JohnJ80

Just had a round of email with Speedplay/Wahoo support. Basically everything other than the Zeros and the Light Action pedals have been cut. Inventory is depleted and no plans to replenish - frogs, syzr, X, etc... All gone. There are also no support for the cleats for any of those either other than what is left in inventory at retailers.

I'm not sure why Wahoo Fitness went to the trouble of buying the company to wipe out the product lines. I guess Wahoo Fitness is on my list of companies to avoid these days.

J.

WhyFi

I would assume that they cut the lines that weren't performing well - not that unusual with new leadership. I'd always heard good things about Frogs, and had some mild interest in them. The rest? Not so much.

Steve B.

I've had 2 road and mt. bike buddies, both used and loved their road Speedplay's. Neither could source replacement cleats. Both ended up on Shimano SPD. No gain to Wahoo to be found.

Sy Reene

Yeah, I just bought 2 pairs of X cleats from excel a couple weeks back. Should last me to the end of X-pedals' life.

Perhaps one reason, using the X series as a point of discussion (though I think the Frog is almost as old), is that this model has to be well out of patent protection by now. Any enterprising companies out there want to sell an X knock-off, could seemingly do so now without the fear of a lawsuit (something I've heard Speedplay oft engaged in).

It is though a bit odd that with this move Speedplay/Wahoo have completely left the non-road shoe pedal business (no Frogs, Syzr or Pave models etc).

nesdog

I got the same info from Wahoo Support as well. Have been using Frogs on my road bike for years. Could not find any cleats and Wahoo told me they also had none to spare.
I've purchased Time pedals to replace the Speedplays. Will get around to mounting them some time soon.

JohnJ80

I have been using the Syzr pedal on my gravel bikes. They were a bit fiddly on the MTB and I went back to my Time ATAC pedals there. On the gravel bikes, with that metal to metal contact and no dependency on the shoe tread, I thought they were without equal for gravel and the next best thing to road pedal performance you could get. One would think that being marketed specifically at that gravel riders would have made a lot of sense. The pedal is light, has great float, and is a much better shoe to pedal connection than SPD.

I've not been too impressed with Wahoo Fitness much after their BOLT release. The ROAM was a miss and this is looking like that too. The growth in the bike industry is in gravel and SPD-ish type things. It's not in the road category except maybe for this season with the pandemic sales spike which I doubt will have any sustainability.

tomato coupe

Speedplay has been on my "avoid" list for years, due to their overly litigious nature. Wahoo's business decisions are much less offensive to me.

Sy Reene

I think there's some irony here.. you wouldn't buy Speedplay because of their litigiousness, but would buy Wahoo, who bought the entire Speedplay company.

JohnJ80

I have no problem with companies defending their trademarks and IP. My knees don't care about lawyers and courts or any of that and love the float.

Not sure what Wahoo is doing but look like they're trying to join the long list of companies that screw up acquisitions - the guys that take two companies and combine them and get less than they had before.

J.

tomato coupe

Correct, because it's upper management that sets the tone. If Speedplay had purchased Wahoo, it's possible both would end up on my "avoid" list.

tomato coupe

Neither do I, but Speedplay's actions went far beyond that.

Bah Humbug

I have a hard time believing that Wahoo spent however-much on Speedplay only to shut it down. Deep breath.

Nachoman

What did Speedplay do that was offensive, for those of us not in the know.

tomato coupe

Speedplay was using standard, off-the-shelf bearings, but charging a lot of money for rebuild kits. People figured out you could buy the same bearings from a distributor for a lot less, and sell them to end users at a fraction of Speedplay's prices. Speedplay didn't like it, and very aggressively went after anyone who sold replacement bearings for their pedals. It got to the point where Speedplay was threatening bearing sellers on eBay that didn't even mention "Speedplay" in their listings.

JohnJ80

Intention and results are two different things. I’m sure Wahoo “intended” to buy Speedplay to make money but whether those are the actual results are another issue entirely and depends more on business acumen.

As well, Speedplay as a company may have intended to make money from selling pedals whereas Wahoo as a buyer of the company may have -say- intended to make money from power meters and therefore only needed ownership of one pedal ecosystem.

I think this may be their purpose and they don’t care if the rest of the innovations go away or not. In fact, maybe the reason they’ve only stopped producing the other pedals is because they’re trying to sell that off and just keep the road pedals for a power meter product.

Marcus_Ti

It doesn't sound like 'shutting down'...rather cutting unprofitable product lines they don't sell enough of to justify their existence economically. It could also be the massive impact of Human Malware on logistics ans supply chains.

For example I had a chat trying to get Shimano Di2 GRX derailleurs today....Evidently Shimano has been missing delivery targets to suppliers in the USA for months. Inventory that was supposed to come in September still isn't here...and just today Shimano sent out an email saying that inventory arriving this week was pushed back to December 15th....and the retailer I spoke to had no faith it would actually be delivered. And that is Shimano---who is many times bigger and more profitable than Wahoo/Speedplay.

bahula03

It's wild to me, as someone that's used Zeros for a long time, that they've kept the X around as long as they have given how much overlap there is between the two designs. It's odd to see the Syzr and sad to see the Frog go, but that's a super crowded market and neither of them really have a brand image as standout products. Wahoo's acquisition still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but given where they're at as a growing company, it's not surprising that they'd dump anything that isn't profitable, and unfortunately customer goodwill from stuff like X cleats probably doesn't show up on their balance sheet.

And agreed on Speedplay's seemingly bygone litigiousness. I bought 3rd party titanium spindles for my Zeros, and it was like you had to know a guy and then he had to know a secret handshake Didn't and wouldn't stop me from buying from them because they offer a unique product, but they'd have been a whole lot better off to just let it be.

Bah Humbug

It's the result in the very short term. As I said, deep breath. There will be a transition process.

popeye

Well how did the clones work? There are plenty of them avail in the open now. I just bought cleats from Excel but will need another set in a year and ebay cleats broke the bodies on my X1's.

woodcraft

Some years ago I bought a bike that had Speedplay pedals on it.

Looking in to getting cleats to fit, it appeared that there were three different models that were indistinguishable.

Went on my "ignore" list as well.

WhyFi

So getting rid of the incompatible one was probably a good move.

Koyote

Speedplay was always a small player in the pedal market, and I can't remember the last time I saw them on a bike. Not surprising that the brand is dying off.

Sy Reene

He referenced buying aftermarket spindles. They work just fine (eg. the typical source is the Ebay J&L Titanium variety). Not sure who/if anyone is selling an actual X-series pedal knock-off. I would think even a legit parts co. (eg. maybe wolftooth or raceface sized) could make a go at eg. a $100 X-series pedal clone and undercut the zero by over $100.

EDIT: fwiw, the aftermarket spindle business is necessary, or at least it seems that you can no longer buy even the Zeros with anything other than the default spindle length installed.

tomato coupe

They're probably the most common road pedal in this neck of the woods.

WhyFi

Being acquired and having some lines cut is not "dying off." With their X-series, in particular, I think that it was past time that it was culled - I think that they kept it around too long to appease customers of legacy pedals. Wahoo has no such qualms or emotional attachment.

Oh, and I see Speedplay pedals every day.