The Case for Asian Parts
By Jake Brennand
{Brands mentioned: Hope Tech, DT Swiss, Race Face, Koozer, NGEBUT (NGB), Goldix Bike, Elite Wheels, NTN, NSK, Onyx, Industry Nine, Chris King, Enduro, Winspace, NOBL Wheels, WeAreOne, Pinner Machine Shop, NBK, S&S, Bontrager, Spank, Atomik Carbon, ENVE.}
Make no mistake — we use Asian parts. One of the biggest strategic moves for Hogtown Spokes since at least 2022 has been investigating, sourcing, purchasing, and building with Asian-made wheel parts. The results have been overwhelmingly positive overall. I won’t divulge our exact supply channels — that, like our costing, is and always will be proprietary business information, the exclusive right-to-know of Hogtown Spokes alone — but I will talk in broad yet detailed strokes about the reasons for going in this direction and the brands that we’ve engaged with. We’ll continue to supply an assortment of Western-made/based hub and rim parts for both custom and curated wheel projects (Hope Tech, DT Swiss, Race Face, etc), as needs and interest dictate. Other than Pillar, the excellent Taiwanese brand, the spokes and nipples that we use will always be European-made. But having had so much success with the selection, price, frequent quality, and no-bullshit dealing manner of the Asian brands noted in this piece, products by the likes of Koozer, NGEBUT (NGB), Goldix bike, Elite Wheels, and others will become permanent — and highly compelling — items in our inventory and Full Custom array. To do otherwise would put us at a competitive disadvantage, by underserving our customers, and be tantamount to giving into a petty Western ideological bent.
How the bike industry actually works with parts
Cycling is inherently linked to Asian manufacturing. Perhaps even more so, relatively speaking, than the rest of our globalized modern world. Regardless of what anyone says or how skillful companies are at seeming “all-Western,” the unadorned reality is that a vast majority of bike parts — from frames to hubs to rims to stems and handlebars — are made in Asia, namely in Taiwan and specific parts of China like Xiamen. Some items are made in Indonesia or Thailand. Tires from certain brands might well be made in those locales (Vittoria, for one, makes a number of its popular MTB treads in Thailand), while some of the industry’s highest-end drivetrain parts are manufactured by Shimano in its Japanese facilities. The best “Tier-1” radial deep-groove ball bearings, made by the famed NTN and NSK industrial corporations, which we and other specialist builders will fit into cycling hubs, are also usually made inside Nippon itself.
The number of truly “Western-made” companies is extremely small. In the wheel business it’s limited to Hope, Onyx, Industry Nine, and Chris King, among the most notable examples. Even here, only Portland-based King (or perhaps Minnesota’s Onyx) is actually all-domestic, since the others use quality bearings (and possibly other small parts) supplied from Asia. English company Hope Tech, for example, uses custom Enduro stainless bearings. I9, in North Carolina, also uses Enduro bearings. Enduro describes their production as follows: “No longer attic-based, Enduro HQ occupies a 50,000 sq. ft. facility in Oakland, CA with a friendly, experienced staff serving the bearing and component needs of global bike brands, distributors, retailers and riders. Additional manufacturing facilities in Gilroy, Singapore, Taiwan, and a joint venture in China provide everything from economical ABEC 3 bearings to high performance XD15 ceramic solutions. Enduro bearings are fitted annually onto millions of bikes.”
Similarly, British Columbia based Race Face (owned by US company Fox Factory suspension), whose website declares the team as being “Shore To The Core,” meaning Vancouver’s North Shore, is a Pacific company – all the more so if you broaden Pacific to include the reality that Race Face supply traverses the salty pond and includes parts made in Taiwan. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Taiwan and the most commercial parts of China have been manufacturing bike parts to specialist precision for decades; these regions are effectively world experts at bike manufacturing, in the same way that the Germans are with business-class luxury cars and the Italians are with luxury supercars or fine leather. Brands go where the plant, labour, and seasoned production expertise exist.
Aware of their own prowess, as well as no doubt informed by economic pride and nationalism, the Chinese and Taiwanese have also branched out in recent years from pure manufacturing for others to making and selling hubs and complete wheels (and frames) under their own banners. The most commendable operation and the genuine pioneer in this respect is China-based Light Bicycle, which has offered direct-to-consumer high-end carbon rims and handbuilt wheels since 2011. Light or “LB,” for short, runs an excellent, polished business and is a great online resource for carbon know-how and good wheelbuilding practices. They represent the absolute benchmark for communications and order-fulfillment professionalism for Chinese companies looking to succeed in the West. They now have a North American outpost for distribution and building. Other high-profile self-starter brands include Winspace (2008) and Elite Wheels (2013), both also Chinese, plus a few others.
Go on a group ride with a campy local MTBer in southern Ontario, where we’re located, and there’s a good chance that this broseph will use the term “China carbon” to refer to Light Bicycle rims (even as he may own and thoroughly enjoy a set or sets himself). We don’t say that. That unsophisticated moniker belies the quality of these products and the sophistication of the Asian companies delivering these goods. Saying “China carbon” makes a person sound like a down-home caricature and a dunce — especially when the same dudes all love to talk up supposedly all-domestic companies like NOBL Wheels, in BC. You would think NOBL — another excellent carbon and wheelbuilding resource online — was hatched in an eco-friendly incubator on Robson Street in Vancouver, receiving life-giving nutrients from purified Kokanee, based on how riders here speak about them and how they portray themselves on social media. NOBL rims are expertly designed in Canada — NOBL is a Canadian success story in the most important respects — but all of their rim products are made in Asia to very high standards. NOBL doesn’t hide any of this, but my impression historically is that they also don’t eagerly advertise it, unless directly asked, especially with competitor WeAreOne making waves out in Squamish, BC. For a sense of this vibe from NOBL, have a listen to their recent appearance on VitalMTB’s podcast, The Inside Line. To my ears, there’s a slight self-consciousness there about Asian production with NOBL, and it really doesn’t need to be there on the technical merits.
So, aware of how the industry actually works, we at Hogtown Spokes decided to explore the range of Asian parts options starting in early 2022. We now routinely spec branded Asian OEM hubs, blank high-quality carbon rims, and even blank high-end Ratchet hubs that we self-brand as “Oos” — our Hogtown house line. (Oos, or “Spawn of the Devil,” was the name that George, our sweet and beloved black cat, was tagged with before we adopted him as a kitten.) Like anyone else in the industry who wants to run a viable business, we mark up these items and turn a profit.
The value proposition with Asian parts
Irrespective of where you buy from, the potential savings with Asian brands are massive from a business or consumer perspective. Elite Wheels, vocally, offers as their goal “delivering premium products at radically fair prices.” Most suppliers of Asian parts (if not complete wheelsets) offer wholesale or wholesale-like pricing. Even Light Bicycle, with mature retail pricing at this point, is still very competitive. Their stock rims sell for under $300 USD before shipping and any applicable duties (upgrade custom layups or extended warranties are extra). This trumps the pricing from BC-based WeAreOne or Florida-based Atomik Carbon, for example, perhaps the two other most well known suppliers of stand-alone carbon rims in the North American market. (Despite being based in deep-red, US CENTCOM Tampa, Atomik rims are made in Taiwan, as they openly acknowledge.) WeAreOne rims are now slightly cheaper than they were before, at $539 CDN a hoop at the time of writing, before shipping and any duties (international buyers) or applicable provincial taxes for Canadians.
Another direct driver of Hogtown’s decision to pursue Asian supply was a painfully poor experience with a Western hub brand, whom I will leave unmentioned. Almost overnight a couple of years ago — and after, not before, I had just placed another supply order for some small parts— we received a cursory email from these guys telling us that direct selling in future to Canadian builders as well as consumers would be ending, and that this company would be consolidating all future supply in large distributors within Canada. They claimed that the pivot largely involved shipping considerations. (Which multi-million dollar brand can’t figure out how to navigate routine international shipping with UPS, Fedex, or DHL?) In reality, this company probably wanted guaranteed larger orders, flush with the temporary overconfidence of high-pandemic sales, and the bigger distributors offered ready funds at least at the time that the decision was made. So be it. In any event, and relative to our look to Asia, even when this company was willing to supply us directly their insider pricing was never very competitive. It’s hard to run a successful business that way, especially when — as they ended up doing — they had the ability, by fiat, to change the terms of the deal at any moment for whatever reason. It was a crapshoot.
The quality proposition with Asian parts
What a lot of the diehard cheerleaders of Western-made products forget is that the specs don’t lie. What I mean is that the point “Tanner” (your fictional, generic, 26-year-old bike bro vendor rep) forgets is that you can talk until you’re blue in the face about the domestic advantages in performance. But at the end of the day, if something talks like it’s made from 7075 alloy and offers high-engagement with smooth bearings, if it walks like it’s the same, and if it flies on the trails like it’s the same, then it’s the same. Full stop. When something performs like a quality product and uses the same materials as a Western equivalent, then there’s no mirage there: the quality level is at parity. To insist otherwise is cynical self-promotion by the good floral-short-wearing squad at Tanner & Co.
Most quality makers of Asian hubs use 6061 or 7075 alloy for the hub shells and typically 7075 (aerospace aluminum) for the axles. They all use steel driverings and pawls. Nearly every maker of quality Asian carbon rims uses Japanese-sourced Toray carbon fibres for their layups (usually a combination of T700 and T800, as T800 alone is too brittle, while T1000+ is occasionally too stiff but mostly too expensive for a lot of the bike industry — even the Western companies). Each material represents the best practice in raws for their given applications. Western equivalents aren’t sprinkled with stardust that turns Western 7075 aerospace-quality alloy into Super or S-7075, while Western-laid rims with Toray don’t get an extra dosage of Japaneseness with every cured batch. Company Y in Squamish isn’t receiving bento boxes with their raw carbon.
In some cases, the Asian product is even better. Koozer comes to mind. Koozer is a Guangdong-located company making high-quality hubs and to a lesser extent making alloy rims and offering complete wheels. They sell direct or others sell their stuff to consumers through Ali Express, Amazon, eBay, and other platforms. They’ve had a basic website for a while now, the level of detail on which has only improved of late— alongside Koozer products. Koozer’s staple item has always been a loud, aggressive-sounding value mountain hub with 72 Points of Engagement (POE)/5-degree Engagement Angle (EA). They achieve as much with a 6-pawl, two-phase drive system around a steel, CNC’d 36-tooth drivering. The hubs can be taken apart (except for the bearings and axles) without tools, thanks to press-fit end caps — just like most of the Western-branded hubs of record. Koozer uses chromoly steel rear axles for most of their hubs, to improve long-term durability and stiffness even further, a feature many Western hubs lack and might benefit from. Indeed Whistler-based boutique machinist Pinner Machine Shop makes their Industry Nine “Forever” aftermarket axles precisely to address this perceived need for steel (or Ti) with the i9 hubs. We’ve built nine custom sets of wheels with Koozer since opening shop in early 2019, and I’m pleased to report zero issues with these wheelsets since then. It’s a simple, competitive, elegant hub, and it’s one we’ve explored since before we even made our formal look to the East.
The newest, 2023/24+ versions of the Koozer lineup are that much better. The main driveside seal has been replaced with a sturdier and more water-resistant version that also marginally lowers rotational drag; the newest end caps are labyrinth designs with better cross-compatibility across the Koozer range; and the bearing accommodations are close to aerospace-level spot-on perfect. I’ve had to pull out every trick in the book the odd time with Hope, for instance, despite Hope making a great hub, to fix axles that were made slightly too thick for their bearings or bearing shell housings that were made too tight or at slightly the wrong depth in relation to the axle shoulder-to-shoulder length in order to improve bearings’ interference-fit preload. (As the best industrial bearing companies, such as Japanese NSK, will tell anyone interested, preload dramatically affects the smoothness and more importantly durability of virtually any rolling element.) Admittedly the same can and does happen with Asian brands – though never, in my experience, with Koozer. Hope beautifully anodizes their hub shells, but quite frequently sends out cosmetically sloppy-looking machined end caps, showing production scratches, and which sometimes fit too tightly. The Koozer hubs, by contrast, in addition to looking sharp always seem to come with click-on o-rings that won’t fight you and potentially shred over time (this snug-cap phenomenon isn’t just limited to Hope among hub players). When Koozer makes a cosmetic mistake, it’s rare and usually on parts of the hub anodizing like the spoke holes on hub flanges that get covered by laced J-bend spokes, anyway. Such imperfection is almost invisible on a built wheel. Industry Nine sometimes suffers from premature bearing wear with the Hydra hubs; or, in the case of the 1/1 hubs, supplies them with what we view as so-so cartridges, in Enduro’s often (though hardly aways) forgettable ABEC-3 units. Koozer bearings are made by Asian companies NBK or S&S and consistently spin stiff, straight, very smooth, and silent —buttery, as good bearings ought to. All in a hubset that costs a fraction of what the Hydras run. Meantime, one could buy about ten sets of Koozer hubs for the price of Chris Kings. Yikes. Folks in Portland’s bike scene must be growing shade-grown greenbacks in their sustainable hipster gardens.
Furthermore, Koozer isn’t opposed to iteration (Chris King, I’m looking at you) or too cautious when iterating. They’ve just come out with a newfangled update to the long-time stalwarts the XM490 Pro and Boost XM390 Pro hubs. The new Boost XM450 Pro hubs use all of the 2023 innovations described, but increase engagement to a highly competitive 120 POE/3-degree EA, by rotating 6 pawls in two phases around a 60-tooth drivering instead of 36. (For those riders seeking even less drag in the XM450 chassis, three of these pawls can be removed, reducing the operation to one phase and 60 POE. Bontrager offers this choice with their premium MTB hubs.) This makes the Koozer XM450 snappier now than Spank Hex (Asian-made, by the way, in Taiwan; 102 POE/3.5-degree EA), Chris King (72 POE/5-degree EA), Hope with the Pro5 (108/3.33), and Industry Nine with the value 1/1 hubs (90/4). Indeed the Pro5, while an impressive hub overall, represents a legitimate but constrained improvement over the Pro4 (44/8.18). After so many seasons with the excellent Pro4 and amid competition like the Hydra or Onyx hubs offering virtually instant engagement, arguably Hope should have pushed the envelope more with the Pro5 and aimed for at least 120 POE, like Koozer. Hope’s stance that 108 POE is the magic number for tested durability rings hollow amid so much competitor evidence to the contrary. They’re either setting up a future Pro6, in stopping at just 108, or the nice folks in Barnoldswick perhaps lack a tickle of sharp-end design verve. The English, after all, are a plodding sort — with entrenched constitutions and bike hubs alike. But sometimes a Bill of Rights, with real, judicially enforceable teeth, and really high-engaging hubs are just what is needed. But each to their own.
What always goes right with Asian parts
With good Asian products, our experience is that the items always arrive from suppliers in a reasonable timeframe and that the quality level is consistently high. Certainly no lower than the Western competition, especially for what these items cost. You’re more likely to affordably find splashy anodizing options (such as pink, green, or gold) from Asian hubmakers. Asian ratchet-mech hubs tend to use a more streamlined, refined version of the system that DT Swiss pioneered years ago. (These designs fall somewhere between classic DT Star Ratchets and the new, patented Ratchet EXP.) Within such designs, Asian suppliers aren’t self-limiting as to engagement; the best-made Ratchets I’ve ever touched, period, are the 60-tooth CNC’d upgrade units that we offer with Oos hubsets. DT Swiss, by comparison, stubbornly insisted — until very recently — on capping out at 54, and their factory Ratchets, while always durable, sometimes look a touch rough. Asian carbon rims of quality always use Toray raw fibres imported from Japan, as even the nationalistic Chinese understand the mechanical and marketing value of using Japanese carbon. Asian carbon rims typically offer a greater selection of custom layups for the wheelbuilder or retail rider (UD, 12k, 3k, “Butterfly,” etc) within a given rim size and intended-use product spec.
Most Western companies instead only offer UD layups for each rim type. UD means “unidirectional” carbon layup, which is often then painted over (frames) or sometimes lacquered (rims). They sometimes intimate that UD is stronger and more uniform, if only because particularly raw UD rims “can’t disguise stuff,” to paraphrase the perspective. This is nonsense. If anything, the opposite applies about layup choice; the very different-looking 12k layup (it looks like a tight checkerboard) is considered military-ready for a reason. With some ultralight UD road rims, personally I want all the lacquer I can get for these thin hoops; lacquers help prevent UV penetration, damaging to carbon structures. In reality UD rims are inoffensive – they won’t polarize carbon buyers in the cycling community. It’s a business decision, aimed at expanding the gung-ho buying audience. There’s a lot of boring accountants or physiotherapists out there who want black on black on blacker. Further, UD is cheaper and faster to make (like hookless rim designs) and slightly lighter, two other bonuses for Western carbon makers. It’s a fact that carbon has advantages in wheels beyond light weight. It’s also a fact, though, that weight weenies continue to haunt the thinking of carbon rim makers.
What can go wrong with Asian supply
It’s of course the case that nothing is perfect, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Quality Asian parts are often close to a silver bullet, but few items in any industry are ever actually a silver bullet. There’s a few consistent issues that might present with Asian supply, and these should be acknowledged. But all are typically surmountable. These include:
>>A lack of seller support (Light Bicycle very much excluded), namely after-sales support, for the parts sold. This includes the availability of small spares in the event that something goes wrong, say, with a rear-hub axle. Language is sometimes a barrier in asking for these items — English skills vary from super impressive to paltry with Asian sellers — and admittedly the business culture in China is different from ours. There’s an art to communicating productively with classically Chinese businesspeople, especially when something isn’t up to snuff and you need a ready fix. Appearances matter more and legalities generally much less in China.
How we get around this: We typically buy spares of anything that we decide to sell — or ensure that we can in future — and we build very conscientiously. Further, we take in routine servicing under our Limited Service Warranty, included with all new builds, and any justifiable warranty claims (as fairly determined by us) on Asian parts and with curated-wheelset parts are handled in-house. Service is constant and routine, something any fine wheel seller should be set up and prepared for. Meanwhile, legitimate warranties shouldn’t be routine if you’re spec’ing and building right, but builders should still know how to navigate these once-in-a-while cases.
>>Warranties may be lacking or mere lip service. Addressed above.
>>Asian-made hubs may (or may not) come with minor cosmetic imperfections: hubs anodized before every imperfection has been machined/sanded out of hub alloys; some end caps (like Western ones) could have the odd scratch; anodizing may not always be blemish-free in certain richer colours – this often results from imperfect cleaning before the electro-chemical bath (the same applies to the shaggy dog look with Tanner, the Colorado bike bro rep, and his frosted tips). Carbon rims may have cosmetic flaking at holes or, more likely, practically harmless “tenting” of excess carbon/resins on top of the cured structural layers inside the rim channels (where this is totally out of sight and dormant). The removal of the production mandrel may leave a few tiny and non-structural whisper-like dimples (cosmetic voids) on the outside of carbon rims, before finishing is performed. Needless to say these same issues can present and do with some Western hubs and rims as well. The difference – in theory – is that Western hubs or rims are supposed to come virtually perfect, on the logic that with their higher pricing these companies can better absorb production shrink and better perform QC checks, driven by their “absolute” commitment to great presentation for the end customer. In theory.
How we get around this: We’re skilled touch-up artists in the rare situations where this is necessary. Expert and circumspect gentle use of sandpaper goes a long way. As does a plastic tool to flick out a tiny spot of loose resin, for example, before building up rims; similarly a surgical touch-up dab with a small bit of carbon-ready epoxy on a rim can work a permanent treat. As noted above, tiny blemishes to anodizing mean next to nil if the spokes will cover them. Even raw, unanodized alloy (let alone mostly perfectly anodized 6061/7075 alloy) is more fatigue- and corrosion-resistant than people think; aluminum oxide, after all, the byproduct when raw alloy is exposed to the elements, is what sandpaper is made of. SANDPAPER!
Western companies love to rant and rave about the supposed issues with cosmetic overspills of resins inside some Chinese carbon — but then they present little to no proof of actual failures or performance degradations resulting from this. Hidden, miniscule voids in Chinese carbon — which may also exist in Western-made carbon — present theoretical weaknesses that you’re unlikely to ever see issues with while riding, as long as the layers aren’t silly and wafer thin (we would never spec something so risky) or the rims abused. These items aren’t planes or Formula 1 parts, which are stressed to the edge and back and present life-or-death risks to their operators. Most carbon rims have a layered safety margin that’s extensive; were these items vulnerable, they would implode during initial high-tensioning in a proper handbuild or amid safety testing/pre-stressing of spokes, which we always perform on every wheel at Hogtown Spokes. Pre-stressing temporarily sends massive kilogram overload forces (KgF) through wheel structures and is critical to quality assurance and wheel durability. Carbon doesn’t fatigue, and this step doesn’t add to wear. It’s instead a mechanical conditioning process for spoke steel and a tensile-strength litmus test for the entirety of a handbuilt wheel’s constituent parts. Meanwhile, some Western sellers or builders of “perfecto” domestic carbon will skip rim washers with their builds, really for absolutely no good reason that I’m aware of. Carbon rims plus washer-free use of alloy nipples can invite galvanic corrosion of these nipples. At a minimum, skipping washers concentrates stresses that much more on highly stressed spoke holes.
A supremely well-built wheel with very slight cosmetic curing imperfections in the resin will almost always be stronger and more viable long-term than even a perfect Western hoop sloppily or quickly built up by hand, or with poor spoke-nipple articulation angles, and then abused (ridden beyond what it’s intended for) by a Western thrasher out on the trails. Skipping tire inserts or running too-low pressures — inescapably, practices that some down-home stalwarts of the domestic carbon rims love to brag about in the bike forums — could also quickly dissolve the durability from even the most perfectly molded carbon hoops. The RCAF versus the US Air Force comes to mind here. In Canada, we have arguably better aircraft mechanics and possibly pilots in our military and probably fewer crashes proportionately because we need to and have to: smaller budgets and non-Gucci tech mandate even better people and processes on the regular. Working with Chinese parts and being prepared to troubleshoot the occasional small problem makes one a better wheel technician. Take with a grain of salt the claimed expertise of wheel technicians who do nothing but easy builds (straight-gauge or simple butted spokes with stiff, thick rims) using luxury parts, which they then seldom welcome back for servicing. This is optical perfection and expertise (and customer service) only, not substantive.
Ultimately, we don’t sell anything at Hogtown Spokes unless I have confidence that the items present very well overall for the buyer and will hold up under reasonable long-term use conditions.
>>Even the best Asian hubs are sometimes assembled by non-cyclists or assembled too quickly. The parts may be great and the designs great, but bearings are occasionally pressed in too quickly or inexpertly or the wrong grease(s) or too much grease used. We generally avoid adjustable-preload hubs for various reasons, but I’ve tragically seen the odd adjustable-preload Asian hub assembled with permanent threadlocker used on the threads. This is a service disaster waiting to happen. But again, virtually all of these things are fixable. We upgrade the bearings and re-lubricate most of the Asian hubs that we sell, before these products ever get laced into a wheel. Everything gets checked and tested by us for operation before put up for sale. The challenges mentioned are no reason to avoid Asian products. If you expect something to come all done up for you and ready to just push out the door after a comatose build process, then you shouldn’t be in the custom wheel business in the first place. You belong instead on the factory assembly line machine-building wheels or in a bro-style local bike shop.
>>Bad Asian hubs — NOT what we sell — from shady suppliers may violate IP rights. Such items are counterfeits or knock-offs. We have absolutely zero interest in these illegal items and a firm opposition to ever selling them.
But inspired-by — even aggressively inspired-by — designs manifestly are not knock-offs, counterfeits, or illegals. US Patents, for example, have no general territorial applicability in Canada. Even a really closely emulating design made in Asia is lawful to use and sell here if the original maker in the US never bothered to seek international IP protection. This isn’t shady by the Asian copier or by us: it’s just shrewd, lawful business decision-making. Good businesspeople exploit any lawful advantage while also being generally as ethical as they possibly can be.
What the pro-Western perspective amounts to in the end
I don’t say this lightly, but I say this honestly. The ardently pro-Western perspective is self-serving and business-driven in all cases. In certain cases it’s economically protectionist, and it’s even nativist in extreme cases (by some stalwart buyers of these goods, not by the sellers). A basic perusal of Pinkbike on many days proves as much. One gets the full panoply of these self-justifications by reading vendor releases/comments and then reader feedback in Pinkbike’s Wild West comments section. You can’t tell me that something sophisticated and intelligent – versus nativist and reactionary – is what’s driving the idiot rider from Vermont or Red Deer who wants to rail on Pinkbike, quite short on proof, against “China carbon” or supposed Asian “cheese” hubs. Americans are the ultimate deal-seeking wallet consumers; Costco is an American company for a reason. Albertans — as a verifiable political fact — fundamentally disagree with sales taxes (as do many US consumers). If these folks nevertheless object in strong terms to Asian-made goods, shirking the very real possible savings, what else but economic nativism could be driving their objections, short of proof of systemic issues with Asian-made parts?
Western carbon rim companies love to talk about the quality-control difference with their items, but of course they spottily supply independent data. Few businesses publish failure rates publicly, and few of the same companies will tell you who’s verifying their supposed quality control – beyond unnamed or incompletely named domestic “engineering teams” doing “extensive testing.” I have it on good information that at least one such company, making domestic carbon, has historically had a paltry actively certified engineering staff on permanent employ. Fair enough – as even fancy, reliable carbon isn’t rocket science. Bloated staffs would be overkill, even for insurance purposes. Competent wheel technicians and builders with passion, not just engineers, can do carbon and hub design really, really well. And they do. But that’s my whole point: Chinese companies don’t dispute this or infuse their own products with a professional marketing grandeur that just isn’t there behind the scenes and in the P.Eng registries. Western brands strongly intimate that only carbon or hubs made in the West will last; that only the West can meet the professional and training bars that facilitate durable consumer products. Wrong. The proof is in the results. Asian hubs and rims usually survive handedly. Not to mention that many Asian carbon sellers list all of the European, JIS, or ISO testing standards that their rims have met. Many hubs come with Rockwell hardness ratings or fatigue data. You have to try to break a lot of this stuff, either intentionally or effectively through negligence in use or maintenance practices. Just as with the Western-made stuff.
Western companies selling high-end hubs and more typically high-end carbon rims or wheels love to brag about offering (limited) “lifetime warranties.” Light Bicycle also offers one, for an extra sum per rim. But this isn’t because Western (or Light) items are invulnerable. These warranties are ultimately financially wasteful and environmentally destructive exercises in marketing surrender to a modern, entitled consumer mindset in cycling that — in a fit of high contradiction — asks for opposing wants. These consumer insurgents want lifetime warranties, on the one hand, but also want Western brands to offer cheaper products while ensuring their permanent corporate solvency in the market. Huh? Those asks usually can’t (and shouldn’t) co-exist in logical business. Lifetime warranties aren’t necessary or productive, and this is why we don’t partake at Hogtown Spokes. I refuse to give in to the bullying perspective in the comments section of Pinkbike that to “get with the times,” as one user put it recently, you need to essentially make your warranty doors wide and permissive — aka revolving. No thank you.
The only wheelset I’ve ever seen English mechanical engineer and carbon and bearing guru Hambini give a near-perfect balance rating to is an Asian-made one. The root cause of good balance within a rim is quality and uniformity in the layup. His review of Elite Wheels’ DRIVE 40 could not have been more positive versus most of his honest and scathing “reams.”
Meanwhile, ENVE, prince brand of the Western domestic set, will for a while continue be dogged in MTB comments sections — and perhaps unfairly so — by Paul Aston’s notorious review on Pinkbike, in February 2019. Aston needs to be taken with a grain of salt; he holds some views that aren’t always supportable by good information. Namely, as respectfully as I can word this, as a professional hand wheelbuilder versed in the industry’s best assembly practices, I consider his views on deliberate low spoke tension to be akin to junk science. (Aston indicated his willing flirtation with the concept in an interview on the UK-based Downtime podcast.) Aston also breaks a good amount of gear — as his new independent review project has amply shown. Nevertheless, two consecutive major failures in one testing period is still two speedy failures, Aston’s experience with ENVE. This is why his review is worth discussing — albeit my overall take on ENVE as a brand is more nuanced than his.
I’ve personally worked on ENVE heavy-duty carbon. My own experience is that the product I personally touched was full of cosmetically flecking carbon around most spoke holes (when this occurs, the cause is often cutting with a worn drill bit or a failure to deburr holes after cutting or both), as with the e-rated rims that Aston had managed to break. However, this didn’t affect anything, and the wheels in question are still extremely strong to this day. ENVE makes a sound and thoughtful product overall, and ENVE’s proprietary rubber rim strips — also destroyed by Aston — are objectively brilliant tech. On balance and in fairness to ENVE, their Product VP, Jake Pantone, did say in reply to Aston’s review that “perfection is a myth. For ENVE, it’s certainly the goal, but we’ve never pinned a label on ourselves claiming we are perfect.” That’s a sincere statement, I think.
The M7s I tuned after Aston had rattled greater Salt Lake were honestly no better, if not worse, than your average Asian-made high-end carbon MTB rims. Aston’s experience sucked — but I’m not sure ENVE is necessarily actually responsible, and certainly I wouldn’t read anything systemic and structural-mechanical into his unfortunate daliance with Utah carbon. At the same time, the UX, if you will — the entirety of the ENVE product experience, including its comsetic aspects — left a bit wanting for me. This arguably isn’t acceptable for something so expensive, and such a value-based critique quite seemingly informed Aston’s scathing review of the brand.
My ultimate take is that it was hard to justify the $2,600+ USD original retail price tag (just for rims, hubs, spokes, washers, and nipples, and I believe the rim strips, too) for what I worked on, given what else is available if one can get past this fervent MTB bias in North America toward domestic supply. That much is clear to me. I respectfully disagree with Pantone’s defense of ENVE’s value proposition, despite, like Pantone, also being someone who never wants to run a discount, non-premium brand. My take on ENVE is as thoughtful and nuanced as I can make it, and nuanced is the most important word here. I can’t speak, at this point, to Aston’s larger perspective, if any, on domestic versus Asian-made carbon. Nevertheless, my point in mentioning this whole controversial episode is that the debate is hardly — hardly — clear-cut (pun intended) and definitively pointing in the domestic direction as correct, as the industry’s powers-that-be and most vocal marketing champions would suggest. Hence my use of the word “nuanced” in talking about ENVE M-series rims. There’s plainly no bright lines in this cycling pseudo culture war and lots of parity in basic quality and UX between Western and Eastern products.
But the net of this is that there manifestly is consumer choice, a good thing.
Critical faculties are everything.
The Western perspective is ultimately and unmistakably self-involved — as it should be, as a free-market business perspective or consumer choice. The Western Canadian business perspective in cycling is perhaps even more so. WeAreOne no doubt genuinely believes in the quality of their items and possibly that they’re serving some type of greater good with their Canadian-made carbon. They depict themselves as Canada’s pioneer gift to cycling carbon. They proclaim on their website (somewhat ungrammatically): “The entire organization believes in growing our manufacturing capability in Kamloops and hopes this inspires other companies to consider doing the same thing. It would be amazing to one day collaborate and increase the quality in the industry with other like-minded companies that making their products here and sharing these values.”
But this myth-making needs to be qualified by someone who doesn’t work there and doesn’t operate within the BC bike bubble. Their marketing notwithstanding, WeAreOne probably isn’t engaging in some type of BC-led exercise in retaking manufacturing for Canadians by Canadians. WeAreOne taking back carbon for the people does nothing to assist me, for one. Were WeAreOne centrally committed to the greater national good of the industry and riding community they would do more and slash prices dramatically, as a compensation “thank you” for the protectionist tax regime that they enjoy inside the cozy BC commercial sporting ecosystem. But of course they won’t and nor should they — they run a growing business. I only make that statement facetiously and sympathezing, in the end, with their stance. They’re competitors of Hogtown Spokes and NOBL alike. But just admit to the entirety of the holistic motivations obvious and at play in driving any brand, without necessarily insisting on straining for more. Their marketing may not make the mark that they think it makes with the sophisticated, wily observer. Their talking point about the WeAreOne “Revolution” comes off as a little much at times, to put it politely. WeAreOne and others are decent people making absolutely terrific rims and other carbon items. No doubt there. But is their stuff absolutely better than the competition, at home and abroad, or is it serving of a higher purpose within the Canadian recreational sector? Both points are extremely debatable, in my opinion.
In summation…
Our experience with Chinese parts has been overwhelmingly positive, and our commitment will be permanent and ongoing. As will our commitment to good domestic parts, if offered at fair prices and with fair terms in the case of B2B arrangements. Only an idiot would question my personal patriotism; supporting Chinese parts and grassroots Chinese merchants is not the same thing as supporting the Chinese government. The Politburo is no friend of mine or ours and never will be. Democracy, human and civil rights, civility, personal and public legality, and transparency are the West’s enduring gifts to the international community and humankind. But when China is eventually free, those now-free Chinese bike merchants will still be selling Chinese parts. Parts that we’ll line up to buy, then as now.
If someone wants to spend more for the Western name prestige and brand hype, when an exactly or nearly exactly similar Asian product is available for less or with even better specs, then, sure, we’ll happily take their money. But as honourable technicians and retailers, we’ll often recommend the Asian option(s) first. That’s frankly what we would ride ourselves these days, in the way of carbon rims or high-performance hubs.
-Jake Brennand
