I think White Industries can afford to offer a wide/narrow chainring for exactly the reasons you say that they can't afford to. To CNC a chainring, they need a CNC mill, the right materials, tooling and fixturing suitable to hold the material, and a competent CNC operator. They already have all those things. The only investment is a design, which is not nothing, but it's also not a huge monetary expense. It's Doug sitting at the CAD station and deciding to fire out a design. It's nothing like a derailleur. From the CNC manufacturing perspective, the tooth profile is a decorative feature. Just like if there was a hot new trend in 10mm pitch chains, White could react if they wanted to with a couple tweaks to existing design templates. The risk of doing any of these things is mainly deciding whether people would buy them or would you be stuck recycling a lot of inventory. Actual physical infrastructure investment would be nearly zero, which is why I am optimistic that it could happen.
On Thursday, August 7, 2014 6:12:21 AM UTC-7, Matthew J wrote: > > That is too bad. With the rise of 1x8/9/10 and now 11, I think they could > really expand their customer base with a good wide-narrow option. Hopefully > they change their mind in time. > > Agreed to a point. I like WI stuff. The more reasons to buy the better. > I would love to have a WI crank on my 1X bike. > > However, product lines are always a challenge for a small manufacturing > operation like WI. In order to join the 1X wave it is possible WI would > need new equipment and employees. If their product misses or the trend > dies before the investments pay off it could be quite a blow to their > viability. > > Not quite the same thing, but a while back there was a good article about > the Paul Rear Der that for a while in the '90s was the hottest thing > going. Despite demand and customers willing to pay a premium, production > challenges for such a small operation almost put Paul out of business. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
