Mountain Cog
Mountain bike podcast that will make you laugh and learn. Featuring a wide range of passionate guests. Available everywhere (Apple, Spotify etc).
Mountain Cog
100 - Beyond Marketing: Vittoria’s Approach to Mountain Bike Tire Design & Manufacturing (Guest: Ken Avery, SVP Product Development)
In this in-depth episode of the MTNCOG Podcast, we dive into the science behind mountain bike tire design with Ken Avery, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Vittoria. Ken breaks down the complex process of tire manufacturing, from the initial casing construction using nylon or cotton materials to the vulcanization process where the tread is applied. He explains how Vittoria's innovative use of graphene technology creates tires that both roll faster and grip better than competitors, challenging common misconceptions about tire compounds and performance.
The conversation explores Vittoria's progressive sipe technology for improved cornering grip, their very unique approach to TPI (threads per inch) in their award-winning XC race tires, and their comprehensive lineup of Airliner tire inserts. Ken shares insights on how different casings perform in various terrain types, from sharp volcanic rock to loose conditions, and offers his perspective on current industry trends. This episode provides mountain bikers of all disciplines with valuable knowledge about selecting the optimal tire setup for their specific riding style, terrain, and bike type.
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I think it's the end of the day, like being tired or something. But it could be what happened earlier today, like it was really weird. I asked one of the guys at the shop to, you know, hand me a Diet Pepsi, and he threw it at me Seriously yeah. You know, I didn't see him throw it and it hit me in the head and so maybe I'm a little out of it.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):I mean did it hurt.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, it's the surprising part it didn't hurt. Uh, do you know why?
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Why didn't it hurt?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Cause it was a soft drink.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):That's not good man.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):All right, that was as good as the last one.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):That's good, that's good. Okay, I'll give it to you. That's the dad joke, if anyone didn't get that nobody threw a.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):No soft drinks were harmed in the making of this podcast. Yeah, for sure.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Hey, so it's a Thursday night on the MCP and we are Joe, joined with the honorable Mr Ken Avery, who senior vice president of product development. Do I have that right?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Is that still your title? It is yeah, yep, it is. I usually just tell people I draw pictures and talk about it. But yeah, that's technically my title.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):That's awesome and you've been in that role since. Like I think I saw a bicycle retailer announcement in 2015. Yeah so.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I used to also do North American marketing, but a couple of years ago it was kind of it was a bit much. Yeah, I moved to a global role just doing product. We brought in some, some North American marketing team. They've been doing a great job. So, yeah, for me it's it's mostly product and doing some of this stuff now.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, yeah, a little promotion.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Yeah, there's lots and lots of great podcasts out there. If you search on Ken's name, you'll see him. Gmbn has a great YouTube video that has the Victoria Bike Park and your testing facility I think it's outside of Milan, so we'll put some links in the show notes to those episodes and if you haven't watched that video, it's super cool. It's a little insider information on how you guys do testing and it was surprising actually for me.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I didn video it's super cool.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):It's a little insider information on how you guys do testing and it was surprising actually for me. I didn't realize it was that involved.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Well, so I liked it because there's a bike park at the facility, like they're out there riding, riding what drops, jumps, you know, they have like rock gardens, all kinds of stuff. It was kind of cool At the shop where, you know, we, we really really mainly carry two brands, maxis and Vittoria, and Vittoria is like my favorite for a lot of reasons, I don't know, um, but uh, it's funny cause I do run into people at the shop that don't know what Vittoria is and I find it frustrating cause I think they've been around a lot, but 70 years, yeah, can I give you a little, a little, um little trivia that maybe people don't know is they used to be on the mountain bike side under a different name.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Oh, is that true? What was the name, ken? It was called gx. Okay, thank you for pronouncing it. I've had gx tires. I didn't know that was the same.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):See, that's what I'm talking about. That happens all the time. So, yeah, and um, it's so funny because I waited for you to pronounce it, because it gets pronounced Geeks. All kinds of stuff. Yeah, like we got, oh God, yeah, we've heard it all yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, yeah, you get that awkward moment where, like when you forget someone's name and you're trying to have them introduce themselves, yeah, yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You want them to say it Exactly? Yeah, no, I could. I could hear it coming. So, um, yeah, it was it's pronounced gx and uh, it was. Basically, it used to be vittoria's mountain bike line. We folded that in technically for the 2015 season. Uh, I've been working under vittoria umbrella since about 2012, yeah, in fact. Uh, I have actually some funny stories about gx, um, when we get into that. But, yeah, no, that's the quick version yeah, that's so.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So once I say that, people will recognize them. What was the tire that I loved? There's uh, man, I can't remember big block tire, it's no, it's like a saguaro probably no, the saguaro was huge.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):The so, so, so where you guys are, yeah, so so we call it saguaro.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):But uh, saguaro is totally acceptable, just like if you say that's like yeah, it totally is just like prescott or prescott yeah, exactly, yeah so but uh, yeah, I can't remember.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Uh, goma, that's the first tire I ever did yeah, oh did you do that tire, yeah I did that one for gx right when we first came in and it was sort of the last gx tire actually yeah, that, that's the one that got me hooked honestly, uh, because at the time we were doing 26s, this is a while ago 2015.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, and it was um 20, 2012, like I can't remember. The 2-4 goma was huge, like it was just bigger than everybody else's. Yeah, and as a big hit rider, I always wanted the biggest tires I could get.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):They were really good tires, so so, ken, um, one of the things that I've heard you do very well and I think would be beneficial for us as well, and I'm sorry to ask you to repeat yourself, but you give a really good overview of, like, how a mountain bike tire is constructed and the case and the tread and all that and everything that goes into it. Maybe you could take our, our listeners, through that real quick, just to to, to, yeah, I mean, and this could be.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):This could be a podcast in and of itself. If you want to dive super deep on this, there are a series of white papers that I did on the Vittoria website, vittoriacom, so go check that out in the Vittoria world section. Basically consider a tire as really a few different components. There's going to be the casing construction itself, which is like the carcass, which is typically nylon or cotton in most tires In mountain bike tires it's almost exclusively nylon. There's going to be the bead, of course, which hooks onto your rim. There's going to be the tread design itself and then the compound. So for the most part onto your rim there's going to be the tread design itself and then the compound. So for the most part, like I said, it's going to be nylon material and that material is typically measured in what's called TPI, which is threads per inch. So you basically have a cord structure and if you can imagine how many of those cords fit in a given inch, that can kind of tell you a bit about how thick that cord is. So the idea is the higher number on the TPI the thinner the cord, which means that it's more flexible, I mean. Of course. Also it's not going to be quite as robust in that way. So there's always sort of like a give and take on that. Now, of course, you're going to have the beads that are going to go, you know, around your rim and they're going to sit on that bead seat on your rim. Now there's hookless and and and hooked rims and all that stuff. But, regardless, a tire, whether it's hookless or not, we'll always have a bead. Now, a hookless bead has to have certain, um you know, attributes which which make it hookless compatible, uh the same, with tubeless. In fact. Uh, you have to have a certain attributes with that bead which enable it to, you know, withstand kind of just the demands of having a tire that does not have an inner tube in it, right? So those beads are typically made out of some sort of an aramid fiber or metal or like what's known as, typically like a rigid bead or a wire bead, right? So historically it was just very easy to throw like a wire in there. But you know, with all this other technology that came out, aramid, which is commercially known as Kevlar, suits that well, simply because it is very stable in terms of being not stretchy, essentially, right, so your tire is not going to kind of like pop off because of the beads.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Typically, if things are designed well and pressures are respected, the casing material goes around that bead.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):It goes up and around around the other bead and then back up in the middle and overlaps itself and then typically the tread is vulcanized onto that structure.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So when the tire is being made, there's a machine that is cleverly called the tire building machine TVM for short and it basically resembles sort of like a rolling barrel that a person would sit in front of, and so they can basically put the material onto this rolling barrel and it rolls around, overlaps itself, and then they stop, they put the beads on those, roll around and then stop and then they cut those.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Then there's a sort of a button they hit where the mechanism closes that bead within the casing structure and then they put what's known as the green compound, which is the compound pre -vulcanization, around that tire and then that sort of green structure then goes into the mold for vulcanization. And when that happens, you know there's a few different ways to do that, but a common way is some sort of like a steam bladder that pushes up into kind of like the underside of the mold, sort of like a female mold, if you will, and yeah, that gets held there for a few minutes and then the clamshell opens and the steam is released and the tire pops out. In order to do that, of course, you have to have the compound formulation and a tread design that's going to be compelling for the type of terrain that you're trying to conquer. So that is, I would say, the super quick way to talk about how tires are typically constructed, but that's going to open a can of worms, I know, in a few different ways.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I have so many questions right now.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, so hit me with it.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):One quick question no-transcript. That's actually not what happens. Okay, those are actually vent holes.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Okay, um, if you can imagine you ride your tire I know in arizona you don't have like a lot of mud, yeah, but like if you, if you were to ride your tire through mud, right, and you have like a footprint of the tire on the ground, that's sort of like what the mold looks like on the inside. Okay, okay, yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):But it's made out of metal and then so the rubber is actually just a strip, a solid slab, a strip of rubber, that's, you know, a certain dimension, given how wide the tire is and given how deep the tread is going to be, and each tread has a different dimension. For that little slab of rubber that goes in the center of that green tire, that, that is typically, that slab of rubber, is typically extruded and then and then cut on that tire building machine.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So like Play-Doh, so it kind of wraps around and then they literally cut the rubber. So is it like sorry, I keep interrupting. So I'm wrapping my head. So is it like a piece of Play-Doh rather than a liquid?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I would say it resembles a piece of Play-Doh more than anything.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, okay, basically they cut it so that you know the seam is butting up against each other, right, and I realized that it's going to be vulcanized so it all melts together, okay, so it's not as if you see that seam or anything, yeah, and then that gets pushed up into that that mold that we were talking about.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):That kind of looks like a footprint of the tire and in doing so, you know, that dimensional kind of piece of that slab that we put down is really so that we don't have sort of any sort of an overflow or waste or things like this. And so you can imagine, you know, a tread that has like a, say, a seven mil deep tread block versus like a super fast gravel tire that has like a three millimeter tread block or something like that. You know you wouldn't want to waste the difference in the rubber if it was sort of just like a standard thing, right. So for that reason they're specific for the model that your truck produce. And yeah, that's really about it. Other than that, while it's on the tire building machine you'll also throw on the hot patches, which are basically just the logos on the tire, but in the biz those are called hot patches.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Nice. How long does the vulcanization process take? Roughly.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, it's going to depend on the dimensions of the tire, right? If it's like a bigger tire, there's more material. It's going to take a little longer, but yeah it's usually only a few minutes.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Okay, you know that said, do the math. You can only make so many per day per machine, right? So when you do this on scale, you typically say you know your most popular SKUs meaning model and also size will have dedicated molds lined up and you might do like a you know a huge batch of those that way, whereas if you have a tire that's maybe more of like a specialist type use, say like a downhill mud tire, right, like you're going to sell some of those but they're not going to be as popular as like sort of like a mixed terrain, cross country tire, for instance. You know what I mean, so you know you'll have less molds for a tire like that.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):That's crazy. I I love that because I you know. You hear vulcanization, you hear all of this stuff, the bead, you know Kevlar Aramid, all of these terms I've heard for years and years and years. But I can totally with their carcasses tearing, which gives you like a wobble in the tire, and I've not seen that with a Vittoria. Do you know what causes that?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, that can be cheap materials. It could be a molding defect. It can be sort of like you overcooked it. Yeah, I mean tolerances, right, and, to be honest with you, I've never seen it happen on a tire that's come out of our factory.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, I haven't either. I've seen it with other brands I have too, there's one brand that we won't carry in the shop anymore because of the trauma it inflicted on me as a dealer, and then the other brand is so popular we have to carry them, you know, right.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):But it's been an issue and one of the reasons, I think foot at least where we're at, because we have lots of square-edge bumps and lots of hard-hit square-edge bumps. I think one of the reasons that a lot of the riders that come to our shop end up sticking with Vittoria's because that doesn't seem to happen.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So yeah, it's. When it's put together in a super high quality process with tight tolerances, ultimately it benefits the rider right? I mean, there are cheaper options, of course, but there's not going to be anything that's higher quality. I used to work for another tire brand and you know, I came to Vittoria because originally, a buddy of mine wanted to start a tire brand and he approached me about it and my time at Maxxis had just ended, and so he was trying to scoop, you know, and let's do something, and whatever.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):And I said you know if my name's going to be on this.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I just want it to come out of the Vittoria factory. And I gave him a call and they said why don't you just work for us instead? And so here I am, 14 years later. Yeah, that's been fun.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):So, ken, if we stay on that tech theme, just I won't go too deep, but do you guys use synthetic or natural rubber or both, and why?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, both. You know they have different properties. If you were to make a tire only out of natural rubber, it would crack. You know there's different, you know types of synthetic rubbers and things like this that get put in, and just different additives to make sure that the rubber is stable and elastic and consistent, temperature stable and all these things. Because at the end of the day you don't want to be thinking about all of these things when you're basically just holding on for dear life, you know, and having fun doing it. But I mean at the same time, like there's consequence, right, and so, um, you don't want that um rubber to also not vulcanize. Well, because if that tire you know tread were to peel off, you know other other issues. So, yeah, I mean we do use a mix.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Uh, we produce in Thailand, uh, because there's a vast supply of natural uh materials there. I live in New Hampshire and there's a lot of syrup that comes out of New Hampshire.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):We love maple syrup. I always joke that in Thailand, rubber comes out of trees like it's maple syrup, and so there's farms for this and it's a great place for those resources, wow.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):That's awesome. You have graphene integrated into your products and that seems to be a big part of your your design process. Um, maybe tell our listeners a little bit about what graphene is and like why you use it. What? What does it do to help make your tires so good?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Sure it's. It's very much more about what it does for you as a rider. We first launched Graphene years ago. I remember the internal team we were talking about how do we communicate this? The cool thing is, first and foremost, you can Google Graphene. We literally tell you our secret ingredient. A lot of other brands have these buzzwords and marketing and stuff. When we first launched, people were accusing us oh, this is just a marketing thing, and I was like dude, you can literally Google it.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So yeah, it's basically like it's such a thin substance that it's known as two dimensional. In fact it's stronger than steel, it's. There's all these these great things about graphene, but again, as I was saying, it's really about what it does for you guys. So if you would imagine sort of like looking at a structure, a structure of a material under, say, like a microscope, and there was like a lattice structure and this graphene can kind of fill in those voids and it changes the elastomeric properties of the rubber, do you ever have a tire chunk out where, like it doesn't like it doesn't like wear down from the surface to the casing, like chunks come out of it? You know what I mean. That's, you know a rubber that is not going to be, you know, in terms of strong right, but at the same time, typically people when they see that, they say, oh, it's because it's a soft compound, which is actually wrong. A soft compound is just, you know, it's a low durometer, right, it's something where you can make a soft compound still be quite stable and, yeah sure, like, eventually, if you make it so soft, then it's, you know, abrasion will become a factor.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):But I mean in terms of Dane, where it's put, as I say you know, like on the tire, graphene has had tremendous advantages with this. Elastomerically, it helps the tire roll faster. Our tires roll super fast, even the more aggressive tires. If you were to compare a similar tire from another company, our tires are, you know, arguably going to be the faster tire almost every time. And that's not because, oh, it's a harder compound and whatever. It's actually not, because oftentimes our compounds actually softer.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So think about this road tires use a super high TPI we talked about that a minute ago and you want that tire to be really flexible. Imagine sort of like the casing. Then being flexible is sort of as if the casing is also soft, like you know, you push your finger into it and the casing moves away, kind of like a soft compound does the same thing when you put your finger into it. But for some reason people have this idea in their head like, oh, if it rolls fast it must be a harder compound, it's. You know, I need the tire to hook up. I don't care, I just want it to hook up, so I'm cool with it rolling slower. In reality you can have both. You can have a tire that hooks up if it's done properly.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Two things I want to talk about. Go for it. Um so tpi? Uh, sure, in the, your road tires are phenomenal and probably the best in the world. Uh, and we always focus when we're talking about road tires, a higher tpi is more desired. Um, is that the same in mountain or is it the opposite?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):so it's it depends neither. Yeah, you know I think you're starting to expect these kinds of answers from me. Sorry about that, that's okay, that's okay, pretty much, yeah, I mean you know we want to make it as clear as we can for riders and so I'm going to give you the technical version, that I'm going to give you the simple version, Thank you. So if you consider, you know, road tires, they're getting larger. I mean, you know, you know a 30 C road tires, normal now you know, used to be.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):It's crazy 23 is not that long ago.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):You know what I mean. So gravel, like a small gravel, is 50 now. Right. Everybody wants more Right.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You know. So consider that a road tire has a pretty thin tread, meaning that, like if you were to cut the tire right and you were to look at it in cross-section yeah right, like the tread is is quite thin and and the casing is extremely thin, of course. Now there's a few things here.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You know you're riding on a controlled surface for the most part. Yeah, sure, there's cracks in the road and, yeah, you might try to like venture off into, like, maybe, a dirt road, for the most part road, people are riding on a paved road, pretty, pretty consistent surface, right, yeah, you can get away with these things. Um, and and the purpose of the tread and the casing being so thin, aside from lightweight and whatever is that, imagine this every time the tire, a certain little portion of the tire, rolls underneath you right, hits the ground, uh, the tire deforms, right, squishes down at the contact patch. If you sit on your bike and you look down at the contact patch, it's going to be squished down where the rest of the tire is, like a normal shape, right, yeah, so that little deformation, right, every time that little piece goes underneath you is is energy loss, right I? I mean, it's basically the, the casing is is fighting this, um, and it's providing sort of a pneumatic tire provides a bit of suspension. Pneumatic tire just meaning any tire that has air in it, right, yeah, if you make the tire casing and construction more flexible, uh, you can make use of the volume of the tire and it'll roll faster.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So in an exaggerated case, I know we're talking about road tires here, but check this out Like in an exaggerated case. Think about track cycling. Okay, right, like you have a polished wood track. There are like no imperfections in that thing. Right, you're not talking about pebbles and cracks and stuff. Yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Right. Especially roads in New Hampshire, where I live, are like horrible this time of year. They're just kind of putting them back together from the winter. Despite that track, tires are like. You know. It's all about this rolling resistance right and reducing that rolling resistance. And so people say to me, how do you even do that on a wooden track? And it's all about that little deformation of the contact patch. Yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):All that said, consider the ratio of the tread thickness to the casing thickness. Okay, and that flexibility right. A road tire, the entire thing is going to be really flexible, including the tread. But then scale that up to a mountain bike tire Disproportionately, the tread gets deeper in a mountain bike tire.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Okay, so it's a lot thicker Okay.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, that tread cap on a mountain bike tire is going to be a lot thicker proportionally than say a road tire is right so, especially for a given cross-section width, right. So, like you're talking about say, you know whatever, call it seven millimeters for, like a, you know, an enduro tire yeah and yet the casings, uh, I mean, yeah, they get thicker than a road tire does. Of course you know, but you're talking about traditionally, a mountain bike tire is going to be 120 or maybe 60 TPI, something like that.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, those are the two numbers. Get thrown around.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Right, and, and, and they throw it around as if it's just all the same stuff. Yes, and I'm going to get into that in a minute. You know, and, and people assume, oh, higher, higher numbers, better and whatever, because this is kind of um, we launched a tire called a peyote last year. Yeah, we also launched a mezcal in this new cross country race casing. So the peyote and the mezcal we launched on last year came in this new cross country race casing. Now, this cross country race casing came about through testing with our athletes, which you know.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You alluded to our testing park earlier, which is awesome. That's one of the ways we do this. We have Victoria labsoria labs. We have one in Italy and one in Thailand. We have the Vittoria park, which is in Italy, which is like a control, test environment, test track. I would love to talk about more of that in a minute, but, in terms of this, the other place we test with is just on the race course. Yeah, this Mezcal in the new XC race case in construction. I'm going to tell you what the magic is in that in a minute, because I think you're going to be surprised. That won three world championships before we launched it.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Oh, wow, so it was pretty well proven, yeah. And so everybody's like, wow, man, how is that casing faster? That's got to be like you know another brand is doing like way higher than 120 off road right yeah. Yours must be even higher, because we make road tires that are 330 tpi cotton, right, yeah? So people were speculating like, wow, what is that? What's that magic dude? It's 60, that's what I thought yeah, I swear I.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I feel like the best performing tires have a lower tpi in mountain, but in road it's the opposite, and I don't know why you know so so what we learned was uh, a 120 tpi tire in mountain bike is sort of common, okay, um, and and that's fine. But you know where you guys live. You have two things you have cacti and you have very abrasive stone.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yes, yes, right, and so both of those things are really tough on a high TPI casing off road, right, yeah. The other thing that happens, though, if you ride a 120 TPI tire or higher off road with a let's call it a normal mountain bike tread, right, like you know, say, five mil deep mountain bike tread, right, yeah, you know how people, everybody's going tubeless, of course, of course, not a new thing, yeah, uh, and you do that partially so you can run lower pressure yes so and I have opinions on that the tire gets waggy, right, it does this.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, the tread cap wags back and forth when you hit a square edge bump, the tread actually doesn't deform first, the side sidewall does. Watch this. Do this on a tire with like a real mountain bike tread and like a 120 or higher TPI casing, with no sidewall protection or no sidewall inserts or anything like that, just a pure 120 casing, right? You'll be surprised. So what we did was we softened the tread as much as we could within reason for a cross-country application, and then what we did was we made the rest of the carcass more robust by using a 60 TPI. Now, it doesn't have any other sidewall insert to protect or anything like this.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Because, again, this is the XE race version, right, it's kind of just simple. And it's simple by design, because what we wanted to do was have the casing and the tread and the entire tire together to form in a uniform way. Okay, right, and what that does is make use of the volume. So now these tires are 2.4 width. You know, for cross-country, that's historically on the large side, right, but it's great because you have more sidewall, you have more volume to deform, right?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So that's actually a really good thing, and it was crazy because we didn't tell the athletes what we did. We just said you have option A, b, c and D, and A, b and C were 120 based constructions and D version D was the 60. And universally, everybody was like I don't know what that is, but it's faster and I want it, and, and so we we brought that to production. And the great thing is, last week, at Sea Otter Classic 2025, we launched the full line of XC race tires. So now you can get that in a Torino, in a Peyote, in a, a mezcal, in a Barzo, and there's another one coming this fall You're going to hear about, oh goody.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Cause I love the mezcal. What I want is a. I like the agaro, I want like I want a little brother to the agaro. That's what I want.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Have you tried a Sierra?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, they're a little too wide for me. I like the knobs a little closer together. We're so we're you mean spacing wise because you live in a dry climate super hard like kitty litter so you know what is it loose over hard is what the term is but yeah, we call it kitty litter because it's like concrete with kitty litter on it and so you don't, you don't need a deep tread, but you definitely want to tread that.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So for me I'm a corner and I'm a downhiller, so even on my cross-country bike I lean real deep, you know, and so I want really supportive side knobs. I've never really been annoyed with like some people talk about round versus squared off and stuff. It doesn't bug me too much.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):But if the side knobs don't support, I get real squirrely in the corners and I don't care that so but I mean and there's a lot that goes into that too I mean, um, you know, and again we could do an entire another call and just yeah, design yeah trend theory, but one of the things that you'll see, like particularly on a martello or a maza, but on the agaro as well, is you'll see three sipes, uh-huh, uh, that are parallel. Yes, um, like the face of the knob. Martello was the first tire we ever did with this.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, I've won a lot of races on that tire.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, we call this progressive site with, okay, and so imagine this this is another like tread nerd thing. Okay, but hey, that's what you brought me here for. So, so basically the idea is a site is just like an engineered groove right, it's just like a little cut in the top of the knob. Yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):And it's usually captured, meaning that it doesn't go all the way off the edge. It's sort of like, you know, just like sort of in the middle. There's like a straight line, right. What we've done is done a small, medium and large site in a row and the idea is that the larger site has more air in it Right, so like it can collapse more. So that basically means that it's going to be essentially softer on the edge Right. Then you know that gets progressively, you know less soft Right, so you have an asymmetrical flex laterally. So if you can imagine, you're doing all the cornering work on that effective edge, the inside effective edge of your side knob, well, the largest type is going to be right there, yeah, and then they get thinner as they go out towards the side.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So if you were to take pretty much any Vittoria tire and you push on the inside effective edge, like the cornering edge of that side knob, it will accordion shut, it will not flop over. And so, like you know how, like some tires, especially where you guys are like cause you have like crazy grip and then you don't. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yes, so like that's often because you have an edge that's holding and then it, and then it lets go because it overcomes Right. So by offering that sort of like accordion, progressive flex, uh, that progressive site with gives you that feeling and it's more communicative. So, like you basically at the edge, you'll hear it start making noise before it just snap under steers. It's actually something that is so simple to do, but it's become like a trademark for Vittoria and you know, for whatever reason, you don't see it oftentimes in other places in any sort of consistency. So it's become really one of our big tread design trademarks.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, martello's probably the most winning tire for our team. And then the Mazda is. We started integrating that into the front tire.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):We don't do usually that as much in the rear, I'm not sure why, uh yeah, I mean so maza martello, super popular combo, yeah, and I mean, and that's really for like, and both of those tires work really well in like a mix of terrain, yep, so I mean you can ride that in like greasy north shore stuff, yeah, um, and you can ride that in the desert and it works okay, so I so I um so.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):so Josh does a lot of research and gets like all these questions, so you got to make sure that I stay on that.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):You don't have to.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Okay, all right, I got I. Okay, then I have another one. So, uh, there's been some changes. Um, there's. There's two questions that I have. One is a lot of people are pushing like an e-bike rated tire. Sure, but I'm getting mixed reviews on what that is, and so, yeah, so what is an e-bike tire compared to an analog tire?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Well, and I'm going to say this in a way, that's, I hope it's. I hope you don't take offense, but it sounds like the Enduro casing and the e-bike casing are the same tire with just two different hop patches.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah. So these are all great questions and you're not really wrong about any of it. It's funny in the early days of e-bike, when we started making e-bike tires, we actually had like say, you mentioned the Agaro earlier, we had like an e-Agaro, we had an e-Barzo. Those were the same construction with it of a hop patch, because people, dealers and and OEMs and OEM is basically just a bike brand that wants to put, you know, our tires on their bike they were asking for something that said e-bike I mean people, you can buy e-bike grips right now, which is like hilarious to me.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I think they have e-bike shirts.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, I'm not, I'm not kidding I think they do, but the thing about it was is that for us it wasn't a gimmick.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):We weren't trying to fool anybody. The truth of that is that our standard tire was made in such a quality way with materials that passed the e-bike standard so we could literally just slap a label on it for the people who needed the label for whatever reason, and that was fine. So it got a little cumbersome and you as a dealer can appreciate this. You know you want to put the least amount of skews on your wall that are going to hit the most amount of customers, right? So it's the kind of thing where you know, having a separate category, people would contact us all the time.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Can I run the e-bike tire on my regular bike? You know stuff like that, and so what we've done is we've collapsed that down into our normal product line and now we are introducing e-bike ready, so much like tubeless ready. You can use a tubeless ready tire with an inner tube or without a tube. You can use anything that's e-bike ready on an e-bike if you want it's and it withstands the. You knows all of the ETRTO norms to get you that designation and certifications and all that, or you can obviously run it as a regular tire, which is the point. So it should be a lot more streamlined. Moving forward, to answer your question, yeah, there are certain load requirements that are needed to call a tire e-bike ready, and particularly regarding power and speed of the bike, it's going to be going on. So there's a couple different nations there, but the great thing is that with any Vittoria product you don't have to worry about it because we develop everything per ETRTO standards. Most people are going to say what the heck is ETRTO?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):And including you guys. Probably right little bit. Yeah, I've seen it. I haven't dove into it, but european tread, I don't know, I'm just making stuff up no, I love it.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I start making up you know, things sometimes mess with people, but no, basically, uh, etrto is european um tire and room technical organization. Okay, um, you know, it basically is a consortium of tire industry. People like myself. I sit, uh you know, on that committee, uh, representing vittoria, along with um ameliano, who's our global director of product. He's sort of like my brother in Italy, basically, you know. So we sit on in this committee and also I got to give a big shout out to my, my, my other co worker, tommaso, who's also spent a lot of time in the ETR to meetings. So you know, we have all spent time in there voicing our concerns for the industry and it goes everything from rim wall height to rim width, compatibility and I mean that's changed a lot in the last 10 years to e-bike tires and load ratings and everything, all these things. So all of that gets discussed in there, along with people like myself from the other brands which belong to.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):ETRTO. And so you guys all kind of agree on.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Uh, this is the set of standards. Yeah, so that's yeah, really yeah, it's, it's.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):It's a good thing because at the end of the day, like um, it's an industry standard yeah whether you work for us or for any of the other big brands. Not all the big brands are in there, by the way you know yeah um, but you know it's, if you see like um, uh, sometimes on packaging, you'll see like a designation that looks weird. You'll see like 60-622 as an example. Yeah, so 622. Is the the actually 700c or er?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):29er, that's not measured at the bead seat.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, um, and then 60 is just the 60 millimeter cross-section width. Yeah, so, um, you know, you'll see that, and people are like what the heck is that? And it's, sometimes it's known as the French size, but basically it's. You know, that's what you'll see on any of the big brands. You'll see, you'll see. The second size, which you know indicates what the cross section width should measure, given a design rim width which then also is aligned with that width of tire. So, for every width of tire, there's a designated design room with, and there's sort of a sliding scale above and below that, which is is typically compatible within reason.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So when, when I see five, 59, if I remember that was 26, I is right is that what we're talking about?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):that's probably four there's there's like a you know every, every size is gonna have a bt diameter like that.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, I mean, and and that became important with us when we were doing a lot of schwinn tires. You know you would get these weird right so the schwinn size is a totally unique one, and we had to go essentially like a
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):yeah what was it like a 27?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):They would say it was a 27, but it wasn't an actual 27, but it right, that's what they called it. And or a 26 by one and a three core. Anytime you see a fraction on a tire runaway.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Um, but yeah, one in three because the rims would actually be different sizes, but they would both say 27 or 26. And we would have customers come in and they've somehow stretched these things on to the wrong rim and they wouldn't. They wouldn't get them off and we'd have to cut them off a brand new tire. Cut it off Cause they had bought the wrong one and so we were using that second number. So like six, two, two we were using I can't remember them all, but but that's the number we would find on the rim. Luckily, they would put it on the rim a lot of times, and then you would then go find the tire with that matching number and you at least knew the bead would work. You know, maybe the width was different, but the bead would work.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):But that's the beauty of having a person like you in a shop like yours. Yeah, that's true. To be honest, you know people. You know oftentimes people can be intimidated going to a bike shop these days or whatever but you know there is no better resource, uh, than a person like you in that shop and and we are so grateful that you are a Vittoria dealer for that reason, you know.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I often tell people that, uh, my knowledge is just past trauma, so that's what it is. I just learned from my mistakes, so okay, Josh has got a question.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):No, I can. My day job. I'm a corporate strategist for a defense industry and so I got to get into a little bit of sales stuff, and if I ask anything you're uncomfortable with, just let me know.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Sure, but first do we have a safe word.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):We have a safe word. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Say Saguaro yeah.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Saguaro, that would be awesome. First, I was interested. The percentage of your sales. Well, let me start here. How much of the popularity of a tire is tied to a trend we were talking before the podcast about some trendy things versus the actual performance of the tire huh, it's going to be uh.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So this is again. This is another kind of curveball answer for you, but basically I'm not trying to be difficult what I'm trying to do is give you real world kind of perspective.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah sure, at the leading edge of the launch, it will be disproportionately tied to a trend, okay at at sort of. After that first year or two, maybe it will be entirely tied to the performance of the tread. And so, uh, you know, there are, there are occasions where you'll see trends, be it size or use or whatever. When we launched the Sierra, it was like our downcountry tire, because that was a buzzword at the time. In reality, that tire won gear of the year award and has been popular, you know. So it's not just pigeonholed as, like, a downcountry tire anymore. Yeah, I mean, it sits between our most aggressive cross-country tire and our trail category in our spectrum. But at the same time that's typically how it goes right You're meeting demand by launching a new product one way or another and in meeting that demand, that demand, inherently, if it's a new product, it's going to be at least associated with some sort of a trend, right?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So, uh, that's the reason that it's a new product and one that hasn't already existed. But the true test is actually how it does, sort of like second, third year, you know, if you look at a tire, like you brought up the agar earlier, which is such a great tire for your area. Yeah, you know it's funny that tire launched it got gear of the year. It was a trail category product that was supposed to be sort of like not quite an enduro tire, yeah, but very much more than an xc tire. It's, it's. I always say that tire is basically just like you want to go mountain biking yeah, throw our cars on your bike.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yep, you can basically do anything. Yeah, I have. I have like testers. We have product testers all over the world. I have a couple buddies, one guy named dave coleman hello that I. I mentioned him on the show, nice um you gotta tell him to listen you gotta tell him to listen.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, I'll believe you, I will.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Okay, all right he'll share this now that I said his name, uh, he'll throw like an agaro in front of mezcal and back sometimes in bentonville, just because it's like sharp rocks and he wants to be able to like lean his bike over, yeah, um, so it really depends on the intended use and kind of what you're trying to get out of it. But you know, for that reason that Garo, at first it was very much a trail tire and it's kind of like as it's kind of been tried through the years, because that tire was launched in 2019. You know, it's become something where, you know, xc trends have then gotten more aggressive and larger, so it actually aligned better with this existing product in a way. So it's interesting how that starts right. It starts with a trend, but then it kind of goes in terms of longevity if the product has merit.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Man Like the, the trend gets you the initial invitation and then the performance gets you re-invited to the party.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I have one that I think was a trend and it's I don't think it's in your lineup anymore, and I I think because the trend went away, which was the Bambaloni Bamba.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So Bambaloni, yeah, so that was a felt like tire actually, yeah, bambaloni literally means like donut in Italian, which is awesome, yeah, and when we launched that, we actually served like Italian donuts at Seattle classic one year. It was super fun, nice. But yeah, I mean, you, you know, we're just not. Uh, we, we did some fat bike tires because, again, it was, it was a trend and it was something that I mean, listen, fat bikes are still super popular. I'm not going to say that that trend is over, yeah, but for us it didn't align with, necessarily, like, our brand goals and where we wanted to take it. So, um, you know, we did it for a few years because we partnered with some, some oems, whos, who, who needed it, and you know that that was one that that we happened to not make anymore.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):But most of the tires that we've done that have been hits. Obviously we've kept, I mean, you know, you look at something like Barzo and Mezcal. I mean, those tires are a few years old now, you know, and they're still winning world championships. Both have won multiple world championships. So I mean, mean, um, you know, when you have those kind of like accolades and really it's validation is what it comes down to, right, and validation, sure, at the highest level, but it's just validation that that tire does what it's supposed to do at the highest level and this is a key thing. Within the intended use, yeah, um, and then that consumer who has a parallel, uh, and you know intended use, maybe not quite at the same levels of the world, you know a championship pro, but they're, they're still going to find like tremendous amount of like I don't know satisfaction and and and goals, you know, in that tire.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, we sell a lot more of the trail. Uh, I think I got that right. Casing cause you just changed it not too long ago, so it's a little different. Your different casings, yeah, so like they're calling them different things.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):I never know how much of a change structurally or if it's a marketing used to be like tnt and now it's true, no that's a while ago.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Okay, that changed a while ago, but uh, they went from. So, like, for instance, in the tires that I tend to ride the most, they did the enduro casing and then the trail casing that came out a few years ago, and duro was a just an added level of protection, but their standard trail casing has the kind of sidewall protection that we need here, and then they had on the mezcal.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):They had a strict xc I think xc race and it was the thinnest sidewall, so we didn't. We actually only stocked two of those tires in the shop at a time because they're not a long-lasting tire in tucson, but I sell them to people like our racers that do leadville or they'll do the barn burner up in flagstaff or something where we know they're not going to be in heavy rock.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, in the trails that we have around here, where it's just super sharp volcanic, you need some sidewall protection. So the XC race casings aren't as popular.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So Ken, maybe take us through your casing yeah. So a moment ago or maybe a couple of months ago, we talked about the new XC race casing and 60 TPI and how it deforms and all that stuff. Yeah, that again was launched full line this past week at Sea Otter. The peyote and mezcal came out in 2024 with that new 60 TPI XC raised casing that completely replaces the bright tan old 120 casing that you're talking about there. That doesn't last very long in your area because of the volcanic stone.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, because it's just tear resistance, right, that doesn't last very long in your area because of the volcanic stone. Yeah, cause it's just tear resistance, you know Right.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So, so that was a one 20 TPI casing which, again, many other brands still use there, and we're really the first brand to take 60 TPI to a premium world cup and world championship winning XC race casing. Okay, so it's funny, in 22 and 23, uh, we won a few world championships on the Mezcal in that new casing when it was a prototype. We launched it in 24 and in 24, the Mezcal and peyote were used to win the world series marathon. Overall. So like, consider marathon, cross country, like world cup, stuff has gotten gnarly. And then you're doing the marathon version, which is minimum 40 miles, yeah, right.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So like, if you have a tire failure, it's really tough in a race like that. And so you're talking about Leadville and things like you know longer events like this first season out on these tires, they won the overall title for the series, um, so I think that really spoke to all of the things we talked about a moment ago with that 60 TPI because, check this out, it's not just faster because of the way it deforms. You then have 60 TPI versus one, 20. So the core thickness is going to be more, much more abrasion resistant, right, but also it's grippier because, check this out, when you make it flexible, you're not. You know, typically, if you had a lightweight, flexible tire, be like oh my god, is it gonna pinch?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):yeah, yeah, and you're gonna cut the thing when it when it folds over.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, but because it's more robust, yet more flexible, which, by the way, how do you do that from a design? It's like very crazy, usually like if it's more robust, it's not gonna going to be flexible, right yeah? But it's actually because of how the casing works. With the tread cap as a unit, you're buying a tire. You're not buying just the casing or just the tread.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):People forget that often yeah, but basically because it's more flexible, that tread can conform to the terrain. Whether you're going over, you know, weird rocks or roots or anything like that, it can mold around that terrain and create surface area grip, whereas a stiffer tread will deflect and actually not conform to that terrain and not have that grip while it's then not rolling as fast yeah so yeah, it's. It's sort of like the magic uh solution to all of that, so I shouldn't again I shouldn't be so gun shy on the new 60 tpi tires.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):You shouldn't be. That's something we should, I mean so I'm 165 pounds okay I used to race elite level downhill.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Um, I'm pretty much a cross-country nerd now, but like I run 16 psi holy at 165 pounds, oh my.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):God, you just can't be like. I think I'm having a heart attack at this moment, like that's so low, oh, granted, I have an airliner, okay.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I have the airliner in the wheel.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Okay, Okay, so I'm not worried about bottoming out and stuff. But that, and it's the fastest way to do it, and if you, if you talk to people, pressures are coming down with larger volume cross-country tires that are more armored, and then the use of a liner in that system together and we're the only tire manufacturer that makes a liner, you know it works. And that liner prevents burping, prevents pinch flatting. If somehow you break a spoke right and like it pokes through your rim tape and you have air loss, somehow it works as a run flight. You can get back to your car, your house or finish your race. I mean, so it's pretty cool stuff. Yeah, I mean I, I charge stuff on those, those new XC race tires. I think you should give it a try.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I think you'd be really surprised I haven't even tried the new liner, I tried the um, the old one, uh, the rounder one in my downhill bike in my.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):A short little story on on my vittoria liners is I ran a um we're at south mountain in phoenix, which is a pretty aggressive mountain, super harsh, uh terrain, and I was running a vittoria front liner and a kushcore rear and I'm just testing them to see what I think on my race bike and that's where we're practicing terrain.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):And I was running a Vittoria front liner and a Cushcore rear and I'm just testing them to see what I think on my race bike and that's where we're practicing. And right off the bat I got a flat on my front tire at the top of the run and I'm with a group of friends None of them are competitive and my run with a front flat tire and the Vittoria insert I was just as fast and still passing my friends with the flat tire coming down in the front, in the front yeah, and full-on high speed, like still doing it, and so I was like, okay, this is awesome, I can't wait to run these at bootleg, which is where we race, which is again super sharp, volcanic, really sharp, and the the one thing that I didn't realize.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So I ran it and all practice runs I had front and rear vittoria and I was like loving and it was no issues, no problems, this I was just great runs. I was kind of excited. There's a little bit of me that wanted to run flat down on a race, run and be like and show people that you could run in flat and um, but I mean, I didn't.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I'm not so competitive that I was trying to win. I was like my my motto was just roll down the mountain just get down, um, but I did get a flat on my rear tire and I was it that the crappiest thing happened the um the rear you had a crush core. You said no, so this I had put because of the performance in the front at south mountain.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I had put a vittoria in the back and I was convinced that this is the best combo for this kind of terrain, because I'm even if I get a flat, I can roll down, you know, and and the Cush cores I have carbon wheels and the Cush cores you still felt that impact of the rocks, and those rocks are so hard. You really had to go slow, and I wanted to be able to roll in fast and um, but, through practice, didn't get a flat, and then, in my race run, got a flat in my rear tire. What happened, though, is that we were on a side slope, and, as I was riding, I started a sprint and my tire just rolled off the rim and I was like shit.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So because, because, honestly, had that side slope not been there and I've been on flat ground, I think I would have been fine. And on all the South mountain testing it was pretty flat terrain. There was no side slopes where you were really kind of sidestepping a mountain, you know, and you get this kind of like sideward thrust of the rear wheel Every time you turn it. It wants to move down the mountain and the tire holds it on the mountain. Well, when the tire's flat, it just it tries to de-debeat it, which it did so so there's a couple things.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So you were running the old round airliners yes, yeah, the older ones those like you'd kind of like wrap around common to lag zip tie on that whole thing yeah, yeah, and so they're not super b.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):That was probably the big differentiation between that liner and the cush core at the time, because the cush doors were the nightmare to get on. Like you know, they're super hard. You have to have to use special, special tire levers and stuff to to try and get them on and and they did a pretty good job of holding your bead, but they didn't run flat great, so so the old round airliners are, um, basically phased out.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):The ones you'd want to check out now are Airliner Protect Downhill and Airliner Protect Enduro, and for that use they come in a hoop now. They fit a lot tighter but at the same time they're easier to install, which is great. They have sort of like a T cross section, that kind of keys into your rim, but then also kind of gives you that beadlock and and sidewall stability. The materials are also different now, which is great, and so we make liners for cross country, trail, enduro, downhill and e-bike, yeah and, and they're all optimized kind of shape and use.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):What's the difference on the e-bike one?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):There's a lot more of it, okay, you know, um, yeah, so I mean, I don't know about you, but you know, like I said, I'm 165 pounds. So, like when I ride an e-bike, I just like lean back and manual stuff, I'm just like I pack into stuff. You know what I mean and like.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So it's funny because, like you know, say like I'd rather get xc hardtail and I'm like floating and popping engine and everything. I got an e-bike, I just plow and it's like you know. So I mean, a lot of people do that because of the weight of the e-bike. But you know, the thing about it is is that changing a flat on e-bike is a pain. Yeah, so you don't want to deal with that ever. So you know, we made this airliner so that it withstands. It's like a massive like bottom out bumper ramp up, feel right, so it displaces air volume as that tire compresses. Uh, there's a really progressive feel and uh, I mean, I challenge you to get a flat with one of those.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):To be honest, so if I want to race my downhill bike, I got a new um, that's not the new one, but I got the no, no, it's actually well, the firebirds. My Enduro bike, I got a Phoenix um which is full 29 and it's 38 pounds for my downhill bike, which is pretty light, and, uh, I'm 200 pounds. So am I better off on a bigger, like a Enduro, or like the downhill or the e-bike version, or is the lighter version, like I? I still haven't quite figured out what the sweet spot is on liners, because I like them in different versions. I haven't quite gotten to where I'm using them to tune the air volume, like a lot of people. Um, for me, I was protecting my rims that that was really the main thing, sure, but with, like, those cush cores they weren't actually protecting. They were not chipping my rims, but they were. I was still getting cuts with them, Sure, and so so I guess the answer is this.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I mean, a liner is a piece of a system. Yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):And you have to take the system approach and we're huge at Vitt to take the system approach. Um, and we're huge at vittoria on the system approach. So you know, you're putting liners on your downhill bike, meaning that you should have downhill tires as a part of your downhill system. Okay, with your downhill liners, right. So, um, the liner is, uh, on the airliner protect downhill is going to be very robust. It's going to be very much, you know about bottom-up protection. The tire is going to do a lot of the work on a downhill bike because it's going to have a much more robust construction.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You know, if you were to put that liner on, say, like a super you know the old XC race that we talked about, the bright sandals that we're phasing out, right it would be like a really wonky combination because you'd have like a bottom-up bumper on like a super soft tire, right. Or vice versa, if you took like an airliner light XC and put that in a downhill tire which, incidentally, when Pinkbike tested it they did that, which I was like what the hell? But like anyway it was good in that they tested a very extreme test of the airliner light in that way, tested a very extreme test of the airliner light in that way. But yeah, I mean, you know, it actually showed that our airliner light was could withstand that sort of a thing, which.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I thought, was, in the end, a great, a great, you know, validation, to be honest, yeah, you know, yeah, like you'd want to make sure that your tire and your liner match in that system. Therefore, you know, I would, on your, your downhill bike, go with the airliner protect downhill. Okay, um, if you wanted a more progressive feel where you're trying to tune air volume and you want that liner to engage when with your tire, as your tire uh, compresses, and you want that to happen sooner, uh-huh, um, you certainly could try, you know, uh, the enduro or the, the e-bike version, and see how that feels. Yeah, um, but you know, I mean, when you go outside of intended use, it's inherently an experiment yeah, yeah, I'm usually going lightweight because I'm pretty easy on my wheels.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Uh, I rarely like. I've been riding carbon on downhill bikes for a long time and have not hurt them, even though I've come in flat a few times. Uh, sure, granted, my wheels are super robot, they're the reynolds bernard kerr, so they're overbuilt, you know. Sure, stupid, stupid, tough wheels, but uh, but yeah, I want the protection and I want to be able to run in flat. Those are the two main things that I'm usually looking for um I don't.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):actually, because of my size I don't tend to run like a lot. Everybody got into this real thing with tubeless when it came out like I got to run the lowest possible pressure and I was resistant to that because one what we noticed was if you go from a tube to a tubeless, everybody was bragging about how low a pressure they could go, but we kept telling them that you really want the same kind of cushion it's just you're going to have more air volume and tubeless, so it'll be a lower psi because there's more volume of air and whereas in a tube you have the tube taking up space and you actually have a higher, a lower volume.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):So you have to run a higher psi. Is that right? I think I got that right.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):It's always been hard to explain yeah, yeah, yeah and so, but you don't want a flat tire.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):They would misinterpret that you're running lower pressure as meaning you had like that bigger contact patch or like the squirmierness, and I'm like no, the the cushion needs to be about the same as it was with the tube.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):So yeah, I mean, at the end of the day you just need to tune your system and with tubeless you typically can run lower than with a tube because you're not worrying about pinch, flatting a super thin inner tube. You'd have to actually pinch through the tire itself to then get a flat on an impact. And so does it happen. Sure, you know, but at the same time you know it's it's much easier to pinch an energy than it is to pinch through a tire.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You know you can run lower with tubeless, but my whole thing is just cause you can, does it mean it's better? It's like anything we can make 330 TPI mountain bike tires, but would they be better? We haven't found that to be the case so far, so we don't, you know. So yeah, with air pressure, it's all about tuning. You do want to make sure that you're making use of your full contact patch. Typically, that means that you have a good amount of deformation when you're fully loaded in a corner or, you know, in that sort of a scenario where you need that to engage. So yeah, I mean, there's no hard and fast rule, and that's kind of. The beauty of this is that it's still like individual and and also you know a lot about your riding style. You know, yeah, if you're, if you're popping off stuff and landing sideways off a whip, you're going to have a different set of circumstances.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):You know what I mean and go through wheels a lot faster, which I don't.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):I ride really conservative.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):I just go straight fast.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):That's it very little flash so, ken, can I ask you like a totally unfair question, you guys, I mean, I think you're going I'm going to. You're talking about contact packs. There's a lot of buzz around what schwalbe's doing with their radial tires, sure? What are your thoughts on that, and is that something that vittoria might be looking at?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):vittoria has already made radials, and we decided to stop making radials a long time ago, in fact, um we used to have a tire called a diamante radial.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You know I don't want to speak uh too much on 12 days product, but based on their media kit for that, I think they actually even admit that it's not like a like a traditional radial. And what I mean by that is if you go to, like, say, wikipedia and you look up radial tire construction, you'll see that the strands typically go perpendicular to the rotation and the idea behind that is sort of, as they roll, say, over like a square edge of something, it's sort of like inchworms over it, right, so you're not sort of like bouncing off of the thread. If the thread was was sort of, you know, in line with the rotation, which would then be perpendicular to the impact, right, like, say, rolling up a curb or something like that. Yeah, so that is to say, most tires use what's called bias ply. Again, there's a white paper on this on the Vittoriacom site. Bias ply means in a traditional sense that the chords oppose each other roughly 45 degrees. Now if you change that uh angle from 45 degrees to say, I don't know, 30 ish, you could start claiming that it's more like a radial gotcha. But a traditional radial would be pretty much closer to zero or 10 degrees, something like that in terms of, yeah, that chord direction.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):With regard to opposing the direction of rotation of the tire, yeah, it's been done before. They've done a tremendous amount of communication on this and I commend them for that. In a bicycle tire, it's inherently so flexible because it's so thin. As I said, we've previously made radials and what we found was that the the construction didn't last very long because that you hit your brakes and it kind of inchworms and collapses and it creates an excessive amount of wear and uh, in fact, and then the grip and the rolling wasn't improved in our in our testing, which is why we don't make them. We basically kind of solved that puzzle another way with some of the other things that we spoke about earlier Using silica with graphene in the compound and then using, of course, different cords and materials. We've been able to optimize performance that way.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):So we've got a trend going on. We'll see if the performance holds.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Oh so one last thing and I'm going to kick myself for bringing this up because I think it's stupid and I don't think it should be brought up, but I'm still going to bring it up because it happened. What? Is it 32 inch rims, is that sure?
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Is that a thing Is?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):that going to be a thing and I would love it if you said no. But I want you to be honest. I never say never.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):The bike industry is famous for taking things further and further and further and further, sometimes past the point of effectiveness, I would say plus. Tires are a phenomenal version of that, uh, where people said oh, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, whoa, and then, they pulled it back.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, uh, you know what I mean. So you know, and that that's a prime example of a trend and a versus longevity and and you know, there there was a certain other brand that really pushed that hard too, and and you know that that was something. Um, there were claims made and and I don't even know if they exist anymore. If I'm honest, our, our 32, is going to be a thing. I think if you're super tall, it could be a thing. Um, I don't think that I mean 29 or took years to get down to a place where you could make a size, small, 29er that was viable. Yeah, you know, much less than extra small. Yeah.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):And 32, you know it's going to be tough. Even I ride a medium ally BC40. So it's like yikes. I probably I don't know that I'm big enough to really handle a 32. I think in gravel it could be a thing. I think in in cross country perhaps it could be a thing I mean, who knows Like somebody's going to come out with a 32 downhill bike next year and it's going to be, like. Oh no, I mean, it'll happen.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Oh, there's not a gearbox and a belt drive too happen.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Oh, there's a gearbox and a belt drive too, for sure, nothing will surprise me, yeah, um, I'm sure there will be.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):You know data and and and the data will tell the tale. But as of right now, you're not. You're not tooling up to start making a bunch of uh 32s then I mean, I can't tell you if we are that changes your whole answer there have you heard of?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):have you heard of faction bike studio? Yeah, okay yeah, we did a couple podcasts with them. So I kind of I I'm getting kick out of talking to all these industry and finding out how much a little bit of secretness is out there right, it's way more, uh, secretive than you'd know, you know. So it's it's, it's I, I, I really I get a kick out of it, yeah that's cool, but hey, ken, maybe one final question for you.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):What is the tire or tread maybe just the tread that um is not performing like you guys thought it would, and people should go check out oh, yeah, under Underrated.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Is that there you go? Yeah, underrated.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):And I. It's weird that we've spoken about this a few times on the show, but I would honestly say, agaro, hear me out on this, okay. So if you just go up in our spectrum of off-road tires, you know from when you when you go from gravel into cross country. The first one is Torino, multiple-time world championship gravel tire. It won European championships in cross-country. One step up from there you got Peyote Cool that just won the cross-country marathon World Series overall. Mezcal has won God I don't even know how many world championships at this point Half a dozen world championships across short track, cross-country and and now it's using gravel crazy. One step up, barzo, multiple time world cross country champion sierra is a you know newer tire. It's not really a competition tire in that it, you know down country isn't a competition per se. But I mean that that's that got a gear of the year award, great. And then you go to a Garo and people are like it's so funny, everybody loves that tire. Who rides it?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Yeah, I don't know if it's because it's not a competition type tire where you know trail you don't go like you're not going to go like your trail race right, like it's like a trail, it's like just you go mountain biking Right, but in terms of like a tire that just kind of works everywhere and rolls fast and lasts a long time, it's like really hard to beat. You know, from there it goes up into like Martello Mazda, blah, blah, blah, yeah. And the cool thing about that Agaro is the trends stay in the same, but watch this space. Later this year, okay, we got some, some kind of news about that category coming out, which is going to be pretty cool, but I think personally that's the most underrated tire in our off-road category. You know, I mean again Martello, like you know, best overall rear end enduro tire on Pinkbike Mazda, I mean five-star reviews like crazy if you Google that tire, yeah, and in the middle of there is that Agaro and it's just this humble workhorse of a do-everything mountain bike tire.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, it's the tire that I would tell people all the time you can ride on Mount Lemmon, which is aggressive, descending.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Or downhill.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):And then you can go out to Honeybee, which is like they're super tame, smooth, kitty litter, you know, um, cross country, cross country, and it just does great on both. You know we don't have loam here, so you don't need huge knobs to to reach down into the soil and, uh, those knobs support in corners and they're fast and you still feel super confident when you're on the chunk. So, yeah, it's a, it's. It's probably my favorite all-around tire.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):On the big bikes I do go bigger just because we're just hitting stuff so hard did you notice that we gave ken his last question and he managed to sneak in the whole product?
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):yeah, that was very, that was superly. It's almost like you've done this before. Yeah, don't act like we didn't notice. Yeah, so we totally get that.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):Well, Ken, thank you so much, man. You got any final thoughts for our listeners?
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):Man, I'm just so grateful for what you guys do. It's so cool to you, know. I mean, there's an old saying the only thing that mountain bikers do more than mountain bike is talk about it yeah, oh my god, that's so true, you know uh, I think, um, your show is so great I'm grateful to be on, you know, on the early end of things and and hopefully we stay in touch. You can do this again no, it's all good.
Josh Anderson (Magellan):All right, it's all good.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru):Yeah, I think this will be somewhere around episode 100 yeah, I mean, but he's right though, like when I we just talked to jess the maker and, uh, getting of an idea. She's only been doing that for three years, you know, and so it's. It's kind of crazy, but you're, you're right, though I, I think I, I definitely talk more than I ride.
Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Product Development):You and me both man. Thanks a lot Ken Nice. Thanks a lot, ken Thanks.
