Plasma 5 One Year In

June 22, 2015

I'm reminded of the scene in Charade, the 1960s movie thriller. Audrey Hepburn's character asks Cary Grant's, "Do you know what's wrong with you?" "No, what?" "Nothing!" That's what's wrong with the Plasma 5. Nothing.

Why then is the interest in the Plasma 5 unreasonably low? The last polling I saw on this (TBI/Multisport Research) showed the bike sitting in a tie for 8th place, when the question to American triathletes was, "What bike brand did you purchase in 2014?" Actually, it was a tie for 8th, with Giant, which does not even market a tri bike in the United States (though that might be about to change).

The sell-thru is low as well according to the U.S.-based dealers to whom I've spoken. It might be the World's best poorly-selling bike.

Sebastian Kienle was aboard a Scott Plasma 5 this past year when he won the Ironman, as was the 5th place finisher in that race, Cyril Viennot. Luke McKenzie also rides the bike, and was aboard a Plasma 3 the year prior when he rode so well and finished overall in 2nd place, with Kienle one place behind him.

The bike is not just underneath men: Jodie Swallow rides a Plasma. And not just underneath triathletes. Austrian Matthias Brändle broke Jens Voigt's hour record last November on a Plasma. Team Orica Greenedge rides this bike, often to great success.

There's just nothing wrong with the product. I called around and talked to the best among the Scott tri bike dealers that I know. I called one dealer in Chicagoland and they were extremely high on the more entry-level Plasma 20 as well as the Plasma 5. But they still sell a lot more Cervelos to triathletes.

Another dealer, in the South, sells Scott tri bikes but it stands sixth in line in that shop's tri bike sales, behind Cervelo, Felt, BMC, Quintana Roo and Specialized. But if you ask that dealer he says, "It baffles me why we don't sell more Scott TT bikes." Why? Because that dealer understands the performance and value of Scott's tri bikes.

The Plasma 5 is a triumph of product, and a failure of process.

A number of retailers report that Scott reps are typically road racers themselves, or are road-oriented, and there doesn't seem to be a fire, an urgency, to sell the Plasma 5. You can be certain that fire is in the seat of the pants of Trek and Specialized reps. Is Scott letting its reps off easy? Maybe so. Maybe Scott itself doesn't realize how compelling its Plasma line is, or could be, in the U.S.

The best two tri bikes Scott sells are the Plasma 20 and the Plasma 5. The 20 has that same rear triangle look as the Cannondale Slice, just written about a few days ago. The 20 is Scott's mortal bike and, at $3,300 it requires an up-sell over, say, a Cervelo P2. The Plasma 20 will cost $500 more than Cervelo's P2, each is a Shimano 105 bike, but the Plasma has a replaceable derailleur hanger which the P2 does not have and Scott, in general, has a better history of warranty-free bikes than Cervelo. Its greatest sin seems to be that it's not a Cervelo.

The Plasma 20 is a tall bike, for its length. Very tall. Cervelo reworked its P2/3 geometry so that these bikes fit taller than the used to. Felt's B-series bikes are taller yet than the reworked Cervelos. The Plasma 10 and 20 are taller yet. In size-57cm, these Plasmas are only barely longer than the reworked P-series Cervelo bikes in size 54cm, but almost 50mm taller! The rest of the size run is similarly tall for its length.

Accordingly, these Plasma 10 and 20 bikes (not pictured here) are either a blessing and a curse for the shops that carry them, based on how these shops like to send people out the door.

The Plasma 5 measures geometrically similar, according to the Plasma's geometry chart. So, how do these pro athletes mentioned above fit aboard these bikes, if the bike is so tall? How do they get the bars low enough, especially the pro cyclists such as those on the Orica Greenedge team?

Partially, it's in the difference between standard and integrated front ends. When you integrate a custom stem and into the frame you have the freedom to make the stem profile very flat. Or not. A lot of these new very low bikes that you see all the pro tour teams riding these days are so because of the integrated stem's lowness.

Indeed, the stem used on the Plasma 5 by the Orica Greenedge pro cycling team has a handlebar clamp center sitting about even with the head tube top. The Plasma 5 that Kienle rides has a stem that rises a bit, but is still lower than a typical stem configuration you'd find on a Plasma 20.

This means almost anybody can ride the Plasma 5 frame, even those who need the aerobars low. The bike above is Annabel Luxford's Plasma 5. She's riding the lower, flatter stem favored by the pro cyclists. When you need a position lower than the Plasma stem triathletes typically ride, you have this stem available to you. The Plasma 5's really cool integrated front hydration system only works with the higher-profile stem. If you need the lower stem, you can't use the hydration system (look at Annabel's bike). This is not the end of the world. You can still use the XLAB Torpedo or the Profile Design FC.

But the Plasma 5 is lower in front than the Plasma 10 and 20 not just because of the integrated stem, rather because the frame is, just, lower. But you wouldn't think that by looking at the metrics Scott produces for its bikes. The failure of process starts with the way the bike is measured. Scott gives all its Plasmas the same stack and reach, that is, the frame for the 10 and 20 as well as for the 5. But they're not. Scott has its own novel way of measuring the Plasma 5's head tube, which I don't like. Still, look on Scott's geometry chart. The bottom bracket drop is the same for two frames, but the head tubes differ in length. Both these frames sharing the same stack and reach is a geometric impossibility.

Scott seems to measure the stack and reach on the Plasma 5 to the top of the top tube, which causes problems. It creates a false impression of height. The way this frame is constructed does create a measuring conundrum because of the frame's novel way of accepting a slotting in of both the fork and the stem. Nevertheless, the right place to measure to is where the bottom of the stem meets the top of the frame. If you do this you come up with head tube lengths and stack measures that are 60mm lower than what Scott advertises.

In other words, I'm saying the Plasma 5's front end is really 60mm lower than Scott says it is. That's a big disagreement! That amount of difference, 60mm worth of height, takes a tall bike and makes it a low bike. But the Plasma 5 isn't exactly low either, because the integrated stem the triathletes (other than Ms. Luxford) ride is rather tallish. But it is a low bike when you place on that bike the flatter stems that Ms. Luxford and the Orica Greenedge riders use. This is why that pro tour team very successfully rides a bike that, on paper, based on Scott's own published metrics, seems way too high for a pro tour team's time trialers.

There is a specific and important reason why these things matter. Here's what another Scott retailer said of this bike: "The [listed] stack and reach has been a huge disappointment, it's on the geometry chart, but it's close to irrelevant on a superbike. What I mean is, they should have a chart like Trek or Cervelo does. It's not rocket science. I've pestered my rep."

These charts this dealer spoke of are created through the reducing the bike to two or three sub-assemblies, the height and length of which are added together to form a "super" height and length from the bottom bracket to the armrests pads. For example, the frame might have a stack and reach of 540mm and 430mm. A stem might have a "mini" stack and reach, i.e., a rise and run, of 90mm and 30mm. Then the pads might sit 60mm above the center of the handlebar clamp and 10mm behind it. If you add all these up, you get a bike with a pad height of 540mm + 30mm + 60mm = 630mm. You have a pad run or reach or length of 430mm + 90mm – 10mm = 510mm.

This pad X and Y, or run and rise, of 630mm and 510mm is very close to my own position and knowing the rise and run totals for these various constituent pieces allows you to make a chart – which you can set up on an Excel spreadsheet – that gives you a complete bike solution through simply knowing the customer's pad height and length from the BB. As this retailer said to me, Cervelo and Trek have these, as does BMC, Felt, Quintana Roo and others. If you make a bike with an integrated front end, like the Scott Plasma 5, you really need a system like this so that the customer can "see" his bike, and the retailer can easily order and build up the bike right out of the box.

This is the "failure of process" I spoke of above. Scott's reps need to understand triathlon, and why the Plasma 5 is such a terrific bike. They need to understand the need for a sizing system to help their retailers, so that they can appeal to Scott for this system and then relay the existence and the use of it to the dealers once this sizing system shows up (which it eventually will).

There is one more criticism I have of the Plasma 5 series, which includes two complete bikes: the Plasma Team Issue and the Plasma Premium, roughly $11,000 and $6,000 respectively. Each is a mechanically-shifted bike. How can you make a superbike, especially one of this caliber, and not offer an electronically-shifted bike?

Yes, you can make your own electronic Plasma 5, by simply buying the frameset which is one hell of a frameset. It's more than a frame. The construct includes Profile Design's integrated aerobar that, to be honest, might be better than the current aftermarket Aeria or any other bar that Profile Design makes. It's just a terrific aerobar. And you get the front hydration and front storage modules along with the frameset, also the handiwork of Profile Design. And the built-in brakes.

Unfortunately Scott does what all the bike companies do, which is price the frameset almost prohibitively high. The street price for the complete bike sells for $500 more than the bare frame. This is a disincentive to buy the frame, and this is a problem when Scott's complete bike lacks compelling groupkit options, most notably electronic. I spoke to R&A Cycles in Brooklyn, and irrespective of the frameset's high price they only bought framesets because the complete bike offerings were unimpressive. R&A reported that all its Plasma 5s go out as electronic bikes.

Scott has the tiger by the tail with the Plasma 5. Its Plasma 3, and now the Plasma 5, were just great, great framesets, and still are. All the hard work has been done. Scott now has to simply embroider this terrific frameset – no, it's more than a frameset, it's a frame system, or a bike chassis – with everything that completes this bike. They have the right bike, and the right pro athletes aboard it. Because we're a year into this bike model, one assumes that any new-model issues have been ironed out, and we're ready (one assumes) for a trickle-down in price that normally attends frames in their second, third and fourth model years.

Its needs are not product based. The product has been made. It's in how the bike is spec'd and priced. It's in how the reps are trained. It's in how the bike's size is measured, and it needs a fit system. Such systems are straightforward and they are not time-consuming to construct.

Last week I wrote about Cannondale, and the Scott Plasma 5 is strikingly like the Slice RS of a couple of years ago in that the frame module was just spectacular. Each of these companies' frames were the fruit of European design and engineering. These European design teams were absolutely up to the task of engineering and building fast bikes, but they were caught off-guard by the lack of attention to how to sell these bikes through retail stores.

The Plasma 5 is a breakdown in process, and the process is that thing that happens between, "Hmm, I think a Plasma would look good in my garage," and that bike rolling out the front door of a retail store, pushed by its beaming new owner. Fortunately for Scott, the product is the hardest part to lick. Establishing a sales process is relatively easy. You just need to do it.