Not to start a war here but I was thinking about something last night as I was drooling over HED's website. I simply love the clean look of their wheels. The Jet C2's in black look awesome. Very clean and elegant. And a much better value than Zipp wheels. Then I started wondering what they would actually look like on a bike. I started flipping through a few tri magazines and realized that 95% of the tri bikes are shown with Zipp wheels. Now I know that Zipp makes an awesome product and I think the Kona bike count shows that they dominate the market. But this got me thinking about why that is.
I know that HED has been around for quite awhile and a lot of people love their products. They are less expensive and therefore are arguably a better value. Yet almost every bike is marketed with Zipp wheels (typically a Zipp disc and a deep dish front). This definitely creates the perception that Zipp is far and away superior to other wheel choices. Then it hit me. Zipp wheels LOOK fast. It is that simple.
Zipp wheels could be the slowest wheels out there (I know that they aren't but even if they were) and they would still look damn fast. It is all about the font they choose. While everyone else out there goes with a pretty standard font, Zipp's logo is made to look like it is in motion. Therefore every bike chooses to market their bike with Zipp's on them because they subconsciuosly (or consciously) make the bike itself look faster.
Now I said that I love the simple elegance of the HED wheels but when I searched for photos of bikes with HED wheels it became obvious to me that the wheels look much better on their own rather than on a bike (not counting the tri spoke wheels here because those look great on pretty much every bike). I know it is a simple style thing but I think we can all admit that aesthetics play a very important role in any bike product purchase we make. I think HED and others would do well to take this under consideration and make some minor logo adjustments that do justice to the great product they are already making.
I know that HED has been around for quite awhile and a lot of people love their products. They are less expensive and therefore are arguably a better value. Yet almost every bike is marketed with Zipp wheels (typically a Zipp disc and a deep dish front). This definitely creates the perception that Zipp is far and away superior to other wheel choices. Then it hit me. Zipp wheels LOOK fast. It is that simple.
Zipp wheels could be the slowest wheels out there (I know that they aren't but even if they were) and they would still look damn fast. It is all about the font they choose. While everyone else out there goes with a pretty standard font, Zipp's logo is made to look like it is in motion. Therefore every bike chooses to market their bike with Zipp's on them because they subconsciuosly (or consciously) make the bike itself look faster.
Now I said that I love the simple elegance of the HED wheels but when I searched for photos of bikes with HED wheels it became obvious to me that the wheels look much better on their own rather than on a bike (not counting the tri spoke wheels here because those look great on pretty much every bike). I know it is a simple style thing but I think we can all admit that aesthetics play a very important role in any bike product purchase we make. I think HED and others would do well to take this under consideration and make some minor logo adjustments that do justice to the great product they are already making.
