Dropper posts: (Almost) everything you need to know

Jack Pittens is the co-founder 9point8, an Ontario-based bicycle component brand known for its dropper posts and other innovative products. 

• How did 9point8 get its start? What is your background?
• For dropper posts, is there an advantage to using a sealed cartridge vs. one that’s tunable, or another design? 
• How do you make a dropper post lightweight? Do today’s buyers even care about the weight of a dropper post? 
• Why do you assemble 9point8 dropper posts in house vs. outsourcing production to Asia? 
• How often should riders service their dropper posts? What does service involve?
• Do you think adding electronics to dropper posts is a good idea? What are the pros and cons?
• Why do two similar dropper post diameters — 30.9mm and 31.6mm exist? And why are 27.2mm diameter dropper posts so hard to find?
• Why are seatpost head designs so complicated?
• How did the 9point8 INVRS pedal design come about?  
• What else is 9point8 working on?

Get more info at 9point8.ca. An automated transcript is provided below.

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Automated transcript

Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Jack Pittens. Jack is the co founder at 9point8, an Ontario-based bicycle component brand known for his dropper posts and other innovative products. Thanks for joining me, Jack.

Jack Pittens
Glad to be on the show.

Jeff Barbe
So tell us a little bit about 9.8 How did the company get started, and what’s sort of your background?

Jack Pittens 0:28
So I have a background in mechanical design, worked for a lot of years in industrial automation, decided with my partner, Steve, at that time to to branch out and do our own business, but to plan for success, we started by doing what we know, which was automation design.

Jeff Barber 0:57
What is automation design?

Jack Pittens 0:59
So we design manufacturing equipment for a variety of industries, from pharmaceutical drugs, heavy industry, automotive so for example, ball top, ice cream cones, the equipment that makes those are the stuff that we’ve designed. We’ve designed automation systems to do assembly of fuel tanks, and it’s very widespread. So it’s a exciting area to be working in, if you like challenges. But when we started the business, though, we set a goal to say, well, we’d really like to have a business that we also own the intellectual property that we’re designing. So in our regular business, where we’re doing contract engineering, we don’t own the designs we create. So we started off by doing a project in the tire industry. We had a lot of experience building equipment for manufacturing tires, but that all happened at the time of the major issue in the US with SUVs rolling over because of tires blowing out, and that brought that whole industry to a standstill. And so we sold our portion of it to a company we partnered with and decided to go in a different direction, and that’s where we decided to get into bicycle stuff, because we both were passionate about mountain bike riding, and we thought we could do something there. So kind of leading up to that, I had had a number of injuries with my neck due to over the bar instances and so on. And I decided, you know, we really need a much better dropper post in the market. And this was at the time where there was practically nothing in the marketplace. Yeah. What year was this? We started working on our first dropper in 2013 okay. And we launched it in 2014 at that time, Rockshox had just dropped their first dropper post on the market, and everything else was pretty antiquated stuff, if you will. Yes, so our first dropper post, which we call the pulse, was not a big hit other than it. There was, let’s say, a niche group of people who really liked it, but most people didn’t get it. So for example, we had Pinkbike review it, and they didn’t get it.

Jeff Barber 3:39
What was wrong with it? What did people not like about it?

Jack Pittens 3:43
Well, it had a feature that we called Stepping so it was a hydraulic dropper post, but if you push the lever to an initial detent, it would step down six millimeters, okay, and you could ratchet through the entire travel like that. So, but it wasn’t done mechanically. It was all done hydraulically. So it was it worked really well. We I still have people I know who are still writing it to this day. So it’s 12 year old product or so, or 10 year old, whatever that is, and but it was a challenge for us. It was a learning curve. It was expensive to make. Margins were not good, but anyways, it was a learning curve. And like we said, the market at that time really just wanted a dropper that was either up or down, and this had a lot of complication in it to create a function that they didn’t get. So we went back to the drawing board, and we basically made a list of what to what would the ultimate dropper have in terms of requirements, capabilities, performance and so on. And then from that list, had. A lot of brainstorming sessions to figure out, how do we achieve those goals? And based on those discussions, we came up with the current dropper post that we’re still selling, which is based around what we call the drop lock break. So instead of using hydraulics to position the post, we have an expanding break that is spring energized. And when you operate the lever, it takes the spring pressure off the brake and allows the post to freely move up and down through its travel. Okay, so it gets rid of all of the hydraulics related issues. The Post cannot become spongy the you know, if your cable breaks, or whatever, the post locks up in its current position, the amount of air pressure used to move it. So the the main spring getting it to return is just air pressure, but it’s pretty low. Typically 25 psi, so not not your typical hundreds of psi, pretty low pressure. So stress on components and so on are different. So, so we launched that in 2016 I think we were voted by pink bike as one of the nominees for Best innovative product of the year. Pink bike. Never heard of them. Never heard of them. A Yeah. Anyways, yeah, okay. Anyway. So that was a some nice recognition. And then we were the first company to take a post beyond 150 travel. So we we released a 175 and 200 travel when everybody else was still at 150 it was funny, at that time, we had licensed race face to license our technology and make their own version of our post. And, you know, we let them know what we were doing, and they came back and says, there’s nobody is going to want a 200 dropper post. That’s crazy. And, oh, it was once we launched it. It was our biggest seller. Oh, wow, yeah, because, because it was the only one in the marketplace. You know, these days we’re up to 240 travel, I believe is the longest that’s out there. And I think it’s pushing the envelope, but I’m sure there are riders out there, like, we’ve had requests for more than 200mm/

Jeff Barber 7:26
Yeah, I ride a 240 on on one of my bikes. I’m tall, so yeah, and there’s people taller than me, so yep.

Jack Pittens 7:34
At the time, one of the biggest challenges was bicycle frames were not engineered considering the dropper post, so the amount of insertion into the frame, the height of the seat tube were all challenges to fitting a long dropper in there. Now a smart consumer can pick a a bike that has an uninterrupted seat post and a low seat tube length such that they are not restricted by the geometry of the bike to get the amount of travel you want into it right. For example, just for fun, we we were at sea otter just recently, and we had a demo program going in. We threw a 200 millimeter dropper into a dirt jump bike. Oh, wow. So, you know, it’s, it was a crazy amount of travel on a small bike, but it fitted. And, you know, we were trying to get bikes that would accommodate the largest range of people, even if they didn’t want to ride a dirt jump bike, it was our small bike.

Jeff Barber 8:44
That background is really helpful. You know, we want to talk about dropper posts. And obviously, 9.8 is an innovator in this, you know, with longer travel and with the design. I mean, listening to you talk too, it’s like we take for granted now that dropper posts, for the most part, they’re all infinitely adjustable. But in the beginning they weren’t right. I mean, it sounds like some of your earliest one was stepped and some of them, I guess some of them, were completely up or down. You couldn’t, like, have it halfway up or down?

Jack Pittens 9:22
Yeah, the the good old pin in a hole, right? So basically, and the optional model had a third hole in it, so you could drop it an inch or whatever it was to the to that intermediate position. But otherwise, yeah, you know, when they originally came out, you know, people were still trying to figure out, what did they want out of a dropper post, right? But, you know, we we kind of figured that to position is somewhat limiting. It might be acceptable for some, but there’s going to be others who who want more out of it. And I. Think those experience in writing a dropper post and using it to its maximum and not just thinking about it, well, I just need to drop it when I’m going to do something sketchy downhill, but otherwise, leave it up. You know, I tend to look at the dropper posts from the opposite perspective of when do I need it raised? Otherwise I have it lowered to some degree. Always it’s, you know, it’s either an inch down or all the way down or somewhere in between. But I only raise it up when I’m doing a climb that’s not overly technical, you know.

Jeff Barber 10:40
Yeah, just smooth ground. I mean, if you’re pedaling, say you’re on like a road for a minute or something, yeah, you just want to, you want to pedal hard.

Jack Pittens 10:48
Yeah. And we’ve also, and this is one of the features I liked about our pulse with the stepper feature in it was we’d actually set the post up higher than our ergonomic height position. It was set up so that if you’re climbing on the nose of the saddle, that was your optimum position. But then I knew that two clicks down was my ergonomic height, and, you know, four or five clicks down was my kind of flow position, if you will, and and all the way down was, you know, pointing downhill sort of thing. So, you know, I think there’s still opportunity to pursue that. But I think the market place has got so used to the ubiquitous, infinitely adjustable dropper post, and they set it where they want it, and that works for 99% of the people. So, right?

Jeff Barber 11:43
Yeah. Well, you mentioned drop lock, which is the system that 9.8 uses. That’s it’s different from the other ones. I mean, most other posts that people are going to be looking at, they’re either like a sealed cartridge based situation. Hydraulic is that, right? Hydraulic? Is that what you call it? It’s air, though, right?

Jack Pittens 12:03
Well, they use air or nitrogen as the spring. Okay, they use hydraulic fluid in a in a sealed cylinder with a piston and a rod in it to to to do the positioning, and then there’s a hydraulic valve that allows oil flow to go from the top to the bottom side of the piston, usually external, but it’s, in essence, if you want to equate it to, it’s, it’s your office chair mechanism for right?

Jeff Barber 12:35
That’s what I always thought, it’s like an office chair, yeah?

Jack Pittens 12:40
And it works well. Hydraulic fluid. When there is no air in it is pretty stiff. The problem is, is that system requires either a double rod, one out both ends, which doesn’t exist in a draw for post, for obvious reasons, or it requires a floating piston to to allow air pressure to absorb the differences in volume as the cylinder strokes, because as the as the piston rod comes out of The cylinder as you’re extending it, the volume of the oil and in that system is changing, and that needs to be compensated for. And that leads to the fundamental challenge with that arrangement is that you have pressure, keeping it pressurized. But if you put any load into the system that’s trying to extend it externally. It’s it, it will quickly overcome that preload pressure. And then the system goes into vacuum. And then when the system goes into vacuum, that’s where one of two things can happen, either a air is pulled through the seals into it, and then it gets spongy from that, but also oil can have a component of moisture in it. And when you take oil and expose it to vacuum, the moisture content in there can vaporize. And now you’ve created air when prior to that, there was no air in the system. It was solid. But now, even though you didn’t leak air into it, it now has air in it. And then you get the ubiquitous, spongy post, which which does exactly what you don’t want it to do. You put weight on it, and it drops, and you take your weight off, and it comes up, and it’s in your way, you know. So that was one of the top items on our checklist of why we developed drop lock is so that we inherently didn’t have that problem. Is that basically, the the locking mechanism works equally in both directions. So you can. Pull up on the post with hundreds of pounds like our quality control inspection is, is that they have a capacity of 800 pounds before leaving the factory. So

Jeff Barber 15:12
So 800 pounds pressing down?

Jack Pittens 15:15
Yeah, or lifting up. We don’t test it lifting up, but it works, yeah, in both directions.

Jeff Barber 15:19
Well that’s a common question people have is like, can I put my bike in the stand, you know, and hold it by the post, or you can hang the bike with a dropper post on it? What are your thoughts on that?

Jack Pittens 15:32
I do it all the time, so I don’t think it’s a problem. I would recommend again, that that’s I’m speaking for our products. It’s not a problem for our products. You would want to use some kind of a soft jaw, nothing that’s going to image the stanchion for our product. I only extended enough to get the jaws around it. But if I was doing it on anybody else’s product, I would want to fully extend it so that I’m not putting any load trying to extend the post, obviously.

Jeff Barber 16:09
And there’s like, it has a stop like at the top, kind of where it’s going to be. If it’s fully extended.

Jack Pittens 16:15
You can’t then put it into a vacuum situation and create an internal problem for the damper but and whether it is, like the older versions of posts still some exist, or whatever, that the body of the post is hydraulic, or whether it’s now the much more common cartridge, they all still work on the same principles. It’s just with the cartridge system, it’s generally not serviceable. It’s generally higher, higher pressures, because you’re now putting a cylinder inside of your body, as opposed to using your body as the cylinder. So that’s driving up all of the pressures and forces higher. But obviously it’s designed to do it. It’s, it works, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s just upping those, those forces even more, but, but, yeah, now some brands may discourage clamping a post by the stanchion. You know, I can’t speak for other brands, but in my mind, to get the the stanchion strong enough to handle the the stresses, not just the one time stresses, but also fatigue stresses from continuous use of the dropper to meet the ISO requirements, assuming that, you know, every brand out there is trying to meet those ISO requirements for bicycle components, you know basically that that tube is going to be strong enough to handle the forces to Hold a bike up, right?

Jeff Barber 18:02
You just might be introducing, it sounds like some air into the system and, and we should mention too, I think so some brands have tried to to mitigate this, or like, I think the Bike Yoke has a way where you can release that air.

Jack Pittens 18:18
Yes, so they have two. They have two versions of the post. The original one had a manual bleeding system that if you would get air introduced into the hydraulic circuit and it became spongy, you could bleed it. And then they have a second model that came out a number of years later that does this automatically as you cycle the post. Now, I believe those tend to be sensitive to orientation, so if you put your bike upside down, you’re probably going to need to bleed it, but it’s that functionality is in there. Yeah, so, but yeah, that’s, you know, to me, that is a far better solution than having to send your post in to get it serviced or having to rebuild it yourself again. It was not our goal to inherently have a system that was maintenance intensive, and that’s why we came out, like I said, with our drop block design, was to avoid that whole issue altogether. But, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, they definitely have, like you definitely has one of the better products in the marketplace that’s hydraulic based.

Jeff Barber 19:36
Okay, well, so one of the claims, I think that that 9point8 has made at some point, is having one of the lightest, or the lightest dropper posts available. And it’s interesting, because dropper posts are actually the example people love to give in mountain biking, about, like, weight doesn’t matter anymore, you know, like we have. Proposed, and the bikes perform better. And so we don’t really care about weight, but some people do still care about weight. And if you got a choice between a lightweight dropper and a heavy dropper, I think a lot of us would choose the lightweight one. So I’m curious, how do you make a dropper post lightweight? Like, what? What is all the weight that’s involved in the system and like, where can you kind of optimize that?

Jack Pittens 20:25
Okay, I’ll start off again with our product. We had done a bunch of testing on our test rigs to understand fatigue resistance and so on, as well as finite element analysis and so on on it and understood where there’s material in the post that isn’t necessary to meet the strength requirements. So, for example, the lower tube, because we have keyways in the lower tube to keep the saddle from spinning around, those grooves create a a reduced wall thickness behind those grooves, everywhere else except where those grooves are, the wall thickness is thicker, and it’s not necessary. It doesn’t so we have a bushing that rides on that surface. So we need to keep enough area for that bushing to ride on, but otherwise there’s a lot of extra material in there. So one of the key features on our lightweight dropper is there is additional broaching operations to remove extra material out of that tube, so it’s a thinner wall. Now we limit the strokes on our lightweight to 150 because that’s sort of the limit that we can go to and still have a comfortable factor of safety on strength and endurance for fatigue.

Jeff Barber 21:53
So if you also have to worry about the clamp force, I mean, in the old days, maybe it’s not a problem anymore, but like, if you tighten down your seat collar too much, it’s going to start to pinch the post, right?

Jack Pittens 22:06
Yeah, there were definitely posts in the market that were very sensitive to that, and I think a lot of that came about because I don’t think it gets talked about that much anymore, but in the early days of driver posts, one of the parking lot tests was grabbing the saddle and seeing, how much does it twist freely, how much does it move side to side, front to back, freely? And that’s all clearances in the bushings and in the keyway system. So if you used lower tolerances to to conveniently use available bushings, keep costs down and so on. If you use simple keys and so on, those all created a fairly sloppy post. It worked, but you could tell when you’re writing it how much it’s moving around underneath of you. It’s, it’s not like it’s going to fail or anything, but it’s, it doesn’t feel like a quality piece, if you will. You know that. So, so manufacturers trying to make it feel better, tightened up these tolerances, and in some instances, tighten them up to the point where the bushing on the bottom of the stanchion tube, as it’s running in the the lower tube, if that is goes through a zone where it’s clamped by the collar to the seat tube, could create an interference fit where the bushing won’t go past. So if you over tightened it, the bush, the bushing won’t go past. If you under Tighten it, then the post doesn’t want to stay in position, or it rotates if you knock the nose of the saddle or whatever. So again, those are things that we’ve tried to manage in our designs to mitigate those, those issues, so we haven’t gone crazy trying to minimize this, what we call the stance between the two bushings in the raised position. Obviously we can get a shorter overall post as we shorten that distance, but then the cantilever starts to get really long, so you’ve got a bushing stance that’s maybe only 60 millimeters, and then you’ve got 200 millimeters projected up to your saddle. From there, that’s a lot of that’s a very big ratio to try and manage. So we’ve tried to keep that that measurement somewhat reasonable, and haven’t gone crazy with it, but then implemented other things. Again, we’ve been very selective on how we’ve managed our bushings and our fits to keep that fit so we don’t run into those problems. We’ve on our longer posts. I believe we’re the only company in the marketplace that actually uses three bushings, so we have. Uh, two bushings in the lower tube and one at the bottom of the stanchion tube. So in, you know, from the fully lowered position as it’s coming up, it’s supported mid span and by the two end bushings, as opposed to just relying on that, those two end bushings, you would, I think most consumers would be shocked to see how much a post actually deflects under load. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve got a test rig that we designed and built ourselves to do all our testing on the post, whether it’s, uh, ultimate load testing or endurance testing and whatever. And to see a post like a 200 post in there being loaded per ISO standards, and seeing how much deflection there is at the saddle, again, I think most consumers would be shocked to see it move as much.

Jeff Barber 25:58
It looks like it’s just wobbling out there.

Jack Pittens 26:02
Well, it is. It literally moves like 40 millimeters over, like, it’s a lot. Now you wouldn’t recognize that when you’re riding it if you hit it with that much force. So we’re talking about applying like 270 pounds force on the on the saddle at a prescribed angle. And it’s a lot of force on that amount of extension, and that’s done with the post at its minimum insertion depth. So for example, one of the things we’ve done on our longest travel posts is we have, not we’ve, not gone as long as we can on insertion depth, if you will. We’ve restricted the insertion depth so that we can save a little bit of weight here and there, and so that we’re not managing as much cantilever. Because we’re we’re figuring there’s going to be very few people who are going to take a 200 millimeter dropper post and only inserted 100 millimeters into the seat tube, right? You got to be very tall for that. Yes, that would be, that would be outrageously tall in our mind. You know, it’s, I think, for 99% of the people using a long dropper post, it’s trying to get it as close to slammed as they can, you know, right? The bushing and seal assembly on the top of the upper tube is up to your seat collar, or as close as you can.

Jeff Barber 27:30
Well, so, you know, thinking about that, minimizing the deflection, and, you know, considering more travel and or less insertion, how does the C post diameter play into that? Like, if you go with a bigger diameter, does that let you get away with more? I assume the larger diameter is, is going to be stiffer? Is that right?

Jack Pittens 27:54
It is going to be stiffer. Stiffer is not really the the challenge, like I said, the the post does deflect a lot, and you need to think about it like, if you’ve ever watched a documentary on testing the wings of an aircraft, and you’d be shocked at how much they can move.

Jeff Barber 28:15
Well, I’ve seen it, yeah, I’ve seen it on a plane, and it’s, it’s kind of scary the first time you see it,

Jack Pittens 28:19
And when, when you when you see it in a plane, and it’s moving, and it looks like the ends are moving up and down a few feet. That’s nothing compared to the tests that they need to do. Where the top of the wings, like on a triple seven, are they’re lifted by about 20 or 30 feet, or something like it is mind boggling. And so the whole structure is designed to be flexible. If you designed it to be stiff, it would be impossible to manage the loads and and make it so a plane could fly. Same for this, it’d be impossible to design it so that it is as rigid as a solid bar, and still have all the functionality we need. So we’re limited by the sizes that have evolved in the industry.

Jeff Barber 29:13
I remember a few years ago interviewing someone, I don’t remember which brand, but at the time, they were saying, you know, to go 200 millimeters of travel. You know, they really felt like they needed that. Needed to be a 34 millimeter seat post, or a 34 nine at least, yeah, yeah. I mean, is that but? But now today, there’s plenty of 30.9s that are 200, 240mm. So has something changed, or is that risky, if you’re going that much travel with that, like lower down?

Jack Pittens 29:46
Well, you know, I won’t name brands, but I know that. I know who the company was, who who was promoting that. And, you know, I think that was the difference between a dropper post. But. That the body of the post is the hydraulic cylinder versus having an internal cartridge in it.

Jeff Barber 30:06
It depends on the design?

Jack Pittens 30:09
Yes. So I think, let’s call them older-school designs that don’t have a cartridge in it, I think it’s becomes limiting to have excessive amount of travel and still maintain the functionality, the ceiling internally and so on. It’s now, I haven’t tried to engineer a version of a post like that, so that is speculation on my part. But you know, I know for our design, it doesn’t become a challenge because the way it’s arranged, it can tolerate all of that deflection. The only area where we potentially see challenges is why we added the third bushing in there. Is because, with the upper tube deflecting and the lower tube deflecting, and they’re deflecting, deflections not completely matching. You can get internal contact, and internal contact in itself isn’t a problem unless there’s motion at the same time. And it it takes some pretty special circumstances to get a significant load causing it to bend while it’s moving, but it happens, you know. So to address those problems, we’ve, like, I said, added that third bushing in there to eliminate that contact point, so that in the longer travel posts there, you know, we can keep separation between those parts and it’s, it’s surprising, you know, given how much the whole post deflects, it’s surprising how small a gap can be managed, like the gap between our stanchion tube and the ID of our of our lower tube is only point four millimeters on diameter, or point two millimeters on radius, but you know, that does eventually come into contact.

Jeff Barber 32:06
Interesting. Well, yeah. I mean, speaking of those tight tolerances, and you know, it sounds like there’s a lot of specialized parts that go into a dropper post in terms of the bushings and all of that, I’m curious to know about, sort of your production, from what I understand, 9.8 dropper posts are assembled in house in Canada. So why go that route versus outsourcing to Asia like I imagine most posts are?

Jack Pittens 32:36
Absolutely including when Race Face, for example, licensed our design. It was all outsourced.

Jeff Barber 32:44
They’re a Canadian company, too.

Jack Pittens 32:47
Canadian company. And it’s, you know, like, like, a lot of companies that are rooted in the early days of the industry, the mountain bike industry, you know, it all started in house. And as you as as things get more competitive, you know, it drives outsourcing. And then a huge part of the outsourcing is driven by the OES who, like we do not provide OE to any brand because we don’t make our driver posts in Asia.

Jeff Barber 33:26
It’s just not cost-effective.

Jack Pittens 33:29
Yeah, they don’t want to, they don’t want to ship a dropper from Canada to Asia to assemble the bike and then ship it back to Canada. I see. So if it is not domestically available, preferably in Taiwan. They’re not interested, you know, and I get it from a you know, they’re on a tight budget to spec out a bike and put it on the marketplace for to, you know, for the consumer, it seems like a big price, but the cost of everything that goes into it, and the margins that are left are are not spectacular. You know?

Jeff Barber 34:09
I mean, it’s funny, because it’s like, I’m sure very few mountain bikers and our listeners, they don’t believe it. I mean, they think, yeah, bike companies are just making money hand over fist. But yeah, I think it’s more, it’s more like what you’re saying, that the margins are tight for everyone. And yeah, it’s tough.

Jack Pittens 34:27
Yeah, it’s, you know, it started off as a niche sport. It built, but it built with an interest in technology. And you know, if you would compare what we could mass market a fork that was developed 15 years ago. For now, it could be made pretty cheap, but if you want a top spec fork, for example, there is a lot of technology that’s in there, and there’s a lot of complicated manufacturing expense. Of materials, it and it, it’s, it’s just not free. It’s not the you know, or you can’t build it cheap and get the performance you want. You know the old adage, you know, light, inexpensive. You know, strong, pick two, you know, it’s that still applies. You know, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get all three at a budget price, right? Something’s gonna get compromised, you know, unless there’s something revolution in the industry, and then we get a reset and we move forward. But, you know, the the performance of a mountain bike these days is spectacular in terms of what it’s capable of doing and the precision of all the components and so on. But it comes at a price. And you know, the consumers vote by where they spend their monies, and the manufacturers are going to build the product based on how people spending habits are. So you know, in the forums, they complain about the costs of it, but then when they go and buy a bike, what do they buy?

Jeff Barber 36:07
Yeah, they get it. They get the best one they can. And it’s an interesting thought experiment too, to say, yeah. I mean, could What if we pause right now, bikes are great now, let’s not make them any better. Let’s just make them cheaper. And, you know, it’s not going to happen. But that’s, that’s one route that we could take.

Jack Pittens 36:26
We could but, you know, we probably had that same thought experiment five years ago, and then we looked and we thought, we’re at the peak of the technology now, you know. And you look five years down the road, and, yeah, everything’s still advanced. And, you know, some some things, it’s significant. Other things, it’s small improvements. Other things are frustrating, standards changes. But anyways, it is what it is. But, yeah, it’s a, you know, we, we can build our posts, you know, getting back to your earlier question, we can build them in the all the desired sizes. It’s it doesn’t really present a challenge to us, other than smaller than 30.9 you know, we, we engineer our our we’ll call it the 30.9 31 six. They’re engineered to be everything interchangeable, other than the OD of the lower tube. And the 31 six just ends up being stronger than it necessarily needs to be, but the differences are small, but going down to 27 to the you know, we’ve proto engineered and prototyped posts and whatever, and it’s just like, yeah, we’re, we’re not comfortable putting something like that on the marketplace, because it is just too everything’s too dainty.

Jeff Barber 37:44
Yeah, those are so hard to find and but it’s interesting, because a lot of people want one, or interested in one for a gravel bike. It’s almost like the gravel bikes need to just put a bigger tube on there.

Jack Pittens 37:57
Well, and I think a lot of I’m not into the gravel sport, per se, myself, but I believe, from people that I’ve talked to that a lot of the gravel bikes are gravitating in that direction because they recognize that consumers are starting to adopt droppers in that space. And you know, there has been requests for 27.2mm posts for 10 years, and we are where we’re at, and nobody wants to make them.

Jeff Barber 38:25
I mean, it’s not just not just you. There’s very few choices.

Jack Pittens 38:30
Well, and I’m sure the ones that are out there, you know, maybe they’re making some sales, but…

Jeff Barber 38:38
They’re also very limited travel. 70 to 100mm is the most you’re going to get. And for me, as a tall rider, even on a gravel bike, I think I would want more than just 100 millimeters.

Jack Pittens 38:50
Yep. So you know, we’re I just don’t think they’d be very reliable in the long run. I I’ve known people who’ve run them before, because the bikes came with 27.2, and I understand the logic before droppers became prevalent, of putting in a smaller seat post size to make it more flexible if you got a hardtail to take some of that edge off it. You know, that makes sense too. But it’s just, you know, when the market is shifting to droppers, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work. And, you know, some brands jumped on board early, and others took a while to to get in the game. You know, yeah, and I think the same is going to happen on other disciplines of bikes that are adopting droppers because it’s, I don’t think it’s viable to do a significantly smaller and something in between might be viable. But what’s the point? We don’t need it. We don’t need another standard, right?

Jeff Barber 39:47
That’s the other thing I was going to ask you. Is, I’ve always wondered, and I don’t know if you know the answer, but, I mean, why is there 30.9 and 31.6 I mean, they’re not even. A millimeter apart. That seems, seems strange to me. What’s the history? If you know it.

Jack Pittens 40:05
So this is all speculation on my part, but I believe this is all rooted in the manufacturing of conventional bicycles. So back in the day, bikes were made out of straight aluminum or steel tubes, we all had derailers on our front chain rings. I’m glad they’re gone. But anyways, you know, tubes were designed around a nominal outside diameter, either one and a quarter, one and three eighths or one and a half. You know, our derailers were designed to clamp on that, and if the manufacturer wanted to play with the strength or stiffness of their frame, considering their material choice, whether it’s aluminum, Chromoly steel or titanium or whatever, the only thing they could play with was the wall thickness, and they couldn’t change the outside diameter, so they can only change the inside diameter. So, you know, if I’m making a tie frame that I want a little more flexible, I’m going to use a little thinner wall. If I’m using aluminum that, you know, I’m going to probably end up with a little bit thicker wall. So, you know, aluminum frames were predominantly 30.9 and chromolian ties were usually a little bit more the larger size, 27 two was the one and a quarter, you know, with some other variations, like, I did have a bike that was 27 Oh, and whatever. But luckily, those went away. But anyways, it’s…

Jeff Barber 41:39
I think I have a mountain bike that’s like 25 or something.

Jack Pittens 41:43
And anyways, I believe that is where it is likely rooted. So it’s just evolved over time where, you know, people looked at what to if I’m trying to customize the frame to suit what I’m trying to achieve, how am I going to do it? And I can’t change the outer diameter of the tube, so I’m going to change the inner diameter of the tube.

Jeff Barber 42:04
That makes sense. I like that theory.

Jack Pittens 42:08
But anyway, so I haven’t gone and talked to like Gary Fisher or whatever and try to figure out where this all came from. But anyways, it’s, that’s, that’s my theory, and I think we’re just living with it. I just thank God that, you know, it’s not, you know, the flavor of the week. Every year, those sizes are changing.

Jeff Barber 42:28
Well, it’s weird. It does seem to be pretty split. I mean, if I look at the bikes that I test or the ones in my garage, it’s like, about half of them are 30.9 and half are 31.6mm, but maybe it does come down to the material. I have to look at that. If it’s like the carbon bikes are trending more toward one side versus the metal bikes, that’s where the split happens.

Jack Pittens 42:50
Yeah, carbons a whole different kettle of fish. But you’re, yeah, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of carbon bikes out there that are dealing with conventional tube size related issues. But, you know, and then, like you mentioned earlier, we had a player bring in the 34 nine size, you know, that seems to be picking up momentum slowly, where it’s going to end up, I’m not sure.

Jeff Barber 43:19
[A few years ago] it seemed like this [34.9mm diameters] is what everybody’s going to do. But it hasn’t worked out that way. It’s not, it’s not Boost or anything like that.

Jack Pittens 43:29
Yeah, I did talk to some bicycle brands and asked them about it, and, you know, they gave me the backstory and but they said, Yeah, from here forward, we’re going back to our traditional size, whether it was 30.9 or 31 six, you know, because the the 34 nine was a red herring that wasn’t necessary, you know, interesting so, you know. And then, and then, I think, specialized tries to try to push it a bit when they brought out their Wu post that required that extra diameter to get the mechanics into it. But, you know, that product didn’t last very long.

Jeff Barber 44:07
Well, so talking about, you know, you mentioned bike technology, how it’s evolving constantly, and that’s what riders expect. I mean, for dropper posts. It seems like the new thing currently is electronics in dropper posts, making them wireless. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, is there, are there enough advantages where it makes sense, or maybe it only makes sense for certain writers or certain types of writers, yeah. What are your thoughts on electronic dropper posts?

Jack Pittens 44:43
Just to start off with, I’m very much an early adopter. I love trying new things, like I got opinion equipped gearbox bike as soon as it became available, and stuff like that. Yeah. But I am not a big fan of you. Of wireless droppers. I think there’s a huge potential there. But I think the products we have in the marketplace right now where the wireless connection is solely replacing a cable, the pros and cons doesn’t add up for me. You know, for the extra weight, the complexity, the cost, what did I gain out of it? And then again, thinking about our dropper post, because it uses a brake mechanism. It’s like, think about your your disc brakes on your bike. You don’t use them as an on off switch. You modulate it. And how I ride our dropper post is, I modulate what the post is doing by the pressure on the lever, and I can, and I can’t replicate that with a wireless connection, not easily. And if I’m, if I’m going to go to the extent of trying to get that tactile feel at the lever and not have as a on off button, then I really need to think to the future as to where is this going to go, and let’s skip the middle ground and make the leap to where it’s going to go, you know. But yeah, to me, I really don’t see the benefit, like I think there’s good things on components that are electrified, like I’m running the a wireless rear derailleur.

Jeff Barber 46:31
Does it make sense there more so than a dropper post?

Jack Pittens 46:36
It’s arguable that it, I think it makes more sense, whether it makes enough sense, I think, is again, up to the purchaser. But, you know, I got it because I wanted to try it and whatever, I generally like it. And I’m not sure I would necessarily go back, though I do really like my opinion set up as well. So but, but I can see a benefit of some things that you’re you can do with a shifting system, as opposed to operating a dropper, where, with a dropper, all we’re doing is opening and closing a hydraulic valve through a wireless connection. I don’t, you know, I don’t get the benefit of that myself.

Jeff Barber 47:27
It seems like, I mean, a lot of is just a clean cockpit. But you know, we’ve also seen a lot of rider pushback against solutions for that, right, that involve complicated routing and things, and it’s like, oh, yeah, if that’s all we’re getting then, yeah, maybe that’s not for everybody.

Jack Pittens 47:43
Yeah, my latest bike has got to through the headset cable routing, and, oh, man, I can’t wait to see that go away. I just don’t get it. And I look at the bike, and I go, this is all done to clean up the cable routing. And in the end, I still got all the cables exposed. They’re now pointing up out of the headset instead of out front. I think it’s uglier. I think the fact that the brake hose now has a high spot that’s higher than the lever isn’t great either, and it’s unavoidable, you know, so and then, you know, like one of our products is a system to adjust your headset angle through the through the head, or the steer tube angle through the headset. And to experiment with that on a bike that I’ve got to break the brake line to get the headset out becomes pain in the ass. I don’t understand what we gained, other than your bicycle shop can now charge more to do service work because it takes a lot more effort. You know, no knock against them. It’s, you know, the those expensive bills are being driven by the bicycle companies who are engineering this into the bike. It’s none to, you know, it’s a lot more work to do and and you need more parts, you know, to, you know, to do something as simple as change out your headset bearings. Yeah, is not what it used to be. And if it was done like it wasn’t on a road bike where the cables are all tucked into the bars and stuff like that, and you don’t see anything anymore. Okay, I get it. And arrow is a big thing for road and whatever I get it, it makes sense. It’s worth the compromise on a mountain bike. I don’t get it right, you know. But anyways, it’s, you know, the industry does what they think is going to be the next big thing, and they’re going to try it. I’m kind of hoping it’s going to do like dual control from Shimano years ago. That goes away quickly, but we’ll see what happens.

Jeff Barber 49:54
Yeah, but it never goes away entirely. Somebody’s still got it on their bike, and they’re going to bring it into a shop. But somebody is gonna have to deal with it.

Jack Pittens 50:00
Oh, yeah. And there’s probably people out there who love their dual control, but, you know, they’re writing on 10 year old technology, or older or whatever. Hard to get stuff, but they like it, I guess.

Jeff Barber 50:14
So one of the other things I wanted to ask you about that’s not dropper post specific, but it’s seat post adjacent is the seat post head designs. Personally, I I get frustrated with almost all of them because they all work a little bit different. And it’s, it can be hard to, you know, get all the pieces to fit together. A lot of them are like a 3d puzzle. So I’m interested in your thoughts and understanding that the 9.8 head that you’ve designed, like, how do you make a better seat post head? And why are they so complicated?

Jack Pittens 50:51
Well, particularly for dropper posts, I get why they’ve become very complicated is because people want to get the maximum length of stroke and a dropper to fit in their bike. So the the more vertically compact that head is, between the top of the stanchion tube and the rails, the more stroke I can get into my bike.

Jeff Barber 51:14
Like, how much I mean? Were you talking like five millimeters or or more, depending on your design,

Jack Pittens 51:20
if I would say, between some legacy designs and the state of the art current designs, it’s more than 25 millimeters. Oh, wow, difference, wow, that’s a whole inch, right? Yes, yes. So you know, if we typically think of a dropper post as being generally available in 25 millimeter increments, it’s a, it’s a whole size up possibly.

Jeff Barber 51:42
Wow, maybe that frustration is worth it.

Jack Pittens 51:46
Well, if it’s something that you’re dealing with frequently, it’s a pain in the ass, but if it’s something that you only need to deal with very occasionally, but it allows you to get an extra 25 millimeters of stroke out of your post, then, you know, I can’t, you know, I can’t knock the design because it’s, it’s a, it’s a clever solution to improving the performance of the product for people who are looking to maximize their stroke, you know, on our head, we, we very much do like our head, but it is not state of the art for the stack height. It is. It’s probably about 10 or 12 millimeters taller than what otherwise might be possible but, but it does completely separate out the four and a half tilt from the fore and aft length adjustment, and it allows you to take the saddle off without touching your fore, aft tilt and so on. It kind of happened in a funny way, in that our original pulse hydraulic dropper post had a protrusion that came up through the saddle head, if you will, and we needed that hole in the middle through the clamp, so it inevitably ended up with this independent arrangement, and we’ve kind of loved it ever since. And we’ve tried to reconsider, how can we do this, maintaining that functionality, because most of our customers really appreciate that head design, but get the stack height down. So a work in progress. But yeah, I get it when you get a your traditional seat post, saddle clamp that I believe, kind of started with Thompson way back when it’s a nice design, but it’s like you said, it’s putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

Jeff Barber 53:49
And I always feel like I need a third hand or something too. And you know, you want to loosen the bolts enough where it doesn’t all come apart, and you can slide the saddle in and out, but, yeah, but not so much that it all just falls apart, you know?

Jack Pittens 54:02
And then you got some other designs, like the outgoing ASX model has those clamps on the side with this the turning barrel. Personally, I hate those, because they never for me stay in position. I always end up smacking the saddle at some point, and you hear that dreaded creak that it slipped right, you know? And it’s like, Oh, bloody hell, you know. So I’m not a big fan of that. And I guess they had enough feedback that they’ve redesigned that again, getting their stack height down, you know, but again, circling back to the wireless, most of the wireless is up until, up until recently have been a big sacrifice on stack height to accommodate the wireless. So, you know, on a bike with a cable operated draw. Per you could maybe get a 200 in there, and with the wireless, you might only be able to get 175 or maybe even less in there. So again, that that was a sacrifice. So they’ve tried to address that now with moving the battery to the top of the lower tube and going to a more traditional clamp for the saddle. They’re they’re funky, and there’s been some odd designs here and there, but, you know, that’s kind of proven to be a very robust solution that can be made fairly light. It’s micro, adjustable, it’s precision. It’s just a jigsaw puzzle to put together. Yeah, yeah. Which is, which is frustrating, right?

Jeff Barber 55:41
For sure. Well, so yeah, I want to talk about another product that’s completely unrelated, but that’s a 9point8 product. Your company recently introduced a product called INVRS pedals that basically flip the idea of flat pedals and puts the rubber on the pedal and the spikes on the shoe right, tell us a little bit about that design. How did that come about? Like? What? Why do that?

Jack Pittens 56:13
So we’re in Canada. We get to a real winter. We get snow on the ground, sometimes, lots of it. We go through freeze thaw cycles in the winter, turning trails to icy, get sun on them and whatever, and riding in the winter. I love riding in the winter, but the pedal and shoe options have traditionally really sucked, in my opinion. Yeah. SPDs, anybody who’s ridden in snow conditions in the winter. Knows all about them icing up, and that’s extremely frustrating, yeah?

Jeff Barber 56:46
And they get colder, too, in my experience.

Jack Pittens 56:51
So you got a heat sink, you know, you’ve got a connection from just below your foot bed, through a bunch of metal to the pedal, and that’s all exposed. You know, your body heat is heating that up to make the icing problem even worse, and it’s making your foot colder. And you get to buy expensive footwear to boot so, but that was kind of state of the art. And then you got your flat pedals, which were designed for spring, summer, fall use, if you will. And they work well in that application, but the winter boots you’d ride with that are not designed to work with those pedals. You know, any flat pedal shoe has got a relatively solid sole on it, there’ll be some grooving, like, it’s not like a hiking boot or whatever. So, you know, you got a lugged boot that has 50% or more void ratio in the lug, and that’s primarily what’s hitting your your spikes on your shoes, on your pedals, so you don’t slip off, but you’re not connected. You have miles afloat. So it’s it’s not great. Or if you would actually have a winter boot that would have a tread like a summer flat pedal shoe, it would be terrible on any hike a bike situation. So, you know, my goal was, is to come up with a better winter platform. So I wanted the performance of a winter or a summer flat pedal shoe in winter. So we I basically got to a variety of pedals, started machining them, found a company that sold 510 rubber replacement pads.

Jeff Barber 58:47
Like, the actual 510 like the stealth Dotty rubber?

Jack Pittens 58:51
You bet, and it’s actually the company that sells it is actually the engineering group that worked for 510 at the initiation of The company. Oh, wow. And they’re still in existence. They still have a brand, but it is not associated with 510 in any way.

Jeff Barber 59:08
They’re not like an exclusive supplier to 510?

Jack Pittens 59:12
No, they don’t. They don’t supply Adidas anything anymore.

Jeff Barber 59:17
The original, yeah, it is the original.

Jack Pittens 59:19
Going back, you know, more than a decade, they are primarily in the climbing shoe business, but they exist. But anyways, they happen to sell sheets of rubber. Varies in size, but about a meter by a meter, in either dotted pattern or various smooth patterns and whatever. So I bought every material that they had, machined plastic bodies and all sorts of shapes, and, you know, from convex to concave and flat, and put different kinds of rubbers on there, and tried petals with whole. Through them versus solid and whatever, and yeah, and just did a ton of writing in different conditions to figure out what, what was the best package of that. And that led to the development of the inverse pedal. And once we sort of got that under our belt and we’re happy with how it’s working, then we we we had two things to do. We had to figure out how to get it made, which was a massive challenge that took three years to get that wow, to get from a functional prototype to actually product in our hands that we could sell. And that was a nightmare. That’s a story for another day, but, but, you know, well, while we’re going through that exercise. It’s like, you know, I think I can ride these in the summer, and let’s see what they feel like riding them in the summer, compared to flat pedals and clipless and so forth. And, you know? So I would do things like tests, where I would run one, you know, a conventional flat pedal on one side and the our inverse pedal on the other I quickly learned that, like many people know, you have a dominant leg, you know. So I learned that I cannot do that side to side comparison without reversing it and repeating because, because my dominant leg may give me a different impression than my non-dominant leg, but anyways, it so we went through that, tried various pedals and shoes and whatever, and felt, you know, really, after we got dialed in, what are the best studs To use, we thought that this was a viable system in terms of performance. So is there a market for it, you know? And well, that was the, the million dollar question, if you will, is, is there a market for this outside of winter use? So, like winter riders, when they see it, they get it. For summer riders, it’s, there’s lots of people who think it’s a joke, fair enough. You know, I was completely expecting that, but I think there’s a lot of people who also get it, you know, like, when we were at sea otter, it was a constant stream of people wanting to show us their scars, right?

Jeff Barber 1:02:18
Yeah, especially when you first, I mean, I I’ve gone through that probably a year or two ago, where I went from clipless to flat pedals. And, I mean, for the first three to six months, yeah, about every ride I would I would scrape my shins on the pedals. So, yeah, it’s a real problem, yeah.

Jack Pittens 1:02:37
So, you know, I think there is an opportunity here that you know right from the beginning. So if you’re getting kids into mountain biking, you get your choice between the SPD learning curve, the the the risks of flat pedals or using these pedal systems. What pedals Do you want your kid on? You know, if you can have all of the performance but without any of the safety risks, why wouldn’t you go for that? If it’s, you know, cost competitive, if you will, right? You know, I think in general, women really get it because they’re, they’re more concerned about it than guys tend to be. I think guys who have done it enough and are, you know, don’t care about fashion or what their bros say or whatever. Yeah, you know, they just want something that works for them. I think it’s awesome. You know, how many people out there are riding with shin guards on just because of the pedals, but otherwise we wouldn’t be riding with them, and would rather not be riding with them, you know. So I think that opportunity is there, you know. We’re just right now trying to push to to get it into the marketplace and get people aware of it, you know.

Jeff Barber 1:04:02
And when you’ve got a couple different options for for the the shoe part, because that’s the challenge. Like nobody, as far as I know, nobody makes a shoe with the studs already in it. So you can either do the the clipless pedal conversion, where you have, like a little plate with spikes, they can go to, like a two bolt shoe, and then you can also put studs into your favorite shoe. And people might not know that people do this with tires. I mean, again, yeah, everybody in Canada probably knows this, or anybody who lives somewhere where it snows a lot, but, yeah, there’s a tool, and you can put these studs into a tire. I imagine it’s really similar. Putting studs into a shoe is one of those solutions better than the other. And, and also, yeah, have you heard from people that are like, I don’t want to do either of those. I’d rather just buy a shoe that that already has spikes in it.

Jack Pittens 1:04:55
So there are actually some winter boots that come. Them with studs already in them. They’re not very popular, and they’re not going to be what we would consider to be premium studs, like carbide tipped and whatever. But there are that they tend to be more European than North American, but there are shoes or boots that you can buy that have studs, like a

Jeff Barber 1:05:20
Like track shoes? I wonder if track shoes would work, you know, like for running, you have the spikes, the metal spikes in them.

Jack Pittens 1:05:27
They might I have not tried them. So much is going to come down to, what is the geometry of the spikes? How big are the tips of the spikes? Are they in an appropriate spot on the shoe? Is there enough of them? So forth, so and, you know, again, the what is the magic answer for all of that? Well, I think that’s going to be a learning curve, if you will. Like we’ve had reviewers who started off using the pedals without any studs, and said, you know, the grip really isn’t that bad. And then they put three whole studs in the shoes and tried it and go, Well, that’s, that’s more grip than I need, yeah, you know. And that’s where they ended, you know, whereas I normally think about putting in 20 studs in the in the shoe, but, you know, I’m a, I’m a little bit heftier guy than maybe the average, or whatever, and you know, so what is the magic number for a person, and where do they put them on their shoe? You know, you can, you can kind of tune that engagement, probably more so than you can on a traditional flat pedal, where you’re limited to where the manufacturer has put stun locations this you can put you can concentrate them centrally. You can put them around the perimeter more or less. We sell studs in different protrusions, heights, so how far they stick out of the sole. We generally recommend the longer ones are better for winter use, and the shorter ones are better or sufficient for summer use, but you could run the longer ones in the summer. You would just need to confirm that your shoe can handle the greater penetration of the screw into the sole. It’s still not very much like the screw is not your traditional wood screw. It looks more like an auger bit for like digging a pulse hole or something like that. It’s a very aggressive, shallow angle bit that grips very tenaciously into the rubber. Not the easiest to install, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that big a deal, particularly if you’ve got a shoe where you’re not super particular about exactly where it is, like if it if it wants to wander a couple of millimeters to one side or the other, and you don’t care, it’s pretty easy to put in, and you could put them in with a drill if you’re trying to hit the bull’s eye. Then, then doing it by hand becomes pretty necessary. But again, it’s not a big job, like you can do a pair of shoes in under half an hour. Okay, you’re done the the the studs are very robust. I’ve been running the same set of studs for three years now. I do a ton of hike, a bike and stuff like that, primarily because I’m part of a trail organization that manages almost 50 kilometers of trail. Oh, wow, and it’s very rocky. So I ride into the section I’m going to work on, lock my bike up, and I go and hike the trails while I’m working on it with the shoes that I’m I’m using, and you know, they stand up to that abuse. No problem. Grip is generally not a problem. Like I can’t vouch for every possible type of rock. But for example, I was just in Sedona, and though it’s beyond my pay grade to ride, I was on the new hard line trail that you probably have seen the video of Remy crashing. So I hiked that with the studded shoes on, and I did not feel like I was putting my life at risk by walking on those shoes. Now, you know, maybe polished granite is hard enough that it becomes a problem. But I would tend to think that most of the features that are that high commitment are going to have riders that are already experienced on the pedal system that they’re on and aren’t necessarily our key customers, you know, I think, I think the people who are on the learning curve, you know, it would be fine, you know, the only downside is, and if you’ve come from an SPD background, you don’t write, you don’t use your shoes other than for writing. A. For this pedals, again, it would be the same. You’re not going to use these shoes for driving in your car or walking in your house or going to the coffee shop or whatever.

Jeff Barber 1:10:10
Maybe for shoveling snow you can.

Jack Pittens 1:10:13
Oh yeah, absolutely. But so for the people who are used to traditional flat pedal shoes. It might be a compromise that they’re not willing to make. That’s fine, you know, we’re not expecting to revolutionize the industry, but we think there is a very strong market potential for it. It’s just getting the word out there, like one of our sponsored racers runs a youth program out in Utah, and their organization is just loving the whole thing, so we’ve got a number of pedals out with them for evaluation and and go from there.

Jeff Barber 1:10:55
Really cool product, and it’s cool to see, trying new things and different concepts that people haven’t tried before, because that’s how we move forward. And obviously, 9.8 is known for a lot of innovative products, including dropper posts. But also, I think you mentioned the angle adjust headset that you offer. But yeah, I’m curious, what else are you working on? Is there? Is there more stuff on the horizon, or are you staying pretty busy with with the stuff you got?

Jack Pittens 1:11:26
So the INVRS is our latest product that we just launched. Prior to that, we expanded our slacker line, which is the angle set adjustment. Current Project is a new dropper post. Okay, we were actually hoping to show a prototype at sea otter, but we just didn’t have it to a point that I wanted to show it yet. But it’s, it’s at the point where we’re going to start writing it. It is, I would consider it revolutionary, as opposed to an evolution. I can’t, I can’t go into a lot of details about what it is. I have no idea whether the market is really going to want this product or not. It is going to push the price envelope. That’s the downside, okay? But, you know, it is what it is. So, you know, we’re, we’re a company that we don’t spend our money on marketing. We’re not a company like Red Bull that, you know, the vast majority of their money goes into marketing, where we put our money into engineering, the products, testing the products and the quality of the products that we’re delivering and supporting them, and try to minimize our expenditures on on other stuff that really doesn’t add value to the product, but it’s a necessary thing to get the word out there, right? So we’ve been more successful with launching products where we are unique in the marketplace. So when we launched our first or Well, I’ll say, our current draw proposed the fall line when we launched that there was very few good droppers in the marketplace, so it grabbed a lot of attention. So that worked very well for us when we launched our first slacker kit that worked with is headset. So we are, to the best of my knowledge, still the only company that makes a system that can allow you to adjust the headset angle on a bike with an is headset, again, that became very popular. We’re hoping to do the same with this inverse again. It’s the first product like it in the marketplace. There has been other rubber coated pedals, but they’ve never been, in my opinion, intended to be a performance option. They’ve been commuter pedals and stuff like that. The rubber, the rubber has never been a vulcanized rubber. It’s always been like a urethane or something like that. And it’s, it’s never intended to use with spikes on shoes sort of thing to give you the performance that you’re used to with a slow rebound rubber so, you know, we’re we’re much more apt to taking a chance on a product that we believe in, that we think there’s a place for it, that the product should sell itself, if you will, more so than trying to release a product that takes marketing to convince people to buy it. You know, it’s, you know, so and like the new dropper post that we’re working on, again, it would be something that doesn’t exist in the marketplace now, whether, whether the consumers would want it. But. Is, you know, is the big question mark. But you know, based on how the technology in the mountain biking market has evolved, you know, from very simplistic days to sophisticated suspension dropper posts, e bikes now electronic controls for things that isn’t necessary, but they’re obviously selling. You know, I think there is a market for this. Otherwise we wouldn’t be pursuing it, if you will. But anyways, time will tell, you know, so right, right now it’s in the development stages when we think it’s appropriate to to show off we wish to do that and gage reaction, see where it goes. And you know, at some point we’ll need to make the big decision of, do we actually take it into production, or was it a was it an engineering exercise? Yeah, you know. And though a lot of effort goes into engineering a new product, the big dollars really come in when you got to commit to making, making a batch of product, you know, in the 1000s or whatever, you know, and then get them distributed and whatever the that’s when the dollars really start kicking over. Yeah, you know, that’s where you’ve got to. You got to be able to be successful with it, or it’s a problem, right, right?

Jeff Barber 1:16:36
Well, yeah, well, we’ll be excited to see what you come up with when that’s out. And yeah, like you said, whether people adopt it or not will definitely enjoy talking about it. And, yeah, arguing over whether it’s necessary or not. And yeah, that’s part of the fun.

Jack Pittens 1:16:53
Yeah, like, the the pedal system. It’s surprised us how many people we’ve bumped into know about it. Yeah, you know, like, when I was in Sedona, I popped into a few bicycle shops just to show off the product since I was there. And it’s like, oh yeah, we saw the articles, but it’s so cool to see it in person now and never. You know, it’s, you know, the the words gotten around, you know, we still need to to work on it to get the consumer to be aware of it as much as we can. But, yeah, well, I’m excited about this draw proposed, but it’s going to be interesting.

Jeff Barber 1:17:33
Yeah, yeah, it’s marketing through engineering. I think you invented a new category there.

Jack Pittens 1:17:39
Yeah. Well, you know, I think there are people who would hopefully respect that where they’re, you know, what you’re paying for when you buy a product is, you know, the value is in the product, not in the marketing that got you to buy the product, you know, sort of thing. So I hope people can appreciate that in what we’re doing.

Jeff Barber 1:18:00
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jack, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us. I learned a ton about dropper posts and 9.8 products. And yeah, hopefully our listeners have as well.

Well, you can check out some of the products we talked about here on the podcast at the 9point8 website. That’s 9point8 dot ca. That’s all we’ve got for this time. We’ll talk to you again next time.