Bicycle Blog

Last weekend's weather made the perfect back drop for the latest installment in the Wisconsin Fat Bike Series. Broken Spoke Bike Studio hosted the third annual Shell Track race at Silver Creek park in Manitowoc. The course was short at one mile...

I know for some riders every week is bike to work week, but for others the rallying cry is just what is needed to get out the door and brave the cold, especially this year. For us it didn't hurt that several coffee shops around town were enticing riders with free coffee today. This has been one of the most fridged and snowy Winters in a long time, so when we stepped out the door to 5 degree temps it wasn't a surprise. 

For years we've wanted to introduce a Fyxation track/fixed gear wheelset but other projects had priority. Like the market for fixed gear bikes, the market for fixed gear wheelsets is extremely competitive but filled with sub-standard product that is marketed strictly based on price rather than being based on the spec and quality of the product.  We won't use any names, but a quick Google search will show you that there are tons of cheap fixie wheelsets out there that are colorful and look cool, but if you dig a bit deeper you'll hear the horror stories from riders and shops that have had to deal with these cheap fixie wheels.

The other day for example, I spoke to one of our shops that sells a fixie wheelset from brand R that retails for $120...

By now everyone is familiar with Groupon and Living Social and the countless other daily deal sites that are on the Internet.  When I first heard about Groupon it sounded like a good ideal so I signed up to see what kind of deals were out there.  About a month later however, I realized that my inbox was getting flooded with daily emails for stuff that I found myself trying to justify purchasing that I didn't really need (or want for that matter).  After a few more weeks I unsubscribed from Groupon and had pretty much written off daily deal sites. Then I discovered Huckberry....

Here at Fyxation we've always been huge fans of Kickstarter as a way to launch a product or a new company.  I actually was introduced to the concept of crowdunding a few years ago when I attended the launch party of Indiegogo at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. At the time they were targeting this as a way for independent film makers to raise the funds to make movies and it was a pretty big deal at Sundance and Robert Redford actually made it out for the launch party.

Anyway, I don't know if Indiegogo got their idea from Kickstarter or vice versa, but both sites now enable entrepeneurs to get immediate consumer feedback and pre-orders to help "kickstart" their new ideas...

Today was a beautiful day in Park City, UT and I used it as excuse to go out and snap some photos of our new leather bicycle accessories, the Tannery Collection. For those of you who have never been to Sundance, it is one of the more entertaining spectacles you'll experience.  If you're visiting from out of town you'll be amazed at the beauty of the mountains and impressed by the fact that the little town of Park City can actually host a pretty good party.  Sundance happens every January and a for about 10 days Park City becomes the epicenter of all things Hollywood.

We just saw this great build courtesy of one of our favorite shops is Shanghai based Factory 5 and we thought we'd give it a plug up here on the Fyxation Bicycle Blog.  Factory 5 is a great shop that's located in the heart of Shanghai and sells a mix of high end components and their own line of track frames.  This last year they got into the parts game with the release of the F5 Lattice Chainring which is both lightweight and bad ass. 

This latest Factory 5 build features our Session 700 tires and Pilot saddle...

The guys over at Bikerumor.com just posted an article about the new line up of 2014 bikes from Swobo and we thought we'd give them a plug here on the Fyxation blog.  Swobo is based in Colorado and has been in business since 1992.  It's actually had a few different owners along the way and most recently split off from Santa Cruz, hit the reset button and opened under new ownership in late 2011.

Swobo is best known for their edgy branding, apparel and for their singlespeed bike, The Sanchez.  The Swobo Sanchez...