Despite the intense rain outside the VO Imports bunker, Springtime has arrived. DC is awash in the beauty of cherry blossoms, bike paths are getting crowded with kids on their first ride with Mom and Dad, and the satisfyingly popular Brevet and Grand Fondo season is in full effect across the country.
Of course that means everyone is buying stuff. Stuff that we ran out of.
Here's a rundown of new items added, and some restocking dates:
- We added some rim SKU's to the site on Tuesday, after seeing some nice 700c narrow-ish rims at the Taipei Cycle Show. Double wall, high polish, with eyelets, at reasonable prices. ETA on this project is July. If everything goes well, we may be able to have the mfg roll them in 650b. No promises though- most rim makers are reluctant to roll that diameter due to the size of the market. They have no problem making 650b disc brake rims for Pacentis' mountain bike tire- Go figure...... The Weinmann and Sun rims on the Velo Orange retail site are not available through VO Imports- Chris is sourcing them from the same distros you can buy from; there is no margin or advantage for us to sell to dealers and framebuilders.
- I canceled our Nitto stem order. it does not make sense for us to sell any longer. The Technomic is available through most distributors anyway. We are still stocking their handlebars and other parts here and there though.
- We saw the Porteur rack, Constructeur rear rack and Decaleur samples in Taiwan for the first time last week. The samples arrived this past Tuesday at VO Imports HQ so we can do a final fit-up before we pull the trigger. It's a good thing we did: we need to go over a few minor and maddening details before we commit to production. Shipment is 60 days after that. I promised the racks will be here 'by June 09' in January. I'm still hopeful with that ETA.
- The Dia-Compe Guidonnete Levers, cable clips and brown grips are all on order. after seeing them at their booth in Taipei. I have no ETA, and pricing is a gross estimate.
- Our threadless headset was delayed due to an expired licensing agreement between Velo Orange and Cane Creek, much to our surprise. I expect them to be here May 1, along with the French thread BB's and fill in BSA thread BBsets, including a 103mm length spindle for the now ubiquitous 'fixxie' conversions.
- Saddles should be here in 10-15 days. Same ETA with the GC gold brakes, stems, seatposts, Milano bars, bottle cage mounts, threadless stem adaptors, Tektro fill in, steel chainguards, track pedals, brown grips, and more ring locks. And more. More. More. More. Annette is going to have a cow when she sees the next invoice......
I know it's a little bad timing, but this next shipment will cover us for the Spring. There are backup PO's in place as well. Trying to forecast purchasing decisions 4-6 months out with exponential growth is not easy. We were caught by surprise by many of these items.
Photo credit: Scripsi Scriptum on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoliv/3395901089/sizes/l/
4 comments:
If you continue to allow your pipeline to empty you will create a drought in your field of commerce. This in turn will decrease your annual yield. Normally this could increase the over all value of a crop, but other farmer's pipelines are still flowing freely and consumers will moved to new fields.
Is the new Taiwanese decaleur with metric tubing like the Grenouille decaleur?
Is it replacing the Grenouille decaleur and if yes is it compatible with Grenouille bag holder part?
The Stainless Taiwan Decaleur and bag holder is made of Metric tubing, same as the cromoly Japanese Grenoullie Decaleurs.
The Taiwan bag holder is cross compatible with the cromoly Japanese decaleur, and the stainless US made decaleurs.
The Taiwan decaleurs are cross compatible with the Japanese bag holder. They DO NOT work with the US made decaleurs, as that is SAE measured tubing.
anything else that needs to be clarified?
Thanks for continuing to license the Cane Creek compression-ring patent.
Chris King's refusal to do so makes their threadless headsets crap.
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