Originally Posted by
topflightpro
I should clarify. They are plenty of 32 hole rims still being manufactured and largely available via distributors. I would not expect you to be able to walk into any bike shop in the US, except for maybe PSImet's, and find a 32 hole rim. Of course, I'm not sure many shops keep any rims in stock these days, especially with the increasing number of pre-made wheels out there.
Little to no one keeps inventory of anything anymore really. tbh - if your shop is large enough to warrant having money in obsolete inventory sitting around then it's too large and busy to pull someone off of other work to have them build a wheel. If anyone has a 32 hole rim of any decent value sitting around it's because it was a mis-buy long ago or they forgot they had it.
Originally Posted by
big john
There is definitely a shortage as of 2020. People told me they hadn't been able to source anything from Mavic all year. Also, I think Mavic was sold or reorganized. The places I usually get rims from all said no.
A friend told me about the shop where I found them. It's a big LBS and he has a separate building with just parts.
The bad thing about going in there is he is a BMC dealer and I saw a bike I wanted.
Amer sports owned Mavic (and ENVE). They way overpaid for ENVE back when they bought them (IMHO) and I would venture a guess that they are carrying WAY too much goodwill on the books. There's no way that company had $50M in assets. The aftermarket wheel market collapsed a few years back. Mainly people stopped buying wheel upgrades as the tech on bikes had changed so much they were pseudo forced into buying all new bikes instead...and all the big players in the bike OEM business just started private branding wheels and putting them on their bikes. All exhibited by ENVE now making frames (I'll come back to why that's a bad move in a bit).
I have had friends work at ENVE. One of them a handful of years back flat out said, "this is a sinking ship. I gotta get out of here." The cycling brands that Amer owned were pulling the company down. I am figuring they knew they had to dump one: Mavic or ENVE. Flash back to ENVE being way over valued at purchase and carrying a ton of goodwill on the books. Number of interested parties= 0 I would imagine. Mavic - walked away from what made them great a bunch of years back. I remember conversations at interbike where I was told flat out, "We are no longer going to support wheel builders and we are probably going to be dialing back our wheel offerings to focus on our softgoods." Look at how well that worked out. Mavic felt they had to diversify into other cycling gear segments order to survive...kind of like how ENVE is branching into frames now. Yes I agree it's a bit different and with their bar and stem work they are well suited to do it but big picture: you going to ENVE for a bike? That's like going to Thomson or Chris King for a bike (yes they make them). A nice product but largely just a novelty.
ANYWAY - yeah Amer dumped Mavic instead. It has been owned the whole time but there has been 2 pass offs in the last year or so and all of this during the pandemic. It is now owned by a French equity firm (usually the death of any cycling brand) that has promised to focus back on the core business of wheels so maybe they can make it work...but in the meantime Mavic USA has effectively disappeared leaving all its customers and dealers stranded. it is common in the industry forums to see that Mavic isn't responding to anything. For all I know they shut the US offices down but I have no confirmation of that.
As for supply - yeah everyone is out of everything. This should be nothing new at this point. One of my warehouses where I was able to pull some emergency product from flatly said, "I'll be out of everything in a few weeks until late July. I'm going fishing." Chris king is up to 110 days as of a few weeks back. Companies that were back down to 3-4 weeks on items are now back in the 8-12 week range. Just is what it is.