01.26.2012 - Mountain Bike
http://bicycling.com/blogs/thestraightdirt/2012/01/26/prepare-for-the-650b-wheel-size-revolution/

Prepare for the 650b Wheel-Size Revolution

2012: Year of the Dragon.
2013: Year of the 650b Bike?
One thing’s certain: The bike industry is betting big on mid-sized wheels.

By Chris Lesser

A veritable tsunami of 650b bikes and components is bearing down on the global mountain bike market. Even though the wheel size—halfway between a 26-inch wheel and 29er—is not new, the product category has been relegated to the fringes of the market. But the flood is coming.

Both Fox and RockShox are making all-new fork models with 650b-specific lowers for 2013, nearly every tire manufacturer surveyed for this story acknowledged they have new 650b product in the pipeline, and even though they won’t fess up to it this early in the game, some of the biggest bike brands in the industry are already on board. Expect to see some unexpected companies field their first 650b bikes in 2013, followed by some serious market saturation in 2014.

[UPDATED: RockShox has weighed in with the following statement: “There’s definitely been an increase in interest and discussion over the 650B wheel size. At RockShox, we’re always exploring the possibilities of any new standard or technology, wheel size included. We’re not ready to reveal our 2013 line at this time, but whether or not there’s a 650B offering, you can be assured that we’ve taken the wheel size into consideration.”]

/// Everyone’s Doing it ///

Big suspension companies don’t just decide to start making a whole new class of product on a whim. Creating the tooling and setting up manufacturing for a new fork is prohibitively expensive—unless of course you’ve got customers lined up and know demand exists. So, who done it?

“Trying to pinpoint who is doing it is the wrong approach. It’s more like: Who’s not doing it?” says Joel Smith, the general manager of X-Fusion suspension and owner of Tomac bikes. “This is coming up fast. Everyone’s doing it, or they’re at least riding prototypes.”

“With 29ers there were so many companies that were slow to get to it, and they missed out on sales. So everyone’s going gangbusters for what they see as the next big thing,” Joel added. “The funny part is a that a bunch of these OEMs are going around as if it’s a secret. Everyone’s acting like they’re going to be first to market. They’re trying to keep it quiet. ”

Since rumors first started swirling after the Taichung Bike Week trade show in early December, not a single bike brand has confirmed that they will offer a 650b bike in 2013. And no one can blame them for wanting to concentrate on selling 2012 models before tipping their hand.

That said, Scott is a likely suspect. DT Swiss is confirmed to be working on 650b wheels, and considering that it’s hard to find a Scott mountain bike that doesn’t come with DT Swiss parts, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots. As one industry insider put it: Scott was late to the 29er game, Scott is massive in Europe, and Europeans are insane about weight. Officials at Scott have not confirmed any details of their 2013 bike line or beyond.

Specialized was rumored to be working on 650b, but there’s no evidence it ever got past the prototype stages, and the company has categorically denied it’s making 650b bikes, which makes sense considering the company has radically revamped its product line over the last few seasons to crown itself king of the hill in 29er world.

Giant will not have any 650b bikes in 2013, but according to Andrew Juskaitis, Giant’s global product marketing manager, 2014 is another story.

“For Giant, 650b is, for the foreseeable future, an intermediate wheel size, filling in those gaps where we can improve the ride of a 26” wheel but can’t fit a 29er wheel,” says Juskaitis. “650b belongs in certain applications—most likely, longer-travel applications where 29er wheels can’t/won’t fit properly. One thing is sure, we still believe in the 29er wheel size where it can fit.”

What about Trek, America’s largest bike brand? Mountain bike brand manager Travis Ott says he doesn’t see 29-inch wheels being displaced anytime soon.

“We’ve been doing 29ers since 1999 and a lot of the original objections—that they’re heavy, the wheels were too flexy, the steering sucks—have been overcome,” says Ott, who points to the success of the now-six-model lineup of Superfly 100 bikes as evidence of how far the product has come. “You have to place a bet in terms of where you’re going to put your resources. Our bet is that we’re going to keep making 29ers better in terms of further knocking down those objections.”

Ibis has sanctioned running its Mojo HD 140 with a 650b-specific fork and wheelset—although clearances do get a bit tight with a Pacenti Neo Moto 2.3 in the back, says Scot Nicol of Ibis. And you can bet every other mountain bike product manager worth their salt has already checked 650b bottom-out clearances on their existing product. Mongoose (whose product manager came from Jamis) also likely has 650b bikes in the works, but unfortunately the brand is taking a hiatus from the U.S. market, so if you really must have a 650b Teocali you’ll have to pay for it in Euros.

/// “Why and What’s the Reason For?” —Bob Dylan ///

Could Mountain Bike Nation really be headed toward becoming a single-wheel-size state?

While some companies still talk of making a 29er downhill bike, and while others insist that 29er all-mountain is not an oxymoron, there are plenty of frustrated frame designers who would generally agree that pushing much past the 120mm mark with a 29-inch wheel produces diminishing returns—not to mention it’s just damn near impossible to get everything crammed into that space. With 29er full-suspension bikes winning World Cup XC races, though, the big wheel size certainly isn’t going anywhere, but for argument’s sake let’s call five-plus-inch 29ers an evolutionary dead-end.

The best looking 650b bike available today is arguably a hardtail (the Jamis 650b Reynolds 853 Dragon), but 650b’s future looks brightest in the longer travel full-suspension category. Some of the best minds in the business are saying that there’s a good chance that those looking to buy a 100, 125 or even 150mm-plus bike will likely be shopping middle-sized wheels by the middle of this decade.

“Twelve months from now, 650b is going to be all over the place,” says David Turner, whose strongest selling bikes are currently the 140mm 26-inch-wheel Turner 5.Spot and 125mm Sultan 29er. “The MTB bus is running right into a swarm of 650b—and it’s going to be all over the windshield!”

The two new forks would seem to back that up: The 650b fork that Fox is working on is reported to be in the 140 to 160mm ballpark, while the RockShox 650b Revelation will have 130 to 150mm of travel.

“I definitely still see the 29er thing being XC focused, but I see [650b] positioned as a replacement for 26-inch-wheel bikes—from hardtails all the way up to 140, 150, 160mm even,” says X-Fusion’s Joel Smith. “It’s going in a clear direction toward the elimination of the 26-inch-wheel market, minus DH.”

Say it ain’t so, Joel! Even though X-Fusion stands to benefit from this development—all its forks are convertible to 650b—Smith doesn’t whitewash the industry’s fast-tracking of 650b.

“There are going to be some underdeveloped bikes out there because everyone’s rushing it. I think it would have been wiser to trickle it out over time. Remember that it took a long time to get a 29er bike that people could really ride. Then you talk about suspension mountain bikes that have taken 20 years to develop, and they’re not even perfect yet,” said Smith. “I know why everyone’s doing it—nobody wants to be late to this party. Nobody wants to be the guy who poo-poo’d the market.”

/// Another very good question: Why Not? ///

In a vacuum, the benefits of 650b are fairly obvious: More roll-ability than a 26-inch wheel, more nimble handling than a 29er—best of both worlds, right? Not so fast.

“Squeezing the third wheel size in between creates more chaos in the market, and makes things more difficult for everyone—including the consumer,” says Santa Cruz product manager Josh Kissner. “I feel sorry for bike shops these days!  They are already dealing with two wheel sizes, three rear-axle standards, three front-axle standards, countless headset and BB standards—and of course single, triple, and countless double drivetrain options. That’s a lot of stuff to keep in stock, and I imagine it’s quite hard for consumers to find exactly what they’re looking for at a bike shop these days. Even distributors seem to have trouble keeping up.”

Kissner says Santa Cruz is not currently developing a 650b bike, although they haven’t ruled it out in the future. Right now he says it’s splitting too fine a hair.

“The cool thing right now is we have both sizes, and they appeal to different people,” says Kissner. “Both camps have their fanatics—and it’s not just emotional. The bikes do ride differently. Why would we try to cram all of these people on the same bike (650b) when we already have these sweet choices?”

/// Suppliers Ramping Up For The Rush ///

The philosophical debate aside, 650b is coming, and while bike brands are loathe to spill the beans, parts makers are much more open to talking about 650b product in the pipeline.

“The feeding frenzy for 650b is on!” confirms Ellen Kast, general manager at American Classic, which already supplies 650b wheels to KHS and Jamis. “To my surprise, we are getting many requests from [other] OEs for 650b wheelsets.”

American Classic already has two new tubeless-ready 650b wheelsets on deck for 2013. Kast said that many of the requests AC fields are for bikes with longer-travel forks, and so the company will offer a 28mm-wide all-mountain wheel as well as a budget-oriented XC option.

White Brothers is starting to look quite prescient by making its new LOOP fork 650b compatible, and if one were to ransack certain bike company offices, evidence might just surface that at least one high-end component brand has already built the first 650b carbon mountain bike rims—the current pinnacle of after-market mountain bike upgrades. Yup, it would appear that this 650b thing is for real.

Kenda’s Ben Anderson, who handles marketing and product development for the brand, said that in addition to its Nevegal tread now available in 650b x 2.1 and 2.35 sizes, Kenda has four additional 650b tires in the hopper—a mix of existing tread patterns and brand-new concepts, in a variety of widths and casing options.

“The amount of requests for and conversations about 650b tires has tripled over the last six months,” says Anderson. “Even with a number of 650b bikes in the market already, the growth of this segment is going to be 100 percent OEM driven.”

That idea marks a shift from what we saw in the development of 29ers, where a vocal group of true believers slowly pestered manufacturers into making 29er products.

Furthermore, while 29ers were a decidedly American trend that only recently gained global acceptance, it appears that 650b is coming on fast from both sides of the pond. In addition to Jamis, the best-known bike brand already offering 650b models, Anderson said Kenda is working closely with no fewer than nine major bike brands from both North America and Europe.

“I cannot think of too many [bike brands] that are not at least designing a couple of 650b bikes—whether they bring them out or not in 2013 is the big question,” says Jake Scott, Kenda’s OEM sales manager, who declined to disclose customer names.

/// Third Time’s The Charm? ///

The 650b wheel has failed to take off twice now—first back in the early 20th century when the French first developed it, and then again five years ago, when it was re-launched like a bottle rocket that failed to get any real altitude.

Unless you count MTBR threads, most riders aren’t exactly clamoring for the new wheel size. Instead, development is being driven exclusively by bike manufacturers. Even manufacturers that introduced, then discontinued, 650b parts are jumping back in.

“We had a Wolverine 2.2 tire and a LaserDisc rim three years ago, but they didn’t really sell that well because not that many 650b bikes were being made,” says WTB’s OEM sales manager Jason Moeschler. In fact, after a 650b production run delayed a big order last year, WTB decided the anemic 650b sales weren’t worth it, and killed the products.

“But now that the fork makers are in it, we’re totally re-evaluating,” Moeschler continues. “A lot of bike brands are talking to me now, asking what the plan is. But our part of the game is easy, we just make tires and rims. The real question is how are the dealers going to position these three wheel sizes against each other? What I would love to see, when all the dust settles, is one wheel size win out over everything. And in my opinion, 650b could be that wheel size. It’s a happy enough compromise.”

That’s high praise coming not just from a component sales manager, but someone who has won the Downieville Classic three times.

Schwalbe experienced a similar stutter in the market. After launching a 650b version of its Racing Ralph tread three years ago, sales were so poor Schwalbe shelved the model. But when OE interest picked up six months ago, it re-opened the mold, and added an updated tubeless-ready version that sports a revised tread pattern and a higher thread-count casing.

Before those of you long-time 650b-wheelers (650b’ers?) fall out of your chair in apoplexy, let’s get this out of the way: No, 650b wheels are not new. In fact they’ve been around for the better part of a century.

“We can trace the wheel back at least to the 1920s,” says Jan Heine, editor of Bicycle Quarterly. “French ‘rough-stuff’ bikes, which in many ways were forebearers of mountain bikes, used 650b wheels. So there is a 80-year history of riding 650B wheels on singletrail.”

As Heine explains, early British bike makers championed the 27- and 26-inch wheel sizes, while the French used the metric 700c and 650b. The 700c standard was adopted for road bikes, the 26-inch wheel was taken up by mountain bikers, and the 27-inch wheel fell out of favor.

Several European brands produced 650b bikes through the ’50s, but then the wheels fell out of favor until Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycles began producing 650b tires for throw-back randonneurs in 2003. (One exception was the Raleigh Portage, a touring/mountain bike from 1989 that inexplicably came spec’d with 650b wheels.)

One persistent bit of folklore suggests that if the Russian military hadn’t hoarded the entire supply Nokian Hakkapeliitta 650b tires back in the early ’80s, mountain bikers may have used 650b wheels from the beginning. But of course our clunker-riding forefathers settled on 26-inch wheels, thanks in part to a ready supply of alloy rims from Japanese brands like Araya and Ukai. And so for a long while 650b was banished to obscurity—and women’s triathlon bikes.

[Correction: Apparently women's triathlon bikes occupy their own obscure corner of the cycling world - 650c.]

2007 marked the second coming of the 650b wheel—and the first documented modern mountain bike application—when frame designer Kirk Pacenti debuted his custom 650b hardtail at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. The bike used a custom White Brothers fork, custom wheels from Cane Creek and modified 29er tires hand-stitched to size.

Pacenti later began producing 650b tires (and recently, rims), and a couple dozen small frame-builders started making bikes. Jamis is the best known, biggest and so-far most ardent advocate of 650b wheels, followed by smaller brands KHS and Haro (R.I.P., MTB Division).

While the first Pacenti bike ushered in the modern era of the 650b mountain bike, the movement fizzled nearly as quickly as it started. By then, advocates of 29-inch-wheels had already worked themselves up to a fever pitch. There just wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to support arguments for two new wheel sizes, and manufacturers increasingly focused on the larger of the two.

Whether there’s room to shoehorn a third wheel size standard into the market now, or in the coming years, remains to be seen.