Corporate Rock Sucks. This episode is about how big companies get it wrong, and why it’s critical to support the independents. We take SST Records’ iconic slogan and apply it to the bike industry. Then we call out some small companies worth supporting.
Music picks of the week:
Robot – Husker Du
Stevil – Deftones
Podcast (revolting): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:03:19 — 58.0MB)
I have never been a fan of doing what most were doing. When I was a little kid I used to remove the labels from my jeans and never wanted to wear stuff other kids had. This has remained with me in other facets. The thing is, to play devil’s advocate sometimes the big companies provide things that the little ones cannot or at the least come up with ideas that smaller companies haven’t. I’ll mention Specialized as they are an easy target. They’ve done a lot of questionable things business-wise and with bike design over the years. I have not been a fan of most of their bikes. That said, they make damn good tires (Butcher T9/Eliminator T7) at a great price. Naturally, there are tons of other options, but the big S nailed it with these. Additionally, their introduction of in-frame storage is revolutionary and now Trek and Santa Cruz have made similar systems. I cannot imagine this addition is not being brought up by every medium to large bike company at their design meetings.