Now, that being said: we started this off with a pre-production bike that we quickly realized was not in the best shape for the review. This was 100% Knolly's fault as there was a push to get the bike out for review, because we were close to starting to ship production units. Literally 2 weeks after getting the initial bike to Tim, Covid 19 hit in March and, well, I probably don't need to say more, but there were a lot of distractions and life became extremely messy. This was followed by the Fox MY21 product release which was a substantial change to their product line: we wanted to get these parts on the bike for Tim. All of this, followed by the impending rush on production capacity a few months later caused our support of this review to linger and drag on. Long story short, we were not able to support Tim correctly through the review until recently and were able to start addressing some of his concerns, particularly the tires. Contact points on bikes are tricky to spec: they are incredibly personal and what works for one customer will not work for another customer. We have no ability to custom order tires, grips, saddles for each individual customer, etc... so we have to spec what we think is the best overall solution for the product application. We have also grown as a company and don't just "sell to the North Shore": our products are all over North America now (and beyond) and a lot go to places like Colorado or Utah where Maxx Grip is just not required. But we do recognize that in some cases a more serious tire is required, and we actually spec the Delirium version of this bike with Maxx Grip front tire and both front and rear tires with Double Down casings.
So, hopefully by the end of the review, we had the bike working fully as expected, but it was certainly dragged out by the need for our business to focus in different areas since the start of Covid. I'll leave it at that right now and if there are any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them in the comments :)
Nov. 13, 2020, 12:28 p.m. - knollybikes.com
Now, that being said: we started this off with a pre-production bike that we quickly realized was not in the best shape for the review. This was 100% Knolly's fault as there was a push to get the bike out for review, because we were close to starting to ship production units. Literally 2 weeks after getting the initial bike to Tim, Covid 19 hit in March and, well, I probably don't need to say more, but there were a lot of distractions and life became extremely messy. This was followed by the Fox MY21 product release which was a substantial change to their product line: we wanted to get these parts on the bike for Tim. All of this, followed by the impending rush on production capacity a few months later caused our support of this review to linger and drag on. Long story short, we were not able to support Tim correctly through the review until recently and were able to start addressing some of his concerns, particularly the tires. Contact points on bikes are tricky to spec: they are incredibly personal and what works for one customer will not work for another customer. We have no ability to custom order tires, grips, saddles for each individual customer, etc... so we have to spec what we think is the best overall solution for the product application. We have also grown as a company and don't just "sell to the North Shore": our products are all over North America now (and beyond) and a lot go to places like Colorado or Utah where Maxx Grip is just not required. But we do recognize that in some cases a more serious tire is required, and we actually spec the Delirium version of this bike with Maxx Grip front tire and both front and rear tires with Double Down casings. So, hopefully by the end of the review, we had the bike working fully as expected, but it was certainly dragged out by the need for our business to focus in different areas since the start of Covid. I'll leave it at that right now and if there are any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them in the comments :)