All right, the lux life when it comes to two wheels. Here to tell us more is the founder of Felt Racing, a maker of Felt bicycles, Jim Felt. Jim Felt, thanks very much for being with us worries. Glad I can help, all right, So tell us tell people that are not familiar with the with Felt the bicycles, why a bicycle might not have any breaks, why it might have the gear change on the left hand side, and tell us
about the price. Well, you're probably talking about the bike we just developed for the Olympic Games for the US cycling team women's pursuit team, uh this year for the real Olympics. And what we did is like any projects. Sometimes sometimes we pick and choose projects ahead of time, um, based on marketing trends. Sometimes it's purely that it comes to us. And we were asked to take on a project for like the Olympic Games or something. This in
particular was the Olympic Games. So we developed a bike a track for the women's pursuit team from ground up, which consisted of and we just started with a clean canvas, as I'll say, and uh, you know, we're kind of known for pushing the envelope on aerodynamics and everything and
when you're in riding inside of a velodrome. We wanted to find out some new new information that hasn't been found before on what goes on aerodynamically inside of a velodrome, and that caused us to put the drive train on the left hand side. Matt Miller here um joining him today, and I'm excited to talk to you because I'm really into UM bikes. Can you make money on these super high end and we're talking about, you know, ten twenty
dollar bikes. Can you make money in that market or do you have to get out into UM the cross market, into the gravel bikes, into the fitness bikes and the mountain bikes to really make money. I think you really have to have a broad range in order to make money. To be a full branded bike. It certainly helps do that the projects. You know, when you're talking about the thirty track bike, you know, I mean the consumers and the customers that you have to to use those bike.
Those bikes are specific for that, you know, for that event or something like that. So there's uh kind of the niche of the niche markets. But it does well for our branding, exercise and stuff like that. We definitely got some huge exposure from that project for doing that Olympic project. And you keep making bikes UM in America.
I know that almost everybody, especially obviously the big brands that we think of as American made bikes like Cannondale, UM and Raleigh have all moved the most the majority of their production out to UM lower labor countries. Do you have to move as well? Yeah, I think. I
think for a couple of reasons. That is one price for the end price of the bike, because the bikes, as as you know, some bikes are you know, ten fifty thousand dollars now at some of the high end bikes, and they would be even more than that if we were to do of the labor in the US. UM. But one of the biggest things is that, you know, five ten years ago, most of the bikes out there were steel or aluminum. Uh now we're now the bikes
out there are probably composite construction, meaning carbon fiber. And you know, the Orient especially is well known and pretty much the leader in composite technology. So they're doing things over there UM with those materials that we just simply
haven't caught up to. In here in the state. It's it's interesting because we developed the materials for aerospace over here, but aerospace is actually looking to the bicycle industry for the technology because we're using those materials unlike that they can even do in in aerospace right now. So we're kind of, uh, we kind of complement each other. Jim Felt tell us a little bit about the one bike in particular, because I know that Matt Miller has been
desirous of this. It's across F sixt X with the Shamano one oh five groups Set. Whatever that means, You've got to tell me. And then I want to know about this new uh seven seven thousand five Eastern aluminum that you've put together. Well, yeah, that's um, there's there's uh yeah. I mean the F sixty five is uh been a go to bike for us for for quite some time now. UM and Shimano, the who is the
manufacturer of the group set as a leader. I mean they're known for their bicycle components and their fishing equipment. UM kind of well known for that. UM and the one oh five is reliable and not too expensive. I'm not looking to drop ten grand, but Jim, to what extent are you beholden to these groups that manufacturers because Shimano and s ram Um they're so expensive, it's it seems odd that someone would pay so much or unusual unique so much um for a component of a part
of the product he makes. Yeah. No, and you're talking about the two probably leaders. There's a couple other component manufacturers out there, European brands that are that are also producing components, but your Shimono and shram are the two key suppliers to the bike industry. They go head to head on on price and quality, and it's at those different levels. You are correct, one oh five. There's kind of a mid price point level of very good quality.
All right, Jim, thanks so much for joining us. Jim Felt there, uh, the head of Felt Bicycles. This is Bloomberg. Yeah,