The Session 700 Turns 5!

In June 2009 when the very first Session 700 tire rolled off the production line, we had no idea what we were getting into.  We set out with a goal of introducing a durable, colorful and stylish bicycle tire into a very crowded market and didn't really know where things would take us.  At the time, we started off with one size tire (700x28c) that was available in 5 colors - black, white, green, orange and pink.

When we started to reach out to the media and bike shops to introduce our new tires, we quickly realized that we had the potential to start something special. The shop and rider response was great and once we finally finished our first production run we shipped tires to 5 different countries in our very first month in business.  The Session 700 is a unique tire in that has a very aggressive tread pattern that wraps from bead to bead which gives it great traction on many surfaces, not just the streets.  We use a hard rubber compound and a Kevlar puncture layer that helps keep you rolling and we initially launched the Sessions we used a very supple and high end 120TPI casing and a thicker sidewall to prevent pinch flats.

As demand increased and riders started giving us more feedback, we added additional tire sizes with the introduction of our 700x23c Session 700 and eventually our 700x35c Session 700.  At the time, fixed gear freestyle was pretty popular and a lot of these riders would use our tires because of their wrap around tread and larger size.  That market started to evolve pretty fast and riders eventually were hitting us up for an even larger version of the Session 700 and even a 26" model.  It costs a lot of money to open a new tire mold and while it would have been nice to offer a few more sizes of Sessions we resisted the urge and stuck with 700x23c, 28c and 35c.

In 2010 we introduced our Dual Compound Session 700 tire which added a hard black center strip to our colored tires.  With the introduction of our Dual Compound Session 700 tires we had over 20 different flavors of Sessions available to color match the bikes people were riding. The funny thing is that even though we had that many colored tires to choose from, we'd still get requests for colors we didn't make like blue, red and purple but we stuck with our original colors for the first 3 years of production.  

Today in 2014 the Session 700 tire is still going strong and while it's not available in as many bright colors as it used to be, the focus of the tire remains the same. It is a durable city tire that rolls fast and keeps you on the road.  Since those early days we've spent a ton of time launching additional products and we now offer a full line of parts, frames and bikes.  Even though our focus has shifted to other categories, the Session 700 still has a special place for us because it started it all and even after 5 years keeps rolling off the production line. In fact, the 35c Sessions are the stock tire that comes on our Quiver 1x10 complete bike that we launched late last year. 

Happy Birthday Session 700!