The State of Tri Bike Service

July 4, 2013

A few months back, we wrote a tech article that seemed to spark a debate. The article was a demonstration of how to install Trek’s direct-mount brake to their 2013-model Madone. While certainly not the most complicated brake out there, the installation had a few hiccups, and took about three or four times longer than the same service on a ‘normal’ road brake with external cable routing. With high-tech bikes, that’s the breaks (pun intended).

The subsequent discussion centered around how retailer bike shops ought to charge for service. In the old days, super-complicated bikes were relatively rare – a Kestrel here, a Klein there. Tri bikes that had internal routing still had standard brake calipers, and hydraulics were out of the question. For the most part, shops didn’t modify the service charge on the rare bird that cost them extra time; they ate the cost in hopes of keeping the customer.

Back when I worked in retail, we charged like this – based on task. A tune-up cost X, a full overhaul cost Y. At my modest hourly wage, it didn’t matter much to my boss whether a job went awry and took an extra thirty minutes. We lived with it, and life rolled on.

But my, how the times have changed. Nowadays, you almost can’t buy a triathlon bike with externally-routed cables. Brakes are migrating locations, hiding themselves under fairings, and are sometimes actuated by fluid, not cable. Aerobars and even stems route cables inside. Shifting has become electronic, and requires battery charging and firmware updates. Even the road racers and crit riders aren’t safe, as the latest road bikes are starting to feature similar complications.

Where does it end? More importantly – how does the retailer survive in this modern climate? Clearly, something must change. I have observed that cost-of-ownership increases as bikes become more complicated. The tough part is that none of this is written on a bike’s spec sheet, along with the price and other features. They’re not going to tell you, “Oh, by the way… we almost forgot to mention… any service you do to this bike will require three times more time and money than the same repair on your old Schwinn.” The consumers’ desires – or the manufacturers’ perception of consumers’ desires – are driving technology forward. It’s the dealer that sees most of this fallout, in my opinion. They’re left explaining why the price to tune up your bike has doubled in the last five years. For beginning or unknowing athletes, they could be buying into a higher annual repair budget than they realized.

Continuing the Discussion

What I’d like to do is keep this discussion going – out in public, where everyone can see it. I am not arguing against technology, scapegoating all manufacturers, or poo-pooing anything or anyone in particular. The only thing that I think unilaterally stinks about this situation is that it isn’t talked about enough. We (the media) are guilty of this, too. We love the shiny bikes and cool features, but not the reality of maintaining them. A similar argument could be made for many consumer products. All I’m asking for is full-disclosure and honesty from all parties.

As this thought process churned through my mind, I started to think of questions. I wanted to get the thoughts and opinions of some people with more experience in this industry than I. For starters, I wanted to get the word from the horse’s mouth – a bike manufacturer. How do they see this situation progressing? Am I missing something and unfairly placing blame on them? I wanted someone that would help me understand more.

This in mind, I called up Jim Felt, founder of Felt Bicycles. Yes, Felt is an advertiser with Slowtwitch, but that is not why I picked him. I picked Jim because he has a reputation of being generous with his time, very helpful, and very candid. If you ask me, Jim is one of the living legends of triathlon. He’s been in it since the beginning, and knows his way around a bicycle. I value his opinion, and wanted to see what he could tell me. Our interview follows.

Slowtwitch: Thanks for your time, Jim.

Jim Felt: Oh, of course. Any time.

ST: I gave you a primer in email about what I’d like to discuss – the new era of triathlon bikes. As a manufacturer, I’m guessing that you almost have to take some of the technological steps to stay competitive. That in mind, do you think the problem is just a lack of trained mechanics in the field?

Felt: Probably the way we should look at it is to go back to the beginning. The business itself – in the triathlon industry – has changed dramatically. I think that’s the number one thing we’re not looking at. In the old days, it was Dan with Quintana Roo, myself, Phil and Gerard with Cervelo… that was about it for big triathlon players. When we started our companies around the same time in the 80’s, we were the players. If you did triathlon, you probably had one of those brands [or a road bike]. And – the shops back then – if you were a triathlon dealer, you were pretty specific to triathlon. You had to be. The mom-and-pop shops weren’t selling tri bikes.

Today, the business has changed. Every bike manufacturer out there has a triathlon model in their line-up. On every corner, the shops that never were triathlon dealers are now stocking and bringing in a few triathlon bikes because the consumers in their area are asking for it. So here comes the equipment that’s more complicated and higher tech, and they might not know how to work on it. There’s also a tremendous amount of interest in bike fitting, and it’s a key part of selling a bike. A lot of new shop employees might still be getting their feet wet in technical bike fit. The shops that have been doing it for a long time and have been a triathlon shop for a long time ‘get it’. The shops that are new or aren’t really dedicated to triathlon are going to struggle.

ST: One concern that I have with the situation is travel. When you travel to a race, you’re sometimes on your own with the bike. Usually there’s a shop at the expo, but maybe your flight was late and you don’t have time to get there. I guess the question is – if you travel and aren’t a highly qualified mechanic – what do you do?

Felt: Well… get help! {laughs} If you don’t know what you’re doing, get help. Actually, I’ll tell you a quick little story. This [situation] affects everyone from the complete novice all the way to a ProTour or World Tour team mechanic, and the way that they travel. I had something happen last year with the Argos-Shimano team, and I can’t tell you how many bikes I had damaged by them putting bikes in travel cases incorrectly. It goes all the way up the chain from the novice who doesn’t know that they should take their rear derailleur off when they put their bike in a case, and they damage the rear derailleur hanger. Or, on a lot of tri bikes with a fixed derailleur hanger, you break the frame. Little things like that on packing your bike in a bike box. Or things like – how do I pull the bars off? Or if you have hydraulic brakes, how do I put it back together, how do I disconnect the lines, and how would I ever bleed the brakes? You need to get to a mechanic if you can’t do these things.

The perception – and this is a big part of the equation – is that we all want high tech equipment. There’s no limit on the technology that we can throw at triathlon. The sky’s the limit. But, on the service side and the educational side on how to get the consumer ready for this, there’s a huge gap. It is an issue. We have to do a better job. At Felt, we’ve produced some little videos on how to work on our Bayonet fork system, how to work on the brakes, how to put together a Bayonet handlebar – just to help educate our consumers on how to work on their own bikes. From day one when we started doing Bayonet forks and hidden brakes, we’ve had problems with people putting them together wrong. And they’re all different – a Cervelo is different than a Felt is different than a Trek Speed Concept.

ST: I’m curious now. Have there ever been decisions made from a design standpoint where you’ve made the choice to not take a technological step because it might be a mechanical concern. Have you ever had to pull back in that sense?

Felt: It’s funny you say that. At Felt, for sure we take that into consideration. And I’ll tell you why. If we’re in the wind tunnel, maybe we’re working on chipping down at those last few grams of drag that we can pull out of that frameset or whatever it is. Let’s say we’re working on a front brake. Most of the time with a front brake – depending on what brake – aero brake, non-aero, conventional, whatever… the difference between the worst brake and no brake is about 15 to 30 grams. Of course, if someone wants to give me 30 grams of drag, I’ll take it! {laughs} But, you’re starting to shave hairs right now, when you’re talking about 10 grams between two brakes. When you look at it, is it worth the hindrance that it can have to the consumer to put all of the brake lines inside, and try to adjust the brake… or have a person try to take the bike out of a bike box and something is wrong? We think about that and we definitely try to simplify our designs… probably more so that I would like to do. If we weren’t selling to the public, we could make one-offs, and some really wild stuff.

Above photo © Shimano / Jake Orness

Sometimes we might hold back a little; we might not be first to market with something. Sometimes you can get pulled into this vacuum of technology that if your bike doesn’t have a hidden front brake or whatever it is, you don’t have a selling factor because of perception. Not because it’s necessarily better or worse, but just because of perception.

I think about even just working on my athlete’s bikes today – because I still put a wrench on almost every single one of our sponsored athlete’s bikes. The time it takes me to do it compared to the 80’s or 90’s is light years different. But – with triathlon, we’re lucky that we don’t have the regulations that they do in road. We can have the superbikes; it’s unlimited. With that comes technology… the electronic shifting, hydraulic brakes, hidden brakes, hidden hydration. Technology is coming, whether we want it or not.

ST: What it’s sounding like is that shops are re-thinking the pricing structure for service on these bikes. I think they’ll have to, if they want to keep the lights on.

Felt: I back that 100 percent. And I feel for them. Going back to the days when I started the company and was taking orders… I was a custom frame builder trying to satisfy each customer that walked in my door. You could spend six hours with a customer standing in front of your shop and not make any more money than the guy you spent one hour with the day before. That’s the same thing that’s happening today, except these bikes have gotten extremely complicated. The hard part is that the consumer doesn’t always understand that additional cost. You might have a retail customer come in and you say, well, it’s $125 to $300 for a bike fit, but we’ll let that wash if you walk out with the bike. But then we’ll build the bike up and cut the cables and do everything right, and that could be another three hour job to re-cable it. It’s unbelievable how much time it can take these shops to do it, and they’re not going to make any money if they don’t charge more.

ST: My real concern is the new athlete; the young athlete. If a company uses a single frame and fork for all of their triathlon offerings, you get the same brake and the same stuff on each model. A collegiate athlete might get the entry model with Shimano 105, but it still has the higher cost of ownership because of the brakes and routing. I supposed this article is, in part, Slowtwitch voicing this concern to the industry. What is your take on it?

Felt: I back you 100 percent. And I can only speak for Felt on this. We have a lot of offerings in triathlon, because it’s one of our core products. We’re going to have the elite ‘doctor/lawyer’ bikes, down to the entry-level 105-or-lower models. That cheaper bike – for us – becomes a simpler bike to work on… and that’s because of the cost of the offering. You simply can’t put all of the fancy stuff on a bike that costs $1,200. Maybe the frame might be the same, but the front end takes a conventional brake and a standard fork. It’s both for simplicity and cost. Plus you get a bike that can fit almost anyone; just change the stem, cut the steerer tube… you can move the bike around really easy.

ST: I think some of it is out of your control, too. For example, the rear brake on the older DA – the one with the standard caliper mounted down low. The feel of that brake can be hugely affected by 1) your cable and housing, and 2) the brake lever. If you have a really nice lever, that brake is going to feel great… and a crappy lever is going to make it feel crappy. It’s the build and the parts – which isn’t up to you in the case of a custom build.

Felt: Definitely. I guarantee you that when a shop is looking at a SRAM lever vs. a Shimano lever vs. a Profile lever, the last thing they’re looking at is leverage ratio. If you put that cool carbon-lookin’ lever on the bike… well, you might have just increased the lever throw by 13mm! {laughs} I put my narrow wheel in the bike and adjusted my brake, and the lever still goes to the bar! And it happens. If a shop has had a brake lever on the shelf for two years, they want to get rid of it instead of calling QBP and ordering a Shimano lever that’s going to be there in three days. It’s a tricky situation.

ST: Jim, we really appreciate your time and willingness to contribute. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Felt: Not a problem at all. One thing, and that’s that we’re getting the handlebars back to where they used to be, which is separating the aerobar from the base bar. I think that’s key. We got off on this tangent with the Lance Armstrong/Jan Ullrich thing where the extensions were coming straight out of the base bar. Here we are with all of these short head tubes that Cervelo and myself and everyone were designing at the time. Pretty soon, the stems were getting ridiculously high and long to get the aerobars up to where they needed to be. Now we’re bringing the base bar where it needs to be, which is basically like riding a road bike, and then you have your triathlon bar – your aero bar – on top. I’m really excited to see it go back that way, and the dealers seem to agree. It’s better for fitting and it makes the service easier.

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In our second segment, we will cover my interview of two triathlon retail stores, to hear their opinions.