I have thought about your question. It is one that I have gotten from a number of athletes and it deserves an answer. I'm fine with the truth so the following are my thoughts.
It comes down to a business decision and a "company vision" decision.
There are currently a large enough selection of disc brake tri-bikes on the market. The good ones (1-3 or so) are all within what I consider really good offerings (high priced but good bikes) - so if what an athlete wants is a disc brake tri-bike they have some choices.
I have all the CAD drawings, CFD information etc.., etc.. to do a very good Tactical disc brake bike. I have had that work done for about 15 months. We would also be in the top 1-3 bikes to choose - from from a storage, aero, quality, components perspective; if I move forward.
We sold about 800 bikes as a company since our first sale in November 2016 and broke even on the investment about a year ago. About what I expected.
We have not sold a lot of bike since the shut down (not much inventory to sell) but many of the costs are now "kind-of-build-in" so we could do much better moving forward from a profit per unit basis moving forward with another bike.
I have not been able to travel to Taiwan for 14 months. I do this type of work face-to-face so that is an issue. Its' too important to allow mistakes at our size company.
I am currently helping other companies designing products and am manufacturing for sale OEM items to other companies and am busier than I have been in the past few years.
65% of athletes say they don't want a disc brake Tri-bike according to the most recent Slowtwitch poll. So, do I go against the industry and make another rim brake bike which is faster? Already developed? More profitable? Are races going to resume soon?
These are the questions. The numbers and risk are significant.
Dan Kennison
facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com http://www.PositionOneSports.com
