It's not really new, as I pointed out. People have been riding road bikes on dirt since forever. There's nothing wrong with cashing in on the current excitement around gravel races, though most buyers will never use the bikes for actual races. After all, most road bikes sold aren't used for road racing, either. I'm just pointing out that the nominal category of "gravel bike" is so incredibly broad as to be functionally useless. There's no guarantee that buying a generic gravel bike from Manufacturer X will actually be appropriate for the task the buyer has in mind. This is very different from, say, cyclocross bikes, where you can pretty much pick a cyclocross bike from a random manufacturer and expect it to work acceptably in cross races. Same thing with a typical road bike. There are better and worse road and cross bikes out there, but the categories in general have a sufficiently narrow definition that you can a randomly picked one to be appropriate for expected conditions. This isn't the case with gravel bikes, and moreover it may not even be possible with gravel bikes. Believe me, I like riding gravel, I'm not opposed to the very principle of a bike built for gravel, I just am not convinced it makes sense as a category. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if people's idea of a "versatile do it all" bike shifted away from cyclocross bikes to something else. It rankles me a bit that the death of the sport-touring bike caused the equipment for the most race-specific cycling discipline there is (along with track, I guess) to be held up as the epitome of generic commuting gear.