FAT CHANCE returns???

[Anthony]

I think Fat Chance is a different beast from Ibis, and it's much less easy to see how a reincarnation could work.

I don't see anything wrong with the current Ibis, they're said to be good bikes and they're a good shot at a smallish company having a go at the current market for high-end bikes. It would have been nice if they had restarted with steel bikes, but if they don't see a market, you can't really blame them.

Brodie has a new Catalyst for 2009, made of the latest form of Tange Prestige, and Orange seems to have done reasonably well with sales of the reincarnated Prestige, but it's all on a fairly small scale, and Kona has just stopped using the name Explosif. There just isn't a substantial market for either steel or 7005 aluminium bikes now - even Easton is hardly offered by any manufacturer. Top line bikes are either carbon or occasionally (generic) scandium. And very very few of these are made or painted in the USA.

So how do you find a fit between what made Fat Chance special and what there's a market for in 2009? I can't see it. The magic of Fat Chance included being built in the USA and painted (artistically) in the USA, and unless the new Fat Chance includes those two essentials, it'll just be a use of the name on another Taiwanese product. They'll probably be good bikes, just as the Ibis are good bikes, but I can't see how they can really be worthy of the Fat Chance name. Hope to be proved wrong though.

 

[utahdog2003]

I think Fat Chance is a different beast from Ibis, and it's much less easy to see how a reincarnation could work.

I don't see anything wrong with the current Ibis, they're said to be good bikes and they're a good shot at a smallish company having a go at the current market for high-end bikes.....

I think you're missing the beauty of early Ibis. The new Ibis is an abomination compared to the Mojos and the like from back in the day. I would say that Ibis is the poster child for how not to tarnish a vintage nameplate with new, subcontracted, overpriced plastic crap from Asia. When people hear of brands like Fat coming back, they fear the Ibis route...
:cry:

There's a market for USA made steel hardtails, it just isn't a recipe for getting rich. Somewhere along the line, bike companies face the fork in the road where they either choose to keep the faith with their original ideas and muddle through the bad times to get to the infrequent good times, or they choose to chase every half assed fad that comes down the pipe, and wind up as a brand that stands for little if anything at all. Ibis is clearly the latter regardless of whether the new carbon fugliness works or not, and if I had to pick an example of the former, I'd have to say EWR. (yeah, I'm biased...but I do own both the old and the new!)

 

[hamster]

Just like those UGGGLY Carbon Merlins and Litespeed's daft idea of making cheaper Alu frames. :shock: :shock: :shock: