimes you'll it's really like the the goal of the project can can play a role there too, where if you're working on a really ultra light road bike and you know that the layup of the carbon is going to be super critical for getting the right weight and stiffness, you might not want to push those dials too far in terms of the aesthetic purpose.
Julian Richardson:If you look at like the spesh ethos, like their lightweight road bike right now, like if you look at the marketing, they're very clear with what they've done there and that they've kind of pulled all of those design requirements down and really meshed them with the uh kind of manufacturing requirements of the carbon to create as much of a blend between light and stiff as they can yeah, that's, that's a huge thing, even in the manufacturing process, like when they switch to kind of mandrel.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Uh, manufacturing versus bladder, you know uh that that um felt, I think called it, or rocky calls it, smooth wall, but uh, basically, where they have a, a foam, you know frame, inside of the carbon and then they inflate a tube inside that foam and it helps reduce the crinkling or the, the wrinkling of the, the epoxy on the inside, so that you don't get stress risers, you know. So is that stuff that you get to input on or is that shifting into somebody else's scope?
Julian Richardson:It's, it's partially, uh, it'll be kind of like we have a discussion with the vendor or with, like, a layup expert. Uh, we have a great relationship with, um, the guru Richard Matthews, uh, who has laid up basically every carbon bike out there.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Nice. What does he work for anyone individual? Or is he a manufacturer? I don't know him, cause I'm horrible with names, but so he's, uh, he's, he's just a contractor.
Julian Richardson:He'll come in and help uh basically anyone uh. But he's got years and years experience.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):It's kind of crazy how many uh bike companies have worked with him so is that like if you put somebody similar to that, would that be frank the welder? Yeah, exactly okay yeah I just happen to know him because we camp together one time. So um, but yeah so basically somebody who's been in the industry, worked for multiple companies, frank the welder?
Josh (Magellan):is he like one of the characters from bob the builder?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):yes he is the welder, and he's the guy who says yes this is actually a person, yeah he goes, yes, we can no um. So I just a little divert, like because uh, nico mahali.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Uh, frank the welder is the guy who's helping most of his welds, uh okay and so back in the day, do you remember, like the I think it was the atec stem, atec, atec. Uh, if you look under there I think I could be wrong. Somebody correct me, but I'm pretty sure that was Frank the welder and you'll see a lot of those will say FTW on them.
Josh (Magellan):So I thought FTW meant something else. Yeah, well, it does.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):But he's, I know him because, no joke, I was hanging out at a downhill race at a campground and we were around a fire and we were just talking and he told me he goes hey, you know, yeah, I'm, I weld, I'm a welder, you know, and that's. He was super humble at the time but the guy is like an amazing welder so and he's a hired gun, so he's very similar to faction, like he'll go out and kind of you know, he doesn't have a particular home.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Oh cool, and so it sounds like the guy that you were talking about is kind of a similar um for carbon, carbon layup so yeah yeah, exactly, julian.
Julian Richardson:Uh, what was I going to say? Uh, oh, yeah. So someone like that, like Richard Matthews, could tell you hey, the the layup here. It means that this radius here is all uh filler. Basically yeah, yeah, you're not actually gaining any performance, any stiffness, any strength, if anything. It's kind of potentially even doing the opposite. So he's the type of person who could help you tune your design specifically in the layup stuff, and we've got a certain amount of that knowledge. But there is kind of some gurus out there like that who help us out.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video and they took a giant frame and they cut it up. They went and bought it. It was like $4,000. I went to a local bike shop, bought this like $4,000 TCR advanced or whatever it was and then cut it up and then analyzed it. Cut it up and then analyzed it and, uh, I don't know if it was Richard who they were talking about, uh, but the guy that was talking about was showing them all the voids at the corners and the radiuses. He was showing basically the bubbles which you're not supposed to have. You know that cause you know issues, and so it was kind of cool. But I was kind of amazed that these guys just took this $4,000 frame that was perfectly good, brand new and just right off a showroom floor, it wasn't even a factory sample or anything like that and just cut it up and just went through this. So it's kind of fun to watch.
Julian Richardson:actually, we've definitely done that too. It hurts to see it, uh, in the base bed in our lab.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Now. So I heard you can just super glue those back together and they'll be fine.
Josh (Magellan):Oh yeah, no, it's a joke, that's a joke. Yeah, please do not do that.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Please do not do that you can put super glue on a scratch, but don't get carried away.
Josh (Magellan):So, julian, how do you guys stay ahead of like the design and aesthetic trends? Like you're working on a project?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):wait, wait. Are you setting them or are you following them?
Julian Richardson:yeah, hopefully we're setting them. I mean, there are certain setting them, or are you?
Julian Richardson:following them. Yeah, there you go. Hopefully we're setting them. I mean, there are certain projects where we are kind of trying to push those limits. For sure, there's definitely brands that know that they're considered like a fast follower, and that's an okay approach too.
Julian Richardson:But in terms of finding that cutting edge, a lot of industrial designers look to other industries. You can kind of go crazy if you just stay in the bike industry and keep on looking at bikes over and over and over again. So you'll see a lot of our kind of inspiration boards, a lot of our imagery that we create in order to set the tone, the mood. The look of the bike ends up being very abstract and inspired by, say, like fashion or electronics or other kind of categories of product that are much faster moving than the bike industry. Ultimately, we have, you know, maybe it's like a two-year-ish window from when you start a project to when it ends up in your shop, right? And you gotta be really careful about what trends to follow in order to make sure it's even relevant on day one, never mind, you know, five years later when it's at the end of its, like, life cycle, right.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Oh yeah, like if it's too trendy and it just immediately becomes passe.
Josh (Magellan):Like where do you take your inspiration? Then Like what? What do you lean on personally?
Julian Richardson:Oh, uh, I I really love concept art. I really love uh like Blade Runner-esque uh concept artists online Um, there's an automotive uh industrial designers as well. Automotive designers are pretty kind of that's the the surgeon level um designer uh, if you will, in the industry, and there's some pretty amazing ones out there. There's a guy uh Keisel what's his last name? Kaiser?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Sose.
Josh (Magellan):I know that guy. I know that guy.
Julian Richardson:Sorry squirrel that guy, sorry squirrel, uh, kaisel salim. Uh, he's a british, uh, automotive designer who does a lot of really crazy renders adding kind of futuristic body kits to old cars. He'll take like a lamborghini nura and like slam it to the ground and cut the bumper off and he'll do all this stuff that you'd never do to the real car but he does it, you know, on the computer in CAD, and then he renders them in these crazy apocalyptic environments and wild lighting and it's just like, it's just eye candy. And I don't know if I've put together an inspiration board in the last year or so that hasn't had his stuff on it.
Josh (Magellan):You know, I grew up. My best friend's dad was an industrial designer. I grew up in Detroit. So, you know car industry is big there and my best friend's dad was an industrial designer for the car industry and all over his house there were like sketches and pictures and stuff of of cars he um his his claim to fame was he. He designed the grand national, the buick grand national. Oh wow, with that car it's.
Josh (Magellan):It's kind of like a special car okay, his last name is doble, mike doble, but um uh yeah man, I kind of like saw this like what you live, and you said I didn't realize that the car guys were the surgeons. So I guess he was. He was a surgeon.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, so, so, like that's a great way to kind of picture what you do, like when, cause we've seen the car designers and they get their big clay model and they go and form the clay and the concept car and kind of figure out how it's going to look and then eventually somebody has to figure out how to fit everything in that little package and make it work. So you're kind of the one that gets to to develop that, that model and that that initial design, and so yeah, that's we've done.
Julian Richardson:we've done 3d clay stuff for sure. Yeah, it's a bit old fashioned in terms of it.
Josh (Magellan):It's not as and it's not as fast.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, you can just digitally print it now. Right, exactly, and for us it's almost faster to do that 3d model on the computer and print it like 3d print it.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So, um, I don't know if you can say this or not, so I understand you have to be secretive about stuff. Is there anything that you did that like we would recognize, that you can tell us? Like, besides danger home Cause we talked about on the last one and frameworks and the Loctite, is there anything that we may recognize that you guys had a hand in, that you can say like maybe even abstract, where you're?
Josh (Magellan):not. You're just trying to get the question in a different way. You think they're going to give us a different answer this time but where multiple companies maybe use it, and so it's.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):You're not really naming one company, you know. Is there anything? Like that that pops out where you're like yeah man, I, I went on that. I did that, you know so it's.
Julian Richardson:It's so hard, everything's really got a name attached to it. We're we're going to be doing more in terms of like these more visible projects, because it is really nice to show people and we do need some more kind of like evidence of our expertise out there in the world for people to see and, of course, there are other people doing similar things to what we do where it is more visible online. And ultimately, yeah, that's just not our approach.
Josh (Magellan):I haven't been able to find another company that does exactly what you guys do.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, yeah there's very, very few. There are more kind of agencies that focus on transportation design in general. So there's a really big one in Austria called Kiska that does a lot of kind of ATVs and dirt bikes.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, it's more than just bicycles.
Julian Richardson:Exactly. We're so specialized to just the bikes, so so what?
Josh (Magellan):um, I'm going to let you off the hook on the question and change the subject, just because. I respect your your your uh gag orders Um is there a design trend that's just annoying, driving you crazy. You hate it. Or maybe even one in the past that this is now past and you don't have to deal with, but like? Is there a design trend?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):out there.
Julian Richardson:You're like oh God, not again. Yeah, there was some really swoopy frames. I don't know how you describe it. Uh, 2015, era of like.
Julian Richardson:Ellsworth, yeah, when Ellsworth Ibis yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, um, I was. I was pretty happy to see that trend kind of fade away, but I feel like there's some of it coming back these days too. Uh, that was uh, I don't know. I do like kind of crisp, sleek lines. I'm a fan of, like you know, 80s automotive stuff that's really kind of like straight to the point and pretty boxy, but it's ultimately like still really attractive in a way, right. So you'll see a lot of that in my sketching.
Josh (Magellan):Now we can figure out what bikes you worked on. Now we can figure out what bikes you worked on.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Well, I definitely want you to go look up that eminent bike, because now I feel like you did work on it he couldn't tell us.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, I know, and we haven't told him that I'm an expert in reading faces. So, yeah, oh yeah, so no, no, I'm trying to think what, what other?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):um, like, I'm trying to think you know people that listen to this, they're going to have a question like what question would they have? You know? Like, uh, what, what would you say? Is a trend that you see coming out that you can talk about, that you think it's gonna be popular?
Josh (Magellan):yeah, like what? What are you? What are you working on now, in two years? Yeah, you're seeing across. Tell us the future. Multiple projects yeah, predict the future.
Julian Richardson:That's a good question. I think the last couple of years has been really like integration. It's been a really big theme, obviously, with things looking sleeker In terms of mountain bikes. We've seen a lot of linkage being very integrated into the frame. It feels like it's a part of the rear triangle, or it feels like it's really kind of the rear triangle, or it's feels like it's really kind of like cohesive there. I think some of the stuff that we're seeing in the future is kind of diverging from that slightly, where it's not pushed as far as like a 2004 Kona Stinky with a 12 foot long rocker.
Josh (Magellan):But it's not a Scott.
Julian Richardson:But it's not a scott, where everything's hidden inside the frame well, exactly, I think we're expressing a bit more of the mechanical element, uh, and I think there is definitely a push for more maintainability, so expressing and exposing more elements that you need to access. So, although that's a real counterpoint to the where we've seen, you know, road and gravel going in the last couple years, I think we're going to see more of that in in mountain bike in the next couple years.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I can tell you, um, from a bike shop standpoint, if you can design internal cable routing, that's not a pain in the ass. You will be. You'll make millions, like because everybody loves to look at these fully integrated uh, you know hydraulic lines that go through the handlebar, through the stem, into the bike and you never see them on the bike. This is road bikes mainly. Um, no mechanic likes them, we all hate them. So, because the amount of work just to change the cable a headset bearing or what have you like that is a, a huge pain in the butt you know, are we going to continue to see like cables routed inside the headset?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):yeah, like, is that something I'm?
Josh (Magellan):hoping the bike industry's learning, at least the mountain bike industry's learned enough that we shouldn't do that.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Is that the same guy that did the matte paint? Is it the same? Is it larry?
Julian Richardson:it's larry yeah, let's get uh, like no, uh, I think we're seeing. Well, obviously, the mountain side of things was kind of pushed back slightly, maybe with the exception of cross country. I think cross country is kind of borrowing a bit from the road side of things. Yeah, yeah, um, in that there's a bit more integration. Uh, I think the mountain bike will continue to push back and even if you do have the option for internal, uh routing the, you know, the external cable ports will remain. Yeah, hopefully, yeah, uh, I don't know if I see the same going for for road and gravel, though I feel like, if anything, it's just gonna they're going to double down.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah down, yeah it's. It's a big discussion in the shop.
Josh (Magellan):Just quit carrying road and grab stuff well.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So you know, uh, just to bring up a point that that sometimes you know an industrial designer may not think about I bet he does, but maybe not all of them do is when we sell a fifteen thousand dollar road bike and it's got an integrated bar and stem combo and then we go to fit the bike and it needs to be different. The manufacturers have not actually have no have no answer to this other than just buy more stuff.
Josh (Magellan):And that's that's a good. That's a good question, cause we we have on this podcast, we have delved into bike fits, both on road bikes, gravel bikes and mountain bikes, and I actually went and got fitted myself and went through that whole process and it's amazing how much little tweaks can impact your ride.
Julian Richardson:Yeah.
Josh (Magellan):And when the design like limits my ability to adjust the fit of the bike, yeah, that, that's a, that's a, that's a selling point for me.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Big time and and and I am seeing that more often where the bikes are way more adjustable on the mountain side. I'm not seeing it on the roadside. So, like mountain, right now there's a lot of bike companies that are actually including adjustable reach into their designs so they can change the reach numbers. Uh, adjustable wheel bases so they can change the reach numbers, adjustable wheelbases, adjustable leverage ratios, things like that. And on the roadside, like I swear, you can buy a $15,000 road bike and then, when you get it fit to you, they'll have to tell you you need to spend another 500 bucks because that company didn't come up with any answer to the fact that the bike needs to be fit to the person so is that something you guys deal with?
Julian Richardson:you guys thinking about ability to fit a bike to a rider during the design absolutely, and I think the uh, to go to your mountain bike point too, in terms of the tune or the elements that the rider or the consumer can tune on the end. I think we'll see another layer of that in the next couple years too. Um, the you've probably seen it on the downhill world cup, where people are adding extra braces to make bikes like stiffer in the corners. Yeah, yeah, for certain tracks where it's necessary, or take out the brace and make it a bit softer.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Like on the stays.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, I think that's something we'll see kind of at the consumer level, hopefully soon. That's pretty cool.
Julian Richardson:But it feels like there's like a maturing of the audience, Like the whole demographic is becoming more knowledgeable. So, you know, even in terms of geometry and all of these like small tweaks. So you know, flip chip was of geometry and all of these like small tweaks. So, uh, you know, flip chip was the iteration of that five years ago and now we've got reach adjust and in a few years, hopefully, we've got even more like dials to turn. So yeah.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, it is nice to be able to take one bike and kind of help it get to be what the customer needs, rather than requiring the customer to uh change for the bike.
Josh (Magellan):It's an interesting balance, though, because you give me too many dials, I don't know what to do. Like trying to set up my suspension Like I've. I've kind of gone away from like factory and just back to like performance and if I'm talking about Fox products, because like there's just like I'm not sophisticated enough to understand these dials and so just make it good.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):There's a certain level of set and forget. You know where people just set it up and and sometimes all of those adjustments are really so that you can set and forget it. You know like we sell bikes that have multiple bottom bracket, height and head angle adjustments. I don't know a ton of people that go change them on every single ride, depending on the ride. My Rocky has that and I'll change it when I'm doing descending at a bike park and then I'll change it when I'm doing cross country. But that's about it. I don't get into a lot of the other stuff. But what happens is when a customer is buying the bike. If they have some idea of what they want, that bike is more likely to be adaptable to them.
Josh (Magellan):And you guys can set it up from that, and that's a that's a business decision.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So that company has now said, hey, we are making a bike that is more adaptable to the customers, rather than trying to make everybody convinced that our way is the only way. So I I don't know which one's better, because sometimes companies are like, yeah, you just added a bunch of weight and a complexity that didn't need to be there, because our way is better and people just need to get used to it and they'll enjoy it once they do. That's a genuine philosophy that I see. People you know, manufacturers have, you know, so it's two different ways of looking at it.
Julian Richardson:I think there's value there too, in terms of the mindset of the customer too, of the mindset of the customer too. This is getting into my like user-centric design elements too, where there's a bit of an aspiration sometimes when you're looking at a mountain bike and saying, hey, I can make it a cross country bike to go do these trails and I can make it an enduro bike to go do these trails, and the reality is you probably won't but it helps justify the sticker price price.
Josh (Magellan):Right to a certain extent, this can be when you're talking to your wife, this can be five different bikes.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Well, and yeah, I, I do yeah, a lot of people will come in and they're like questions will be real specific, like what's the head angle, you know, and they're they're trying to decide between two bikes of one, that's a 65.2 and one'sa 65.5 head angle, and I'm like just change your rear tire pressure and you'll get. You know what I mean. Like it's little changes, you know. Or you could add 10 millimeters to your fork, or you could. You know, there's all kinds of different ways, but they'll just get so indexed indexed onto those numbers.
Josh (Magellan):You can think pink bike for that, I'm pretty sure.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):It's also. It's also this kind of philosophy of buying something from your couch. You can't talk to somebody and kind of get an idea of what the character of this product is. When you're buying it from a couch, you can just look at the numbers and you can just start analyzing it and cross-referencing and you lose a little bit of that analyzing it and cross-referencing and you lose a little bit of that like yeah, the numbers say this, but it rides like this, you know.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):And so then then, uh, you know, then the bike company reacts because they're like oh, these numbers are the ones that are selling and these aren't. And so now we've got to work on those numbers and they've kind of lose touch with. There is sometimes when you have to hold a customer's hand and bring them to something and show them what they need, and then there's other times when the customer says this is what I want and you have to be able to give them that. So there's two different ways.
Josh (Magellan):So Julian, what are you most excited about relative to mountain bikes in the future?
Julian Richardson:Oh, I'm interested in seeing where, like, multi-material bikes go. Uh, not just aluminum. Uh, I think there's some really cool stuff. Obviously, printed tie is kind of this like oh yeah, unicorn material that we keep on trying to find a price point and a and a use case for. Uh, I think there's going to be kind of this evolution that could happen through that or other, you know, bonding materials and stuff bondings come back into fashion.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I mean it really has yeah, yeah. When aluminum first hit the market in bikes, bonding was the only way I remember the old trek bikes were bonded right yeah and uh, carbon too, and like I don't know what changed to go away from that, do you know? Like I mean, I know Trek had corrosion issues and dissimilar metals. You know they'd have aluminum lugs and carbon tube sets, you know?
Julian Richardson:I think a portion of that was just like. Once you found out how to make the whole bike out of carbon at a cost that could make sense to a customer, they stopped caring about the lugs, yeah yeah, it's true.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, so you think it was just an evolution of like you know, trying to introduce carbon and bringing it in and then figuring out techniques and then making it affordable. Or do you think they I, a lot of people think there's, you know, uh, like some sort of like cabal that everybody talks and they all figure this out, because it's not like they all were like, hey, we'll just slowly ratchet the price up with these and this is how we'll do that, and eventually they'll pay for carbon.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):You know, like yeah exactly it's just technology that slowly comes out, and they learn from the old one.
Julian Richardson:So yeah, yeah, well, and you can see there's phases when they're trying to figure stuff out too. Like you know, early 90s was the crazy time for that, right, yeah, there was a time when specialized was selling the basically the same bike in aluminum, chromo and bonded, yeah, and like a steel soft tail version, like they had just the craziest ump, like range. Uh, you know if, if, I'd be pretty excited if we saw a bit more range come back in terms of materials and approaches well, yeah, there was a whole period where they were trying to stick carbon in the fork in any way they could.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Uh, they had a sid fork that had just carbon windows in it, just little sections that were carbon. It wasn't even the whole thing. And then, you know, the future shock was was basically a judy with carbon legs, you know. And so like uh, yeah, they were just like carbon's awesome. Let's stick it wherever we can. So so are we.
Julian Richardson:It's funny like you're asking about future too, but we're talking about something from 30 years ago. It is so important to pay attention to what we have done in the past because, it's so like cyclical, and everything that we've done in cycling is gonna come back as a trend at some point well, I've already seen neon like, uh, neon, I really want.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Like purple, anodized. Oh wait, it came back. Like all of that stuff came back oh, fanny packs, I want them. Oh wait, they came back mullets.
Josh (Magellan):I was happy to see that you didn't have a mullet uh, yeah, there is some hairstyles that I just can't handle yeah, I was talking about mullet styles, not mullet bikes, but oh, mullet bikes.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, no, I was talking about mullet hairstyles, I know, yeah julian are we in for.
Josh (Magellan):you know I I kind of feel like we're in an evolutionary period in in mountain bike kind of manufacturing design right now, like things are kind of happening slowly and there's and I'm having a hard time envision any revolutions coming. Is there any revolutions coming that you know about, like any major changes that are going to change the game?
Julian Richardson:I mean, there has to be good reason for it, right? Like we look at the last kind of like disruption you know almost what 10 years ago, with one by and boost and like that whole thing and 29ers taking over, like it all kind of happened all at once.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah.
Julian Richardson:I don't know if we're going to see that much in the next couple of years. I think everyone's been real focused on e-bikes.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, so the 36, so there's no 36 are coming in a major way. They exist.
Julian Richardson:I've seen them, but I don't even know if you or I can ride them yeah.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, they're, they're crazy. I I almost bought a medium 36 or like, to fit me. It's like it was two wheels with like a stick in between them, like that's all it was so funny yeah, the day one of those comes through our door, I'm gonna have a hard time making it look good.
Julian Richardson:Yeah, it's a bit of a wagon, uh, so was it jones?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):jones, I think, had a 36 and it was a good looking bike. I think it was a jones.
Josh (Magellan):It's hard to interesting to know, but uh so so we mentioned e-bikes, everything's e-bikes, and like did some. I don't think I've talked about these metrics on the podcast before but, like 2023, at least in the United States, there was 1.7 million mountain bikes sold. 25% of those were e-bikes. And then if you look at the compound adjusted growth rates, like you kind of project out and there's a lot of assumptions in these but if you kind of project out, it's like a 3.7 growth rate for mountain bikes and a 15% growth rate for e-mountain bikes. So what that means is that somewhere around 2035, we're going to sell more e-mountain bikes, then we're going to sell acoustic mountain bikes, or people are going to buy more e-mountain bikes. Are you guys seeing that in the projects that you're working? Is it shifting towards more focus on electric mountain bikes than acoustic mountain bikes?
Julian Richardson:Yeah, absolutely it's. More than half of our projects right now are e-bikes and it's growing every year. I think one of the things we're seeing is a little bit more kind of like parallel development where, uh, the e-bikes are getting a lot lighter as the tech increase, uh like improves. Obviously, these batteries are getting smaller and lighter, as well as the motors getting smaller and lighter and more effective. So we're seeing a little bit more kind of like parity between an acoustic and electric, or an electric version of the same bike or a bike that's meant for the same purpose at least. Yeah, right, so, and we've seen this for a while too, where, uh, you know, down tubes growing on mountain bikes without batteries, yeah, yeah, and they, they, they kind of look. It's like, oh well, if I look at a lightweight e-bike versus just a regular enduro bike, that those down tubes are almost the same yeah, I think we're gonna continue to see those things kind of mesh.
Julian Richardson:Um, it's incredibly expensive, obviously, to develop e-bikes from the ground up every time there's a new technology shift, so I would hope that there's a like for sustainability elements. I hope that, uh, at least there's like some more compatibility considerations there where we're not just kind of throwing these things away, uh, but uh, you know, we're not as focused on the component side of things. We're more working on integrating those things into the bikes we're working on once they're in development or once they're released.
Josh (Magellan):So, oh, interesting, I got to imagine it's like a designer's dream that these things are getting smaller because from an aesthetics perspective, like my Rocky mountain altitude, power play. I love the bike, it rides great.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Yeah, it looks awful, it's like a tank yeah, it's so big, it's just got that big triangle, it's just huge like the tubes are like this big, like a foot around or something's crazy yeah, it's, I had the pivot um shuttle sl, which was one uh, with a fazua motor system in it, one of the most hidden, like people never knew I was on a e-bike, you know you could barely see it because you know with a lot of e-bikes they'll have kind of the the motor is shown, you know, one for cooling purposes and two because it's fairly wide and so they don't bring the carbon down around it, they just let it kind of mount to the underside and so they're a little more obvious. And this fazua system fits so much inside the bike you don't even notice it. And I can't tell you how many times I've been on the trail, like intersection, talking to random people, and they're like, yeah, those e-bikes, blah, blah.
Julian Richardson:And I'm like I have a e-bike and they have no idea, you know, because it's so svelte and so small, you know so yeah, and as, as those parts become more efficient, it's like you, you'll see a lot of those and it'll be unnoticeable, right, yeah?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):well, so I I was watching something the other day and they were talking about cheating and bicycling and they were going through kind of a history at one point in one of the tours long time ago back in the the day someone got caught with a motor no, no, even before that, when they started this program, they were talking about how they were putting lead in the water bottle.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So when you got past a water bottle at the top of a hill, they would pass you a lead filled one and you'd put it in the bike and you use the weight of the water bottle on the descent to gain more speed. And so that's some of the early early, early, but as you go through, this program, you.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):They start going up more to modern time and they talk about motor doping and and and then they put a statistic that I had never seen, that I didn't know because people I remember it coming around and everybody like being concerned about it and they were like, um, what they were doing? Heat cameras to see if there's a motor and as they rode by they could see heat signatures. They put something up that at least four people were caught and fined like $20,000.
Julian Richardson:In like pro races.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):And banned for like six years doing this and I didn't know anyone was actually caught. I thought it was a fear or it know, or it was low level stuff.
Josh (Magellan):Julian, are you guys putting any secret motors in bikes?
Julian Richardson:No, but if you can find the guy who did, maybe we'll hire him, yeah.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):So there was a company that did it and they actually sell the motor system and the bike and it basically goes in your seat tube and it has a worm drive that goes down to a gear that you mount to your spindle or crank and so when you assemble the bike it could go in a regular bike, as long as the bike had the parameters.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):And they got to where they were actually producing their own bikes, probably having some brand make a frame for them, and then they would put the battery in the seat pouch and this was a hidden motor that they were marketing, basically as an assist for people to go on a ride that was unnoticeable and that way people would avoid ridicule or or what have you and I think the the nice way to say that is to help um, you know, help people that are losing their fitness with age or what have you, and they're not keeping up with their group rides, maybe be able to continue to do that. That's a big portion of the e-bikes are people that are just getting to the point where they're not getting out and enjoying themselves as much because their physical limitations, and the e-bike bridges that and makes it longer.
Josh (Magellan):Well, julian man, I really appreciate you talking with us and it's. It's been educational. Unfortunately, you won't tell us any of the bikes that you're working on.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I know, man, I you know, do you guys have like a counselor on hand to help you with?
Dane (The Suspension Guru):that Cause I feel like seriously like I feel like if you made all this cool stuff, you gotta, like you gotta tell somebody. Do you just walk in like every day and tell somebody that else that works there that you made that? Like how, how does that work? Like, how do you release that? You know, that um, energy and that excitement that you just made something cool and maybe you get to see it out there actually doing well, like what I? I can imagine that's a drawback, you know.
Julian Richardson:Oh, it's, it's challenging, for sure, but uh, you know, we've got our group chat teams where you know everyone lights up when we see something launch. Uh, that we've, we've worked on and it's, it's always exciting. Now can you tell your? That's like a gratification. Hopefully, for most of us overweighs the, the the need for us to say anything. So it's.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Can you tell your significant others, or do you have to keep it from them?
Julian Richardson:And I'm saying that as a joke, I'm saying that as a joke, but then I'm, it's occurring to me.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):is it's actually a real question?
Julian Richardson:The thing is, I don't know if my wife would know the brands that I'm working for.
Josh (Magellan):Yeah, my wife doesn't know what a fork is on a bike I'm like it's the, it's the part that I work on like it's how we pay the bills. Julian, do you got any final thoughts for our listeners?
Julian Richardson:uh, no, I mean, I think it was really nice chatting with you guys. It's always nice chatting with other industry people and you know, uh, I invite you guys up to come say hi whenever you guys have a chance, because it is really cool to to see how everything's done. And, uh, you know you might see some secrets. I hopefully not.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I I'm down I'm down with I. I've gotten really good at signing ndas, so yeah, there you go when we're doing the when we're finalizing the.
Josh (Magellan):You know the the terms of the deal for faction bike studio south. We'll come up to quebec and we can see you guys up there fbt faction bikes, tucson so I I'm telling you, man, I already know where you're gonna ride.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):Like we just need to find the place that's closest to the trails that you want to use the most, so you don't have to drive there.
Julian Richardson:So yeah, yeah, that's the ideal is that you're right there at the trailhead, right I you know shimano has been in town uh doing uh products so we can get shimano here and get faction here, but I mean already all these other companies.
Dane (The Suspension Guru):I'm just. I'm not trying to make him feel bad or like they're behind the times I'm just saying, there's all these other companies that come here, so many engineers, yeah there's all this other companies that have decided this is a good idea. If his bosses wanted to kind of keep up with everybody else, they may consider it I can't.
Julian Richardson:Imagine four months a year. More testing is you know, it's a business benefit. That is a huge business benefit.
Josh (Magellan):I'll do the strategic assessment for you, if you want thank you very much, for sure, julian. Thanks a lot, man. We really appreciate your time, yeah cool thanks guys, thanks man.
Julian Richardson:Thank you.
