Shimano Suspension Fork Through-axle System

Somewhere around my eighth cup of coffee this morning, I noticed Guitar Ted’s extremely interesting post, “Is Someone Waking the Sleeping Giant?”. The question he asks–is Shimano once again preparing to reassert its industry dominance?–is particularly intriguing, given the shape of today’s industry. Those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember Shimano’s last burst of innovative aggression in the ’90s know that the attack came with a violence and sense of scale normally reserved for military invasions. Suddenly, everything changed. When the market share needle at Shimano HQ finally dipped into the “unacceptable” range, quietly–with few flashing lights or screaming alarms–they struck. And when they did, your chi-chi wonderbike circa 1994, with its rasta anodized boutique mess of titanium chainrings and CNC machined everything, was basically vaporized where it stood, its fancy parts rendered quaint and technologically barren nearly overnight.

It was sort of breathtaking.

By the time they dropped those original “V-brakes” on us (with what turned out to be sort of piss-poor little wiggly, fast-wearing mini linkages), it was clear the Shimano tank had driven into our little DIY knife fight, and guys like Kooka and Grafton were going back to their day jobs.

This wasn’t necessarily a good thing. There’s a reason I referred to Shimano as “it” up there at the beginning of the post, whereas you tended to refer to companies like Cook Bros. and Paul Components as “they,” or even “he.” In a way I don’t think Shimano ever really understood that we liked our cobbled together, poorly shifting, fairly domestically-sourced mash-up bikes. A fair criticism of Shimano (that SRAM has done a great job avoiding) is that they’re out of touch with what we really like. But boy is Shimano good at giving us parts we need.

This is what mountain bikes looked like before "system integration."

When shit works–I mean works, like on a level never before witnessed or even imagined–and consistently, you can’t help but start to like it. Sometimes a big company has inferior products but a superior marketing budget or established power and rams garbage down our throats. Realistically, Shimano could have done that. They could have chosen to outspend these little guys–for whom the OE market wasn’t even a factor–and crushed them the standard issue, soul-less business way. To their infinite credit, Shimano actually innovated to the top. They built drastically better stuff. That’s an honorable way to win.

Which brings us to our current situation.

The catalyst for Guitar Ted’s ponderings would seem to be an article in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, which I’ve clipped for your reading pleasure here. “Are you ready for an 11-speed internal-gear road bike with electric shifting and diss [sic] brakes?” the article begins. Diss brakes aside, the nature of the upcoming components described in the article does suggest the big wheels at Shimano are once again turning, and the giant cannon is once again emerging from Shimano’s base of operations within a hollowed out mountain somewhere. But where to aim it?

Gone are the scattered DIY insurgents Shimano obliterated last time. In their place stands the obvious competitor, SRAM. Though dwarfed by Shimano in terms of revenue, and seriously lacking a “fishing equipment” division, SRAM has seemed almost incapable of making a bad business decision over the past decade, carefully acquiring brands and rolling them up into a very legitimate powerhouse of a company. SRAM did a lot of the same things Shimano had done in the past, but also added a healthy dose of teenage instant-gratification. When Shimano was still saying, “No carbon fiber and go to bed by 10:00pm,” SRAM was busy giving us as much carbon shit as we could afford and letting us stay up all night if we wanted. Formidable stuff. Most notably SRAM took what had been a disadvantage–less ownership and control of their own supply chain and actual manufacturing processes–and turned it to their advantage. They seem to iterate like lightning, making Shimano, no slouch, seem ponderous by comparison. When it comes to mountain bikes in particular, SRAM absolutely out-innovated Shimano over the past five to ten years, thanks largely to listening to riders and being able to develop and bring to market products much more quickly.

But those with an ownership of their supply chain and manufacturing processes are starting to dominate again across all sectors. Apple, the kings of proprietary products and supply chain control, is a company now valued at nearly a half a trillion dollars. With a serious manufacturing advantage, Shimano is uniquely positioned to disrupt the industry yet again, but the real question is will they once again out-innovate everyone?

The biggest question for me–and something at the heart of all of this–is what about Fox? Check the Shimano patent drawing at the top of the post. Since 2009 alone, Shimano has applied for over a half dozen patents just in suspension systems–and these aren’t your Sunday-driver patents. They deal with electronic suspension monitoring and, more telling still, stuff like through-axles.

I included the drawing above because it raises the most interesting question of all: is Shimano about to turn on Fox? They’ve collaborated in the past, and Fox would certainly be a prime acquisition for Shimano, but Fox is no half-ass operation. They have interests and assets outside of the bicycle industry and a long history of independence. As the mountain bike world increasingly breaks down into game of SRAM vs. Shimano+Fox, you have to wonder what the through-axle patents Shimano is displaying say about their current relationship with Fox.

For one thing, that patent drawing looks a hell of a lot like a Fox 15QR system, but some of the embodiments (Shimano offers several within this patent) are even more like the Fox system. I’ll leave you today with those images, and you can ask yourself if we’re about to see a major partnership, or if Shimano’s about to eat Fox’s lunch. If they can.