Wove saddles

Triathlon Forum
121

I’m even longer in the queue, I ordered mine in Kona after I had the chance to demo it and feel that it would work really well. At the time Nick said they were anticipating shipping mid November or certainly by the start of December. Then like you said, every couple months saying “shipping in a few weeks…”

I’m pretty pissed to be out $500, 7 months later, no idea when/if it’ll come, still doing races on my prior saddle which is decent but not perfect. If you told me in the Kona expo that I wouldn’t have a saddle come mid-May, there’s not a chance in hell I would’ve ordered then. I really like the wove crew and product and support them but it’s so so frustrating to have no product, be out a lot of money, and updates which aren’t worth the electricity used to generate them since it keeps getting kicked out further.

I’ve sent them several emails and they’ve had a ton of issues with quality control and finish from their manufacturer, and recently had to stich manufacturers. But as long as the ting won’t break under my ass, I could give a crap what it looks like, just credit me half the price and send a saddle whose look isn’t perfect. It’s admittedly so frustrating to see half the pro field on wove saddles while those paying keep waiting and waiting after paying our $$.

122

Hi there,

We appreciate the frustration. While our website states clearly there are delays, we understand the desire to express frustration here.

We have been shipping 50-100 saddles each week the past several months.

We’re actually at our manufacturer this week to get these QC issues resolved.

As for the pros, pros are on version one saddles that are no longer in production, and a couple are on blemish version 2 saddles.

We offer refunds, so please feel free to contact us. But we won’t be offering a 50% discount.

Manufacturing is tough and has come with a lot of unexpected issues. We’re almost over this hump.

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123

Eh, $500 is a drop in the bucket considering what most of us spend on this hobby. This is a pretty niche product from a small company, so I’m ok with these types of delays especially when they have a history of actually shipping products to customers (and have a huge Pro adoption rate). I have sent a lot of emails inquiring about my order status and someone from Wove has always gotten back to me within a few days and has been very transparent in their response. I don’t really expect anything else, and was offered a refund, but decided to wait because I really want to try the saddle.

124

I definitely appreciate the support!

But I will also state that I am not OK with the delays and really do feel a responsibility and obligation to our customers, and this has been very stressful for us, hence the reason why we are at our manufacturer’s this week to make sure this is resolved ASAP. We are working very hard on this and take it very seriously.

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125

Thanks for the reply Nick!

I do want to 2nd the prior comment that the Wove team (shoutout Matthew) has always been very responsive and upfront when I’ve asked about status. I think part of the disappointment is because the saddle is so great, and there’s a reason so many pros and AGers have been on or ordered the saddle. Every time I get around 90mins -2 hours into a ride and start shifting around on the saddle, I wish I had the Wove saddle to stay planted better. So it’s not that I’m looking for a refund, just maybe that I would’ve either waited to order or tried around with another saddle in the interim. I do think it could be a bit more clear on the website as to the extended backorder on the V8 though.

I don’t doubt it’s been stressful and disappointing (no doubt the constant on/off with tariffs haven’t helped either), and I do appreciate how you’ve invested in triathlon and cycling traveling around to so many expos this year.

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126

So ordered in February, so it appears I have a while to wait. At some point I’ll cancel and find something else, as if it shows up after the race season then it does me no good. They have been super nice, agreed, but that only goes so far. Don’t take orders if you can’t produce it. It would be nice to know how many seats are in the backlog, and where we sit in the que, so we can have some sense whether we should wait or cut bait. I’d have to think this is a fairly niche product and there aren’t 500 people waiting on a $500 saddle, but what do I know. If I’m number 800 in the que, then my decision is easy.

127

Hi there,

Our goal of being at our manufacturer this week is to ensure that they can produce 200 saddles a week. That will clear out our queue within a couple of weeks. The saddles we received yesterday had a 100% success rate of quality control, but it was a small batch.

And, while I think I can kind of understand the sentiment around a saddle being useless after a certain date, unless the person is completely retiring from riding bikes altogether, I would think the saddle still has some utility. We look forward to shipping a saddle soon, and hope it serves a purpose beyond your immediate season. Thank you.

128

I’m taking next season off from racing :wink:

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129

Nick, where are your saddles manufactured?

130

We recently moved our operations to Mexico to meet demand. amongst other strategic reasons aside from cost. Scaling was the #1 reason.
#2 was the fact that we had come up with a very proprietary way of constructing the carbon fiber, and of constructing and attaching the foam and cover material, and manufacturers in Italy or Asia would want to use some of their tacit knowledge and existing manufacturing methods. while this has proven to be an advantage for us, it has obviously also led to challenges in scaling in terms of quality control. We are almost over that hump, but as they say manufacturing, there is no finish line.

The Cervelo book captured that, and my friend, Stephen of Rodeo Labs, captures this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJecbvwu_xY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

131

Nick, if I may suggest that you come back to the forum after your visit and give an update and some timeline to people. Just my 2c

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132

The time line is for sure shorter now but for comparison. I received my saddle 1 day shy of a year from order date. I ordered mine on May 8 2024 and received it 2 weeks ago…

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133

At the very least you want prompt and up to date info about the product if you are plunking down $500. I was thinking about it but I’m not ready to wait 3/6/12 months

134

Hi there,

The only people that are waiting that long were customers who placed pre-sales orders and their orders were specified as pre-sales and they received discounts for being willing to wait. I think that is an important piece of information.

Customers who are placing saddle orders right now have much shorter waits, and we are shipping roughly 100 saddles a week. And, customers who are in the queue will receive emails this week letting them know which week their saddles will be shipped.

3 Likes
135

Interesting discussion. I held off posting up to now but probably both sides of this getting a bit away from the middle ground as I see it. I made my buying decision almost 100% on the basis of the ST discussions, hence relevance to post here.

I ordered the early adopter saddle 24 July for $450. Was estimated in September IIRC. Few months later it emerged that the ‘new’ improved one would have different rails, which did slightly annoy me as that was one of the things that appealed, but I managed to order the new ‘ears’ to work with the oval shape the updated version would come with.

And then as the months went on the date was being shifted, and being based in NZ then our season is October to March, so I was getting worried, especially as I had a new bike and wanted to get the saddle to take to the fitter. So the saddle delay also pushed my fit back.

My mood didn’t get improved by every day opening my instagram to see a new post from some pro waxing lyrical about their new saddle and how it had just won them 70.3 XX or IM YY.

But, here’s the other side. When I reached out to Nick, and expressed my grumpiness, he replied about 5 mins later with the offer to give me a refund, and when I replied then the money was literally in my account 5 mins later, no further questions asked. And to me that shows a real integrity from a fairly small business.

I’ve not ruled out buying one in the future, and as suggested then I think that the lead times will be both shorter and more predictable. Was the process perfect, no I think it was some optimism bias, but equally I don’t think any conscious decision to miss-lead.

So what happened, I was out of pocket $450 for 5 months. But Wove managed to get through the process to now be able to be in a production ready state. I sleep happy, I can’t rave about the product (still not seen one) but I wouldn’t stop anyone from buying or even raise any cautions. Quite the opposite, if anyone in the club was thinking of it I’d love to see one in the flesh and even try to grab a perch as I say, I am not ruling out a future one.

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136

Writing a quick update:

We have continued shipping out saddles each week, and we will have the remaining Mags pre-sale saddles shipped out next week, at least the ones that were not ordered along with V8 saddles, because V8 saddles are our current bottleneck but we will be caught up on those in the next several weeks. We have a bottleneck because we did change the shape of the V8 some to improve it over the version one saddle.

We are getting emails out to everyone letting them know which week their saddles will ship.

We are working really hard on getting 200 saddles shipped out each week so that we can meet demand. Jumping up to that level of production has been exciting, and by exciting I mean welcomely (and at times unwelcomely) challenging.

As for professional athletes posting pictures of their saddles, nearly all of those are on version one saddles. And we have very purposefully been holding back on our marketing until we have fulfilled all of our orders, but obviously pros posting images of their version once saddles still slip onto the intertube/grams.

Ask for the comment directly above about us changing the rails to 7x9, I can assure you that the version two saddles are better, even stronger and even more comfortable.

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137

Are these saddles going to be available for purchase this year in Europe?
On the worldwide tour will saddles be available for purchase in each location you go to?

138

They are available through R2 bike at this time, and we are working to stock other European dealers.

I do not anticipate having inventory in hand for Eurobike or Roth, but I plan to bring inventory with me to Nice, Sea Otter Europe in Girona, and Marbella.

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139

Thanks for the update.

140

Not yet. Everyone who’s ordered is supposed to be getting an email next week about where in the queue our saddles are. Hopefully before Lake Placid for me… which feel nuts to say when the original estimated date was supposed to be by December. Thankfully I found a better position for my Dash strike in the interim, which doesn’t both me and supports power production.