The Good, The Bad, and The Inventory

Spoiler alert – there actually is no bad in this post.  

MOQ.  Among all the senseless, technically questionable acronyms in cycling, none has caused us to stay awake at night like MOQ.  Minimum Order Quantity.  You can either order at or above the MOQ, or you can order nothing.  In many ways, the first frame we sold was the scariest – we were committed to supplying that frame to that customer, which meant that we were committed to buying the MOQ.  Fortunately, we sold plenty of frames and things went orders of magnitude more smoothly than our doomsday darkest scenarios might have played out.   But the MOQ, she’s no cheap date, and though we sold a lot of frames, we didn’t pre-sell every frame we’d committed to ordering.  Meaning that we have some unsold frames headed to us.  

Through January 19, these frames are available for pre-sale at $864. After 1/19, any remaining unsold frames will be available for $981.  “But Dave,” I can hear you asking already, ”normally when people get stuck with inventory, the prices go down.  It’s simple supply and demand.”  Yes, it is simple supply and demand, but not along those parameters.  We sold a bunch of road frames during cross season, which is a little bit like selling abstinence at a swinger’s convention.  Actually it’s a lot like that.  Our pre-order season occurs when demand is at its natural ebb – see multitudinous previous posts touching on the subject of selling counter-seasonally, the mutually advantageous nature of pre-ordering, etc.  By the time March or April gets here, and everyone who hasn’t got his frame for this year sorted out is looking for one, we’ll be thrilled to be able to help if we can, but our costs will have gone up, supply will have gone down, and demand will be at its peak.  It’s not at all that we’re going to try and take advantage of people in a fix for a frame (and it would be the height of delusion for us to think that we’re capable of occupying a space in the market to be able to do that), it’s that our original deal was the best deal we could possibly offer, and we’ll continue to offer the best deal we can, but we won’t have the ability to offer the same deal in April that we do in October. 

In simple terms, the early birds got the worm and got themselves a phenomenal deal.  The people who commit before 1/19 will still get a phenomenal deal, and so will the people who buy after that.  But the people who’ve bought already get the most phenomenal deal, and have guaranteed themselves a frame in their size.  We don’t have a ton of inventory headed our way – just a very limited supply in the more popular frame sizes: 52, 54, 56 and 58.

We are doing a similar deal with wheels, where our pre-order sales were very healthy, and we are actually choosing to take a bit of inventory.   Especially with the SOB build, we feel that we’ve got a product for which there’s a lot of demand and not a lot of supply.  Big dudes need love too.  So we have RFSW wheel sets in the SOB 24/2 spoke build vailable until 1/19 for $754, and thereafter for $856.  FSW wheel sets are available through 1/19 for $380, and thereafter for $431. 

And since we have some inventory of both frames and wheelsets, you can also elect to build one of the Wheelhouse frames into a Max Perkins.

The kicker on all of these items is of course that we aren’t going to have limitless supply, so when they’re gone, they’re gone – which may happen long before 1/19.  

The shopping cart functions on the site have been updated, and if you would like to reserve a frame or wheel set, by all means please do.  

Once again, thank you to all of our customers, to the teams who have partnered with us, to everyone who’s demo’d our stuff, and to everyone who visits and reads the site.  We are confident that we’re developing a new way for riders to race on great gear without it costing them an arm and a leg, and we’re excited to have so many of you along for the ride.  

Race Smart.