Originally Posted by votedean
Well, short of trashing any of our brainstorming ideas and coming down on my marketing knowledge, I am totally aware I have yet to offer any innovative (Level) ideas for this proposed hub. I've created this thread to find out what you guys want, not what I can get away with selling you. I'm not trying in any way to go head to head with Phil; they're a great company, and I highly respect them, and I doubt we would ever get anywhere near as reputable and popular as them. I'd just someday like to be able to say, that we could offer in a few shops a hand crafted, durable hub that was specified from the ideas and input from riders. We have too many regular contracts (colt firearms, TWA, american airlines) that require most of our machine time. I'd be turning these out in my spare time, probably custom ordered from the get go. So to sum up the "why" question: for the most part, I'd like to be riding on a hub that WE milled.
Relax, I'm not trying to pick on you or discard any of the ideas that have come up to date. I'm doing exactly what you asked, helping you to think about what a product might look like. What I was trying to point out is that you basically said your intent is to build a traditionally threaded track hub. apart from the thought of a different cog retension mechanism, nothing that had been suggested was novel.
The questions you asked were all very straightforward (fx/fr or fx/fx, high or low flange, etc). I read, "what mix of features are you looking for," not, "What new and innovative thing will make this a better hub for your money?" You need to get away from the feature set because that's a solved problem even at the $40 hub range. If you can turn out a quality hub at that price and make a profit I promise I will buy the first one off the line.
Frankly, all the above crap aside, usually the breakthrough ideas don't come from an informal survey or a focus group. It comes from one or two people who are familiar with the problem space and recognize that there is either a problem that needs to be solved or they have an Aha moment. That's how the Level hub was created. So maybe you'll get some mileage out of polling a bunch of InterWeb tools like ourselves, but probably not.
I think the cog idea is a good one. Is it possible to make a single cog that is both standard hub and Level hub compatible? That makes it possible for a shop to stock a wider array of Level-compatible cogs without worrying that they'll never sell them (even though that's not a huge financial risk in the grand scheme of things). What's your business plan when Level starts making them too? Or maybe you patent that design. Maybe Level's already patented
their design.
What about a double-disc hub? You make a hub that has disc holes on both sides and then make a cog that mounts on there. Perhaps you also make some sort of recessed slot on the hub body and put a tab on the cog (similar but reversed from Level) to bear the load. Now you've got a hub that's fix/fix, or fixed plus disc. Of course Level is developing a rotor that will fit their hub, so that ship may have already sailed. They've also got a freewheel coming out soon...
How about a freewheel with a lockout that turns it fixed? That's something that people are always saying would be nice.
I'm just saying think beyond hub feature-set because the problem you need to solve is more fundamental than that.