Regular readers will know that we've been hemming and hawing about how best to ensure that we can get you wheels when you want them in these days of barren distributor warehouses and endless manufacturer lead times, and we're happy to say that we looked at our navels long enough that they finally made with the answer.
A quick little update here a few hours after posting this - White Industries has now gone to 10 weeks lead time on all except black and silver hubs. We have a bunch of hubs on the way, but the supply situation is generally getting worse not better for the time being.
QuickShip™ wheels.
QuickShip™ wheels are fundamentally the same as any wheels we might normally sell. A QuickShip™ All Road 50 set is the same specs as its standard shipping or pre-order cousin, but with a pared down option set. The typical set up will be black White Industries T11, CLD, or CLD+ (Boost spacing) hubs, with axle and driver options per normal, and the usual spokes for the equivalent normal build. Carbon rims will almost always have their normal spoke counts, both because the normal spoke counts are considered choices and because that's what we'll generally stock. That's not to say that a special order might put us out of balance and all of a sudden we have a set of 24/24 RCGs available for QuickShip™, or maybe dyslexia overcomes me and we wind up with extra blue CLDs and those go up as a QuickShip™ option, but the norm would be specs as per usual with black hubs.
For alloy rims, we have some Boyd Altamont and Altamont ceramics left, in exceedingly limited supply, and those will become QuickShip™ options with black T11 hubs. We have HED Belgium+ rims on hand, so those will go up too. For disc, we'll have HED Belgium+ disc for road and lighter gravel, and HED Belgium G in 650b and 700c for more dedicated "what was I thinking?" riding. Lacing will focus on 28/28 for those, because it's right for a ton of our audience. We can't cover every use case with this blanket, but we can cover most of them.
While QuickShip™ wheels will indeed ship quickly, they won't be on a hook ready to go. Inventory is expensive, and we need it to be adaptable. There will also be times when build capacity is at the limit and it may be a few days before we can squeeze a build in. So the sets of 28/28 CLDs that are in the bin could turn into a set of Belgium G 650bs, or they could turn into a set of Belgium+ road disc wheels. Adaptable inventory is a wonderful thing, and this will allow us to reduce lead times from weeks and sometimes months to days (which might be an amount of days that is greater than one week, but not much).
Accessories and add ons are something we'll have to manage. Cassettes and rotors are too varied and in too miserable a stock situation globally for us to be in a position to always have them. Tires are the same. We'll happily work with you to find a solution that works well, but sometimes that solution won't be available. That's life with bike stuff in 2021.
Minor customizations might seem like an easy thing - silver spokes or orange nipples, whatever, but we don't always have silver spokes and orange nipples on hand, and it might be two weeks before we can efficiently order them. So these things will remain available under regular builds, but not in QuickShip™.
Based on our greatest hits, the QuickShip™ ranges will hardly be a hardship of choice - they're what most people want anyway. All in all, you might read this and say "duh, you idiots should have thought of that forever ago" and you might be right, but there are always some wrinkles behind the curtain that make things not always so simple. We're glad to be in a position to make this roll.
Pricing will be the same as per the equivalent normal build - we're not going to charge extra and if you've known us for a hot second you know there's no way we're going to pay you for this. Our regular pricing is great.
We're just getting inventory for the first rounds of stuff, and as that hits we will populate product pages. Each category of wheels (rim brake road, road/gravel/cross disc, and mountain) will have a QuickShip™ section in it, in which currently available options are listed.
Since I had my second outside bike ride yesterday (mountain bike with gravel wheels, full fenders, lotta mud, totally fun and a story for another day) it will soon get to where people are not patient for wheels. QuickShip™ is there for you.