For the price...

"For the price" is implicit in everything we do, say, and recommend, even if we don't explicitly say it. Mike and I are both pretty price aware in life, and our impression is that most people are, too. 

We just sent out a good fair number of GOAT 28 builds. These are priced above par among the products we sell, but their value for the price is hard to beat. There is a raft of wheels out there that you could buy for $1800, which we see as being quite inferior to GOAT 28s, and there are builds out there at $2500 and way more that are maybe equal to GOAT 28s. The rims are simply that good, and all of our hub options are absolutely top notch or better. The same is true of all of our "house" carbon builds, it's just that GOATs have been going out the door so they are most top of mind. The components matter naught without a great build, we've spent 8 years chasing perfection in that regard, and though it's uncharacteristic of me to say anything like this, I think we're getting awfully close. 

But compared to our alloy builds, GOATs, RCGs, Cafe Racers, and GX24s are more expensive, so what do you get for the price? As we've said whenever discussing them, they're of a high enough quality that we consider them to be the quality equal of the nicest alloy rims, and at the very least equal to any of the carbon rims we see. But relative to premium alloy, the extra spend gets you impact resistance and toughness, a better stiffness to weight ratio, lower weight per unit of rim depth and width, and overall lower weight. For the price, we think they absolutely pound on other carbon wheels, but we also think that regardless of price. It's just that they're priced quite well. 

Then take HED Belgium+ rims (for disc, too). They're toward the top of the cost spectrum for aluminum rims, but with that price comes a substantively perfect rim. While I'm definitely not saying that any of the other rims we feature are less than great, if I was forced to enter the Wheelbuilding World Championships in the aluminum rim category and could choose one rim out of all the others with which to feature my best work, there wouldn't be a second's thought before committing to Belgium+ for that. We can always do a for all intents and purposes perfect build on them, plus they are light, quite fast, somewhat shockingly durable, and the only feedback we EVER hear about them is "love the wheels, thanks!"

On the other end of the cost spectrum, take the Select build series (for disc, too!). It's always a struggle for us to compete in the budget end of the market, simply because all of our wheels go through this same expensive and time consuming hand build process, and comes with the same level of customer service, and we simply can't and won't discount that in order to sell wheels on the less expensive end (note that I did not use the descriptor "value end," simply because less expensive can sometimes mean value and often it means you get what you pay for) of the spectrum. So we have to make choices that allow us to provide value. DT 350 hubs are a great example of this. They're so similar to DT 240s, the most notable (though not necessarily noticeable) difference being their increased weight. But they're WAY less expensive than 240s. WAY. For the price, it's an easy choice, and for our purposes they are a pretty obvious solution to a wallet-friendly road build. On the disc side of the Select category, the Aivee MP2 hubs just crush it. Irrespective of price, both DT 350s and Aivee MP2s are awesome products, but when viewed through the "for the price" filter, they are outliers. That's why we use them. 

We work hard to help people understand that though we'd happily use any of the products we sell, and we wouldn't sell just anything simply in order to have something to sell, products at different price points exist in our lineup to give customers a chance to more closely tailor their purchase to their budgetary and use needs.