Chipps brings you a curated tour of the eye-catching highlights of this pivotal European trade show.
It’s Eurobike time again! I spent two and a half days wandering the aisles, catching up with people, taking in the vibe and looking to see what things are new, blue or borrowed.
There were some general, common themes in place when talking to other bike industry long-timers. Many bike companies are doing OK, given that nearly everyone who wanted a bike during Covid now has a bike. It seems that everyone still has massive amounts of stock in their warehouses. (I heard of one UK company with over 200,000 bike helmets on its shelves.) Other brands were even offering to buy back some of their excess stock from distributors, just to keep them in business…
In general, though, the bike industry is back and pedalling a big gear, with many of those supply issues now fading and a lot of innovation on the horizon. Here are a few things that caught my eye. There will be more stories appearing on grit.cx – gravel bikes, obviously, but also luggage and other stuff. Singletrack Charged will have a lot of new e-bike and accessory news as always. And that’s just the stuff we can talk about – a lot of companies had a ‘room round the back’ where 2025 components and bikes lurked…
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No model years.
The model year is truly dead now. Eurobike used to be at the end of August, which was just late enough that bike companies could rush out a few early examples of next year’s bikes. Now, though, the show is mid-June, but new bikes just come out when they come out. If you’re a bike brand waiting for the tyre order you placed two years ago to arrive before you can launch your bike, then you’re better off just waiting, than getting everyone excited and not being able to deliver for six months.
How about this wicked-looking 24in kids’ full susser from Patrol Bikes?
The same with groupsets and other bike components. One component manufacturer reckoned it had a backlog of about a dozen new products that would be appearing in the next year. This is partly due to Covid-related delays, partly due to bike companies wanting to sell the stock they had and partly with an eye on the competition. The big companies have a momentum of scale that the smaller, nippier companies don’t have, so no one wants to launch a product, only for it to instantly be obsolete…
In general, though, the bike world is still pretty upbeat, there’s more effort going into making products more recyclable post-use, there’s more concern about raw materials, recycling and low-carbon emission manufacturing where possible.
And what does all that mean to you, the potential bike purchaser? I won’t say that ‘you’ve never had it so good’ – although you have, as bikes have never been as comprehensively excellent and reliable as they are today. And now is a good time to purchase that new bike if you were thinking of it, as bike companies seem keen to sell them to you. However, don’t hold out too long for a bargain, as there’s a small tsunami of innovation that is surging down, having been backed up by Covid for a couple of years.
A bit like laptops and cameras, there’s never a ‘best’ time to buy a bike, because the next one is just around the corner. However, if you’re buying a new bike and planning on keeping it a while, I’d probably make sure it is compatible with SRAM’s UDH – or universal derailleur hanger, as not only will SRAM’s future gears rely on it, but expect to see a lot of companies reverse-engineering components that work with compatible frames. And, as for e-bikes, well, we have to see how the new Pinion MGU (electric motor and BB-gearbox combined) goes down. And, in addition, the new SRAM motor appeared to be hiding in plain sight at the show under a SRAM-sponsored e-bike racer’s GASGAS bike. Surely can’t be long now, eh?
It’s always been my tradition to visit the Orange booth first at Eurobike, usually because they give good chat and they always keep something back to show at the show, and I wasn’t disappointed. As well as the ‘Angel Delight’ coloured new Switch 6, there were a couple of welded-in-Halifax hardtails: one ‘muscular’ and one e-powered.
The Switch is a mixed-wheel hardtail that takes a 150mm fork (I was told 130mm at the show, but the website says 150, which is more like it) and, because it’s made (and painted) in the UK, comes in a bonkers 11 different colour options. Full bikes come with suitably hardcore hardtail spec. A frame will be £1200, with loads of spec options for full builds.
If the Switch reminds you of a bike that Orange used to make: the MsIsle, well the namesake of the hardtail Orange made for Missy Giove lives on (had you forgotten that Missy rode for Orange-sponsored Global Racing at the turn of the century?) Only now, the 64°/75° Orange MsIsle is electric-assist, coming in this lovely Yorkshire Teal (geddit?) colour and a ‘baller spec’ that is likely to cost you £8,500. However, this again is welded in Halifax and includes a natty stainless steel engine guard/bash plate and it’ll come in the usual Orange range of powdercoat colours. Motor is a Shimano EP8.1 and a 630W/hr battery.
Next up is the newly revamped Fox Speedframe helmet – the Speedframe RS. This helmet owes as much to the new full face ProFrame RS as it does to its predecessor. There’s a brand new MIPS Integral liner, which is similar to the ‘MIPS Spherical’ seen in Giro and Bell helmets – ‘only better!’ reckons Fox.
The MIPS liner on the Speedframe RS isn’t a plastic hairnet that slides inside the polystyrene helmet, it’s a whole slimline helmet inside another one. In fact, the inner MIPS liner helmet is actually in two pieces that can move together and better fit your head, and the outer helmet that they rotate inside. In addition, there’s a volume-adjustable head retention system and an Ionic+ liner to keep helmet stink at bay. On the outside, there are some smart colours and the visor not only accepts your eyewear arms, but the visor adjuster has been centralised to stop the wonky attitude that having two adjustors could give you. The only downside is that you won’t see them in shops until April 2024. Sorry folks.
Over at Abus, the brand you and I associate with locks had plenty to show that it has thrown off that mantle, yet also had the biggest bike security claim at the show – an angle grinder resistant U-lock. They say resistant as nothing is actually angle grinder proof with enough time and endless new discs. However, Abus reckons that its catchily named ‘Granite Super Extreme 2500’ lock will resist a high powered angle grinder for five minutes. And you’ll have to cut through both sides, so that’s ten minutes, by which time the thief will probably have stolen the bike next to yours instead. The square-sided lock is coated in tungsten carbide, which is what the cutting discs are coated with, so it’s fighting fire with fire…
Abus also showed some impressive kids’ full face helmets with removable chinbars. Not DH certified, but great for some extra reassurance. And in better colours than the grownup helmets. All for £99. Or £69 in open face.
This year there seems to have been a more obvious by brands to address the environmental demands of making bike stuff. More and more clothing brands are utilising recycled fabrics, bike companies are shipping bikes and components in plastic-free cartons and packages and there’s more of a focus on where the components go at the end of life. A couple of saddle companies were showing saddles that could be completely disassembled and recycled once they’ve reached the end of their useful lives – the steel rails separated to be recycled and the plastic base (and padding) can be recycled. There were also several grip companies, like Ergon, making recycled grips.
On the tyre front Schwalbe, last year, was showing its campaign to collect and recycle old tyres. This year it displayed the first tyres made from recycled ingredients. Schwalbe also showed the new Tacky Chan downhill race tyre (expect a review from Benji soon…) as well as a couple of prototype e-bike racing tyres – because that’s a proper thing these days and there’s obviously a need for high performance (with related high-wear) tyres that worry more about grip than drag or wear for racers with a motor.
In other news, Mavic is back! After a few years of changing ownership and its separation from the Salomon group, Mavic found itself without all the things it had shared with Salomon in the past, like – an office, a computer system, an HR department, an R&D lab… so it had taken a while to build a new office and all the other stuff. Now, though, it’s back and launching a load of new wheels, just in time for the 25th anniversary of the iconic DeeMax wheels (which makes me feel very old!). There’s also new clothing coming too – firstly for gravel, but later on, mountain bike gear too.
In general, Eurobike was its usual blaze of new and shiny, crazy and dull in equal measures. I haven’t shown you all of the new bikes, because there were so many – but also because many bikes are launched in their own fanfare of energy, but rest assured, there are plenty of new machines waiting in the wings to tempt you away from your wage packets. We’ll be bringing you news of them as they launch, through the ever-busy NBD posts.
And was there one thing that everyone was talking about? Yes. It had to be the new Pinion Gearbox E-bike motor system, but that’s another story.
Stay tuned for more bikepacking-related Eurobike stories in the pages of grit.cx and more new E-bikes and ebike-related tyres, saddles, grips(!) and all sorts of craziness on Singletrack Charged. Stay tuned.