#21 Keith Scott: Banshee Bikes. Engineering Over Hype.

Engineering Over Hype: The Banshee Bikes Philosophy with Keith Scott

https://www.testpilot.bike/magazin/podcast-keith-scott-banshee-bikes

In the TESTPILOT Podcast, we shed light on what makes the most passionate people thrive in the bike industry. In this episode, Banshee Bikes co-owner and chief engineer Keith Scott delved into the core principles that define his brand, why they build the bikes in the way they are and extends with a critical and insightful perspective on the state of the mountain bike industry. The discussion quickly centered on the ethos that has guided Banshee for years: a steadfast commitment to engineering integrity in a market often swayed by marketing cycles and trends.

Summary of the Testpilot Podcast with Keith Scott from Banshee Bikes

The Banshee Credo: Physics, Not Gimmicks

Scott is unequivocal about his approach: "I believe in physics, not gimmicks." While he acknowledges the power of marketing, he positions Banshee on a different path—one where the product must speak for itself.

• Performance as the Priority: Scott designs bikes he wants to ride, prioritizing confidence-inspiring geometry and balanced performance. He notes that many brands are now adopting the higher-stack, longer-chainstay philosophy that the Banshee Titan has championed for years, validating his focus on ride quality over fleeting trends.
• The Strength of Difference: "Being different is an important aspect of how I operate," Scott states. He sees no future in directly competing with mega-brands on their terms. Instead, Banshee thrives by catering to riders who value substance, durability, and a distinct character.
• A Deliberate Pace: In contrast to the industry's push for annual updates, Banshee will keep a frame design for four to five years. Investment goes into the product and refinement, not a relentless hype machine. This builds deep loyalty but, as Scott admits, makes breaking into the mainstream "quite tricky."

Challenging Industry Narratives: Stiffness, Weight, and Real-World Performance

An engineer at heart, Scott questions simplified industry narratives. He argues that the relentless pursuit of "stiffer and lighter" isn't always the answer for real-world riding.

• The Flex Factor: He recalls the painful arrival of over-stiff 35mm handlebars and points out that some World Cup mechanics strategically increase frame flex for better traction. For Scott, the goal is a predictable, balanced flex pattern, not maximum rigidity.
• Beyond the Lab Test: While lab testing is a necessary baseline, Scott emphasizes it can't replicate the chaotic, multi-directional impacts of the trail. He praises companies like Newmen Wheels for innovating their testing to better simulate real-world damage, unlike standard tests that use perfect, often unrealistic, impacts.
• A Tire Epiphany: His own experimentation serves as a case study. After trying various lightweight tire and insert combinations, he returned to robust downhill casings, finding they offered superior damping, traction, and a more confident ride. "I was completely wrong when I first started," he admits, highlighting the importance of real-world testing and being open to learning.

The Road Ahead: New Bikes and Focused Independence

Despite the pressures of a fluctuating market, Banshee is steadily evolving. Scott confirmed that new models are in development, including a highly anticipated new Darkside freeride bike and a Legend, both built on

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Transcript

If you follow the mountain bike world, you know the story. Every year there's a new standard, a new "game-changing" innovation, and a marketing blitz telling us what we need to buy to be faster. But what if you're a brand that just... doesn't play that game? What's it like to build bikes on a completely different set of rules?

In this episode, we're sitting down with Keith Scott, the co-owner and chief engineer of Banshee Bikes. Keith is a fascinating voice in the industry—a self-described engineer first, who's built his company on the principle of "physics, not gimmicks."

We’re going to dig into why he thinks the pursuit of ultimate stiffness might be wrong, why he's skeptical of lab tests versus real-world mud and rocks, and how his small, non-mainstream-brand survives—and thrives—by deliberately ignoring the hype cycle. It's a candid look at the business of bikes from the inside, the value of being different, and what it really takes to build a machine that's just pure fun to ride.

Let's get into it.

Jens Staudt:
We have like the newest upside down fork but like speaking of tiny, tiny companies, I mean, this is pretty much the reason we tried to catch up here because we did the Titan review and it was funny because I put it in the review also like you out there, the logo is somewhat hidden inside of the chainstay and people are like, looking, what are you riding here?

Keith Scott:
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Jens Staudt:
So makes you think and you're like in a third person making somewhat of a testimonial marketing because you start raving because we really like the bikes. And you're like, it's a bench. You're like, I never heard of that. then you now before the podcast, I looked up on your website again and you're pretty much, this is your credo, right? Right. You're saying it's performance first.
Bike first, no marketing BS. It's just like.

Keith Scott:
Yeah, probably to my detriment. I mean, it's just I, what's the saying is, morals are a poor man's quality. I think maybe, maybe that's something that unfortunately I live a bit too close to. just, don't get me wrong, I would love it if we had the budget to do the marketing of a lot of brands. There's definitely brands out there, I'll say no names, but there's brands out there that, you know, their sales are predominantly based on marketing rather than the product. The product is, it might be alright, but the marketing is really good and it makes people think that they want it, it makes people believe it's the best, it's all that kind of stuff. I just don't want to be that guy. I'm too much of an engineer. I believe in physics, not gimmicks, I think is a phrase I used to say quite a lot. And I just, would feel I was being dishonest a lot of the time. Not to say that you can't have really good product and really good marketing, it just requires a lot of money. We spend our money on the product rather than the marketing. That's our approach and our hope, which is ongoing, is that the product speaks for itself and sells itself and word of mouth reputation, etc. is what creates the sales, which it definitely can do. The hard part about that is that people are excited by new stuff and we don't tend to change things all that regularly. We tend to keep models for four or five years. Whereas, you other brands will, it might just be the color that they change, but they hype it up and it's this big thing of a new bike and it's every year something changes. And so people want, they want something new. A lot of people just, it's a bit like, what do they call it? Like retail therapy. They, they feel good about buying something new and a new bike is always faster, even if it's not in your head it's always faster.

Jens Staudt:
because maybe you also should do some suspension service on your old one.

Keith Scott:
Totally, totally. that's a big part of it. Yeah, your new bike is always faster because everything on it is working well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it can be to our detriment a bit, but you know, marketing is expensive and we don't have a dedicated marketing guy. mean, Brian does most of our marketing. Well, I do some as well. Between me and Brian, we tend to do most of it.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah, it's not just like a pile of junk, just written to dust.

Keith Scott:
And Brian's background isn't in marketing, he's a writer first and foremost, but he's a good guy who gets the industry, our customers well. And we market well to our customers, which is great, and we've got lots of very loyal customers and we benefit a lot from repeat customers, which is amazing. those would always be the core of how we move forward anyway. But I think our problem that we recognise is that getting outside of the network that knows us already is quite tricky. To be on a short list alongside Specialized, Trek, whoever, Santa Cruz, these big brands, it's quite difficult. But that said, it's kind of also an element of we want to, we don't want to be too big a company. We quite like being niche boutique, smaller, it makes it more manageable. If we sell 1000 frames a year, then great. We don't really, well, it's quite nice sell 2000 frames a year, but we don't need to be selling 10,000 frames a year, because if we did that, we'd have to expand the whole workforce side of it. We'd have to get more people in to do. Lots more overheads and also lots more to manage and control.

Jens Staudt:
and you create overhead.

Keith Scott:
And you see a lot of brands nowadays who have done that and they've pushed themselves forward and they've scaled up, but a lot of them have done so by getting private equity investment, for example, which is a big topic right now. It costs a lot of money to expand. It can happen naturally. My hope is that gradually over time, I would love it if in five years time we got up to between 3,000 5,000 frames a year. That would be amazing. While maintaining...

Jens Staudt:
Do you also think that the slowdown of development or innovation is part of that? I mean, it pays, you have a bike, the Titan, and it dates back a couple of years, and it's not new new, but it's still a really good bike. And you could now argue that like another manufacturer has a 0.5,

Keith Scott:
network.
Yeah.

Jens Staudt:
degrees, slacker seat angle, steeper seat angle, 0.5 slacker head angle. It's just marginal, be honest.

Keith Scott:
Well I'd also argue that the funniest thing is that so many brands are starting to move their geometry in the direction that the Titan's been sitting at for five years. know, people are starting to talk about higher stack, longer chainstays. They're realising the benefits of the balance that that can offer and the confidence it gives you. My way of designing bikes, it kind of might sound kind of selfish, I design bikes I want to ride. But the reason I think of it that way is... If I put it out to, let's just say for argument's sake, 100 people, what geometry do you want? I will get such a range of answers and most of those answers will be based on what they've read is the best or what they've been told is the best, not actually what is the best. Whereas, you know, I'll test things. mean, when I developed the Spitfire V3, I tested the long reach, the super slack and the head angle, the super steep seat angle. And I made a prototype which was...

Jens Staudt:
Ha ha.

Keith Scott:
I wouldn't say it was extreme, quite significantly shifting more that way than we have been and we currently make. And I really didn't like it. Like I really didn't like it. Actually it damaged my elbows and wrists, the weight of the handlebars I didn't like. Now everybody's different. There'll be a lot of people that say, this is better, this is better. Everybody's different. Everybody's got different riding styles, body proportions, blah, blah, where they ride, all that kind of stuff. But for me, I really didn't didn't like it for the majority, right in those certain situations where it was good obviously. It climbed, it was quite good for climbing and things like that but for me it's, I've got to build a bike that I want to ride and then that's what I base on it. It sounds selfish that but I think there's a lot of people who will benefit from that in the process and also I don't want to copy everybody else because if you copy everybody else there's no choice in the market and also you're then directly competing against all these people who are the same. And they will be big scale companies that can make frames for a quarter the price that you do, cheaping out or just economy scale with big marketing budgets. And you lose, you know, it's not going to work. So being different is an important aspect of how I operate. It's maybe not conventional business thinking, but I like to do it what I believe is the way I believe is best for actual riding performance. And a lot of that isn't... So much nowadays is, I'm going to time this, is this faster? I'm going to time this, this faster? And you read these reviews, like, we did three timed runs and this was half a second faster over a one minute track. And you're like, pfft. And there's so many variables in a one minute track that, I mean, if you did a hundred runs and it was half a second faster and you took into account all the stats then yeah maybe there's something in that but also for the average good rider what matters most and for me like the confidence to ride and I also think you know sometimes I read these things this is half second faster a lot of times it's because they want it to be half second faster you know subconsciously it's that we are testing is recently I've been reading things like our enduro tires better than downhill tires or vice versa that's something that's popped up this week and you know people have they might be subconscious but they have an agenda and they want to prove the downhill tires are better and so they'll maybe ride with a bit more confidence, a little bit faster. I, you know, I don't think that you can put too much on that. And so timing is not, don't get me wrong, our bikes are fast and can be ridden fast, but it's not the only though.

Jens Staudt:
It's the same timing and weight. I mean as the average Joe it doesn't really matter unless I lose 10 pounds or I just like train significantly more. I'm not a World Cup pro. I'm not racing. It's just I'm out there having a good time, right? And it doesn't matter if I'm

Keith Scott:
really doesn't.
Exactly. Yeah. And that's it. And I think having a bike that you feel confident on is the number one thing. Because if you feel confident on it, you're going to ride hard or you're going to bigger jumps or drops or more gnarly straight sections with more confidence. You're going to crash probably less because you actually, you know, you're riding properly rather than dragging brakes. You know, the confidence is a huge, huge factor. And I mean, the The funny side is that actually by building bikes that give you confidence it makes you faster and so your times get better generally.

Jens Staudt:
If you just say faster is better, there would be no regular mountain bikes anymore. You would just ride e-bikes.

Keith Scott:
No, everybody ride the e-bikes and everybody on these like super weird bikes and I like faster and hot course as well. You could have like a straight down a mountain, maybe rough, but like more or less straight line track where you basically want as long a wheelbase as you can have. Super slack angle, head angle, long chain stay, you know, or you could be in a tight twisty, technical steep forest where you almost want the opposite. Not quite the opposite of you still want we all end up being much more maneuverable and stability isn't a factor, it's how quickly you can get around corners. So there is no answer. I get bit annoyed by companies or individuals who say this bike is faster. It's like, well you ride in the desert, I ride in mud and rocks and roots. I mean, I remember a good example of that, not an example of the marketing, but a good example of how riding in different conditions completely changes your mindset. I remember seeing Noah who's one of the guys that works for MRP who rides in desert. He's a really good solid rider. Fast, you know, he won lots of Enduros and things like that I out where he lives. And he came across to Scotland to do an Enduro race at Interleithan with a couple of friends of mine and it was a wet soggy weekend. And I went down to see them. I wasn't racing but I went down to see them. And honestly he looked shell-shocked.

Jens Staudt:
I already know.
Ha ha.

Keith Scott:
He was just like, I mean, he came dead last. And he's just like, how do people ride that? I just, don't understand it. And it's a completely different skill set, but it's not just a different skill set. It's a different bike set up. It's a different, you know, obviously tires are the biggest thing for that, but also like how to pick your lines and what's important. So yeah, I never believe anything when you're told this is better.

Jens Staudt:
Do you think the industry should have, do you think the industry should do more education on that? Because it seems like media as well is just trying to find anything on the bike to pick on. It's pretty much every bike you can have a good time, right? And then they start picking, the tire is knobby enough or the tire isn't strong enough. And then they're testing in whatever finale. Ligure Rocky conditions or south of France and then of course your Exo tire won't hold up there because it's just south of France so Yeah, and then it should should it

Keith Scott:
I mean, yeah. Yeah. That's why you get thousands of different tires. Yeah, I think it would be good to have articles about what do you need? like, not what do you need, what would we suggest for these conditions? I mean, I did see, there's actually one of the German mags, I think they're German anyway, is it Enduro mags? They do some like actual analytical testing. And it's more lab testing than it is real world testing a of time. But that's better than just saying this is better. I've seen it a couple of times even with Pinkbike actually. They actually did, they worked with, think was University of Edinburgh actually, or maybe you're here, looking at handlebar deflection and vibration stuff. I read the article and personally I don't actually think there's much to be gained from that article. I feel like it's talking as deflection the same as vibration damping and does that help? The vibration, I don't want get into technical account of that, but if you're not actually measuring on a trail and you're being ridden with a rider weight and input, I think it's irrelevant. Okay, so you can attach something that's vibrating to the handlebar and this might be slightly more damped. like, yeah, but is that real world input? And does that actually affect you?

Jens Staudt:
There's I mean you mentioned it before that you were currently riding Newman wheels and Michi Graz from Newman and he tries to emulate real-world damage into the lab for instance and then he figured that like mostly that back in the days that the testing machines were just like vertical impacts and there is unless you're going straight into a curb

Keith Scott:
I'm coming to angles and things.

Jens Staudt:
you won't have a vertical impact. will always be diagonal and it's just hitting your rim from the side and you will have like a bent rim side and it's just...

Keith Scott:
Yep. Yep.
I mean, how often have you had a ding in your rim where it's gone flat out that way? It never happens, or like straight in. It's all within the way. Just about.

Jens Staudt:
No. Yeah. And so you need to figure the real world damage and then you can maybe take it to the lab and just save time by testing it and you can see the same damage. And you need to be able to replicate that. But it's tough and mountain biking also is a very complex board. You have a lot of forces like coming from all sorts of directions. You have rider input from the top. You have different weight of rider, riding styles. it's...

Keith Scott:
It's impossible to come up with, like cover every scenario. I mean, I look back at this and when we developed the legend, the Bernhill bike back in the day, and that was my thesis at uni and it kind of came through and it's been a lot of work before it saw reality. But also it was so new for Banshee and everything was so new that I wanted to test it. And Banshee was in a bit of a funny position right at the time. We didn't have the money to develop it. So I ended up taking the option of making 50 and selling them at cost. So we covered the cost of that production and those were all to test riders around. People applied to us and they were mechanics, engineers, pro riders, the whole spectrum across the whole world. So we sold, I think we sold 45 in the end because we had five for various other, for spares and things like that. And we also did lab testing before they went out to people and the lab tests showed absolutely no problem. Everything was working perfectly. We went through all the required scenarios and then we doubled the load and doubled the the number of repeat loads and it still passed with line colors because the lab tests are basically like a real minimum requirement and also like you know some brands will put one frame in for one test it passed the test and they put another frame in for the second test whereas we'll always put we do like five tests and we always put one frame through all five of them and if it doesn't if there's any problem that's a big issue and then what we'll do is repeat it with the double loading normally. And sometimes I'll get through all of that fine, it gets to the real world and we discover new problems. So with the legend, I think out of the 45 that we sold, we had three of them break in the first year and they were all in the same place. And that didn't come up in the machine testing, despite the fact that that area was loaded. And it's because, yeah, the loads are completely unpredictable. know, people are going through rock gardens and crazy, rooty sections. They're quite basically slammed from side to side. weird crazy angles which are not predictable. They're landing jumps sideways, they're crashing. Any company that will not give a warranty because a bike has been crashed at some point, they're not mountain bikers because a biker doesn't crash from time to time. Obviously if the damage is significantly caused by a crash, you hit a tree at full speed or something like that, fair enough. it's part of mountain biking that you should be designing a product that can take general crashes. Yeah, abuse, exactly. But yeah, they're coming back to the testing thing. I mean, the Newman is a good example. Actually, that was one of the reasons I got Newman wheels in the first place. I read a couple of reviews. I knew some people that I trusted who had liked their stuff. And I saw how they tested it and just the different way they were thinking about things. I like, that's cool. I like that. And then the fact that they're relatively small brand. And I spoke to the owner guy and I oh he's cool yeah I get that that's I like what he's doing and that's why I went to Newman. Actually I've run Newman wheels on a bunch of bikes and honestly they've been really good for me. Not as a, this is not an advert for Newman but give him a shot. But I think you know that was an example where yeah every other test you see is a wheel which is mounted this way with a tire with 20 psi and it's like a trail casing tyre and they drop this nice semi-circular weight that lands perfectly on it. I'm just like... Okay, it's like hitting a tree root square on maybe. That's about the closer you get, but you don't get destroyed wheels generally from tree roots. It's normally from sharp edge rocks coming up from the angles. So yeah, that is a good example. So yeah, the testing side of things. Testing for me...

Jens Staudt:
Absolutely.

Keith Scott:
Lab testing you have to do before it goes in the real world just to make sure you've got something which is generally strong enough to be written properly. think it's like, I mean, the only person who's ever written our frames before lab testing is myself. And that's fair enough, it's my work. I'll put my life on the line as it were. I never had a problem with that, thankfully. But, you know, it's the bare minimum. Real world testing gives so much more, but it's... I mean I also think like suspension, you know they do all the suspension analysis at World Cups where they strap all these machines and check how your suspension is working. And I wonder how much that really helps. Because if you look at race times when they're doing practices compared to the race run, they're always you know faster in race runs. They always hit things harder in race runs. I'm sure they must take this information and then assume that this is going to increase by 10 % or whatever, the loading, and use it. So I can see it maybe being useful, but also it's only really useful if you hit the exact same line every time and the conditions are the same. A lot of people talk about like testing in Formula One or like things which are applicable to Formula One cars or race cars of some sort to mountain bikes like unsprung mass is a perfect example. Whereas cars, you you've got this fixed body with a driver that's fixed into and the driver is a very small proportion of the weight. With wheels on a smooth surface with wheels that have to react to bumps on that generally smooth surface. Or rally cars where it's maybe way heavier. Whereas we are looking at mountain bikes where the bike itself is light.

Jens Staudt:
and the vehicle is way heavier.

Keith Scott:
The rider is the heaviest part of it but it's completely mobile around the bike. Our legs and arms are suspension. We have suspension also. answer math, don't get me wrong there probably are, well there are some benefits to it to an extent in certain ways and in certain situations but I also sometimes feel like it doesn't always work quite the way people think sometimes I almost think it, I wouldn't say it's a negative having super lightweight in certain sections but I don't think it's as beneficial as they maybe make out I think it's sort of tagging onto the back of what other industries have put some science into

Jens Staudt:
Do you think ride quality, and you stick strictly to alloy, ride quality of a frame, I mean, it's also not really measurable, but you can notice it on the trail how the rear flexes, how the overall frame flexes. And the industry went down the path of actually saying, it's stiffer, stiffer, stiffer, stiffer, it's better, until at one moment they realized, dude, it's just like, it's riding like crap. It generates less grip, it's uncomfortable, it's exhausting. Do you think, I mean, it's not really quantifiable and it also depends on the rider weight.

Keith Scott:
It's not... totally. mean, and various... Like, the handlebar one is a good example for this. You know, we had 31.8 handlebars. It wasn't a problem there. Somebody came along with, we're going to come up with 35mm clamping location. And then it's like super wide stems, so it's got like great stiffness. And I remember riding it was an Easton, was like early on when 35mm came out I sent a bunch of stuff I rode in Whistler and it wrecked my arms it was so stiff this handlebar it wasn't even a carbon bar it was an alloy bar but it was so stiff and I'm like this is absolutely horrible I mean I ride exclusively 31.8 handlebars because I don't have a problem people say it's too flexy round corners how do you have control

Jens Staudt:
Mm-hmm.

Keith Scott:
I mean relative to the flex you've got on the tire, the fork, the frame potentially. Your brain adapts and adjusts but not quickly enough that the flex in a handlebar will have significant... I mean, you don't want a handlebar that bends, that's completely different thing. But if a handlebar flexes and rebounds by 5mm as opposed to 1mm, and it does so within 0.1 of a second, your brain's not even going to realise it's happened. And by the time you've not realised it's happened, it's back to where it was in first place. But in that time it's given you a little bit more, know, it's not taking as much, sapped as much energy from you. It's maybe not caused your hand to slip off the handlebar. Yeah, I certainly, I mean, I've seen it so many times in the industry where it's gone from one extreme to another. So when I first started working in industry, was around about 2002, everything was going, so like the 90s, early 2000s, everything was super like, huck off everything. At least in the part of the industry I was working in. Everything was getting heavy and crazy and mad. Banshee Scream was a prime example of that back in the day. That was before my time. I nothing to do with that. But I wrote a Scream and it was fun for certain things. I did crack it in the end, but it was fun for certain things. And then everything started going super lightweight and like mega weight wheelie. And I remember, I mean, I wouldn't say I was...

Jens Staudt:
Hahaha!

Keith Scott:
I didn't follow the trend to an extent. You have to to an extent if you want to keep sales. So I remember with the Spitfire V1 that came out, which I called the downhillers trail bike and I was the first one to coin that. I kind of regret it because a lot of people misunderstood it as a trail bike that can be ridden downhill on. Like, in downhill racing. We had people hitting road gaps on it and full face helmets and it was... But the interesting thing with that was it was quite light and I remember the first time I built it up because there's all this sort of... I mean I was less experienced and didn't know as much as I do now about things and so I kind of got caught up in the hype a little bit. I remember building up to be about 28 pounds with a bunch of lightweight components and I hated it. The forks were so flexy, the wheels were flexy, I felt like I couldn't generate speed out of corners. I felt like I was a passenger through really rough sections where the thing was flexing around too much. And so from then on, know, I ended up building everything much stiffer. Not crazy stuff, but I mean I'm 90kg so I don't want flexy. But even then there's quite a lot of stuff out there that I've ridden that I'm I'm a fairly strong guy, 90kg and that to me feels like I'm just hitting a block of wood, like, it's too much. And yeah, maybe if I was racing, if I had younger joints and weren't so broken from years of abuse, that might be one thing. But also, if I was racing a downhill track which was four minutes and I was riding so much that I was super strong and supple and hitting good lines as well, this is a big thing. The pro guys make rough stuff look smooth because they hit the lines, they get everything, they judge it correctly. When I've done testing with pro guys, they don't break things. It's... Well, yeah, does depend, yeah, they do. They can break things. But I found that when done testing...

Jens Staudt:
It depends. There are...

Keith Scott:
testing with I wouldn't say average good riders aggressive riders who are not super smooth they will break way more so yeah I do feel like you know that so everything went super lightweight and flimsy and carbon and then all the carbon started getting thicker again because all the carbon frames were breaking and then everything started getting like really stiff I mean a good example of that was well talk about the Nogis GT don't exist anymore but if you look at Danny Hart's race bike you know his mechanic was cutting sections out of the linkages and stuff to increase the flexibility in the frame because flexibility will give you more traction yeah it might not be great I do remember a very specific case of that where I rode back in the day my friend had a Yeti DH9 with the raddles on it this is back in about 2004 maybe

Jens Staudt:
Absolutely.

Keith Scott:
And it was a dream. He bought a second hand from a racer and it was like, at the time it was like the absolute best sort of setup you could get. And I remember taking it for a ride one time at a place called Hamsterley, the place that Danny Hart now owns actually. And I used to go to uni there, down there. And there's a rock garden, there's a tabletop full of a rock garden. I remember I was like, I'd hit the tabletop and I'd sort of blast my way through this rock garden, I had my line, I'd sort of bang, bang, bang, slam through it. On this bike, honestly, was like the front wheel and the back wheel found a path through it. I think it had as much lateral flex as it did travel at the back. It was back when they had, what was it called? I forgot what it's called. Same one that Rotec used. The kind of linkage, which was like two big long parallel links with the, Lowell, that's it, yeah. And so back in the Lowell designs, and it was so flexy at the rear end.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah, the law will.

Keith Scott:
through that rock garden it was incredible because I just went through it I was like oh my god and I like it took no energy from me I mean it was awful at corners you slam into a corner and it's like you didn't know where you're gonna go you get sort of spat out of funny ways and it ended up breaking but not Pallas ready thankfully but yeah that shows I think that's a good example of where a bike can be exceptional in one situation but awful in another and it's always about optimal compromise

Jens Staudt:
Hahaha

Keith Scott:
Compromise is a huge part.

Jens Staudt:
Do you think you should be able to adjust the flex in some sort of way?

Keith Scott:
I mean a lot of the downhill guys are doing that now. My dog is chewing the lotus tree. Can you put that up here please? Thank you very much. I think you're seeing it the downhill world now where the top guys are getting these bikes which have got different sort of bridges that you can bolt in. Yeah, and they've got different stiffnesses. They maybe got three or four different stiffness things. I would say there's an argument for it.

Jens Staudt:
some bolt on,

Keith Scott:
I would also say there's an argument for when you talk about size specific chainstay length is one thing people talk about size specific stiffness. You know if you're doing carbon bikes certainly that would be so easy to do because it's just a case of changing the layup. You're doing the layup for a different size anyway. You're cutting everything differently why not have size specific stiffness? Harder for alloy because you'd have to change the yeah change how tubes are butted and things like that.

Jens Staudt:
custom-budded.

Keith Scott:
And actually the weird thing for most bikes is the smaller the frame the stiffer it is. Just because you've got shorter sections. Should be the other way around but that's hard to achieve. Now with butted tubes and the placement of those buttings you can control it to an extent. But it is, you end up... For me I mean I have to design a bike and it could be that I get a guy that 120kg riding a small. So that's quite possible. It's more likely that we're riding an extra large but...

Jens Staudt:
It should be the other way around,

Keith Scott:
So I have to have all the bikes to be strong enough anyway. But I mean, if I was in the carbon world, and it is something I played with at one point, and looked at factories and stuff like that, I would certainly be trying to make the most of the material and the way it's put together. it's stiffness, and it's not just the stiffness, it's where the stiffness is. That's one thing I've been working on quite a lot over the last few years. In fact, the prototype was just stolen, the rear triangle on it. stiffness profile of it was quite different and I was experimenting with the impact that had on the riding and it wasn't just that, how it... I would almost say it's where does the frame flex. If you've got like a hinge point in the frame that can give a lot of uncertainty. If you've got a sort of a general stiffness profile which is consistent across the frame that gives more consistency to how you ride which I think improves confidence. But... Some flex is good. Our bikes probably were too stiff. I look back at the original legend and I would say it was a bit too stiff. It's not as stiff in recent years as it was when it first came out. And I remember Adam Brayton when he first got on it when he rode for us. He was like, my God, I can go around corners so much faster in this bike than any bike I've ever ridden before. And it was because it was so stiff. But most people don't ride like Adam Brayton.

Jens Staudt:
Do you think they could also balance it out by putting on some softer wheels on it?

Keith Scott:
Yeah, I mean that's, I've got carbon wheels behind me here, that's for that kind of bike. For bigger bikes, I never go carbon wheels. I always go alloy wheels because I like the... like the feel of them, they're less tiring. That's probably the easiest way to put it down, but less tiring, less fatiguing probably, it just means they're deflecting more, which means less input to your body and also more traction generally. And you look at, I mean, they might be carbon, but look at like the SRAM Moto Zip wheels. I've never actually ridden them myself, but I've heard lots of things about how they're amazing for off-camber riding and stuff like that but as soon as you slam into berms or want to ride things that hit harder the flex can be disconcerting.

Jens Staudt:
It's a balance, as you say, and I guess the rider needs to be able to understand the portfolio and a manufacturer should offer four different rider weights as he does, for example, as springs on a coil shock. You choose your spring accordingly to your weight and you should maybe, and Newman, we mentioned that one before, they have now three levels or even four of different rims, the best car.

Keith Scott:
Yep, yep. And you've got front, back, different. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that makes sense as well, because most of your weight's on your back wheel. Anybody who thinks they've got 50 % of the weight on the front wheel is deluded, except for when you're braking hard and steep. But you put more load, laterally, into your rear wheel than you ever will your front. Who was it? Was it 1Up that recently there?

Jens Staudt:
And then you can pick and choose and you can say, I'm running a super little. Yeah.

Keith Scott:
handlebars, they've got shorter handlebars and the shorter handlebars have got more flex in them so that the end of the bar flexes the same amount regardless of what length the bar is and I think that's quite a good way of approaching it. So yeah, and I'd also just say to any rider out there who's you know on the lighter end of the spectrum

Jens Staudt:
Yes.

Keith Scott:
just go with something flexy. You'll benefit a lot from it. Not necessarily flexy-flexy, but like, I saw this kid the other day and he was riding, you know, carbon wheels, carbon cranks, carbon bars. He was quite a spoiled kid, it seems. But, and he was on quite a big bike and he had a Fox 38 in the front and he must've been 50 kilograms. And I was just like, I mean, he was a pretty decent rider.

Jens Staudt:
Ha

Jens Staudt:
Beaten up.

Keith Scott:
I guess honestly mate, that must just be beating the crap out of you. It's just not working that well for you. If you were on a bike, could, A, for a start you could have a lighter bike which would be more easy for you to maneuver. But like, drop the 30 and put like, you know, 36, something like 35, almost engines on it. You don't need the stiffness 30. I'm not really convinced many people do at all. Except for if you have really big trouble on it. Yeah.

Jens Staudt:
We encourage people to test it out because I had the idea of having a wheel set that is just said and forget like 36 spokes, 29, it weighted too much. The rim was I think like 700 something grams alloy, e-bike specific, Chris King hub. And I thought, hey, finally, this is like the rim I'm taking on a road trip. I will never ever need to consider hitting anything less hard.

Keith Scott:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jens Staudt:
because it will just eat things up. And then once I swapped it over against a more common 550 gram-ish 29 inch rim, a different wheel set, I was like, dude, this other wheel is just riding like crap and I'm 98 kilos. It's just like, of course it holds up in corners as you put it with Adam Brayton, but at what cost? And are you always hitting just berms?

Keith Scott:
Hmm. Hmm.
Yeah.

Jens Staudt:
or you need to go some off-camber stuff somewhere.

Keith Scott:
Yeah, and what's good for one will not be good for the other. Inherently, you can't be optimal at two things. mean, one thing I've learned with wheel setup, and I've experimented lots over the years with inserts and different things like that. So I tried, my theory at one point was if I run a lighter weight tire, one which is good for puncture resistance, where I ride, there's not too many sharp things, it's more roots and mud and stuff. Some rocks but they're not too sharp compared to some places. So I thought I'll go a lightweight tire that can conform well to the ground. I'll run it with inserts and that will be great. And I thought well the inserts will give me this sort of sidewall support so I don't roll the tire off. And I can run lower pressure and get this. So first thing I learned is I couldn't go very low with the pressure because it squirmed too much and I just didn't feel the confidence. So I ended up putting the pressure up.

Jens Staudt:
and you put insert, yeah.

Keith Scott:
And so I was running probably 20, well, you probably work in bar, I don't know what those things are in bar, but 26 PSI front, 28 backs or something like that with inserts. And that was better for the squirminess. But then I got punctures because the tire was too hard. So like sharp edges got like, could get through it easier. I know I experimented with that for a while and then I realized that actually feels what felt kind of wooden so I went with more enduro casing with inserts quite heavy and I was like hmm okay this is kind of good but then I found that the insert the volume of the tire was just so much by the the insert that's in there that it felt like I was running a low volume tire so it was fine for that I just start traction stuff but when I was going through really rough stuff it felt like I was getting more feedback and it was working me harder like I seem to talk about quite a lot. And then I've since switched to running an Enduro front tyre with no insert at about 25 psi, 26 psi and a downhill back tyre with no insert on alloy rims, the Newman SL30 or whatever they are. They're old school. Still good though. And I find the downhill tyre, the big thing... for me, having the volume without the insert makes a huge difference for me in terms of trail feedback. Again, you know, so many inserts were promoted as... Take it, like, into bed. So many inserts were promoted as it removes, it damps your ride. What does that really mean? and in what scenario. Anyway, I won't go into the damping thing but I found that it did the opposite for me. I found that I actually made my ride harsher. And moving to downhill tyres, first of all not worried about side walls tearing easily and things like that. Actually the tyre in itself protects the rim to an extent just because it's so much thicker and beefier and it's less likely to make contact with the rim. But also the damping of the tyre

Jens Staudt:
It's way higher.

Keith Scott:
I found is far superior. It removes the noise when you're riding to a logical extent. So I was completely wrong when I first started. And I think it's important to be wrong. I came up with a plan. think, oh, lightweight tyre inserts, that's going to be exactly what I need. And I've ended up coming completely to the off-the-end of the spectrum and then accepting that I was wrong and realising this. And I think any good engineer should be prepared to come up with theories. and then also be prepared that they might be completely wrong and learn something from the process. yeah, mean, yeah, okay, wheels are heavier. They're a bit harder to accelerate, but, tires maybe are a bit grippier and maybe don't roll as well. But on the downhills, they carry speed better because you've got momentum, the rolling distance, you've got momentum going through things. I'm not the best rider, so I want to carry as much speed out of a corner as I can. And so if I can carry a bit of momentum from the wheel spinning, that's great. Plus I feel like I can that corner harder because there's less squirm in the tyre, the whole bike's more predictable. And I think that is a good example. But I mean, again, like you, I'm a bigger guy, heavier guy. So if I weighed 50 kilograms like this kid riding all day, I would probably put a trail tyre front and dual tyre back. So sort of scale the whole thing back a bit. Or something along those lines. The carbon wheels, mean so this bike, the Phantom behind me, it's got carbon wheels. That's because I ride this bike for trail riding. want... Yeah, I'm not riding it hard if you know what mean. I'm wanting flow, I want lightness. It's fun, the light weight's good if you're doing like a long day. And you know, they're good wheels. But the big bike, the Titan, mean, alloy rims and alloy rims and big fat tires, heavy duty tires, that's my way forward. But I do think that's a good example of how the industry can tell you one thing is better. And actually what I'd be curious about is if you looked at... So on the Titan I've still had Continental tires, they're pretty good tires. But I wonder, I they've got their Enduro compound, their downhill compound. I wonder how many of their Enduro riders the actual racers who are riding enduro run the enduro compound. You know, might be more accurate to call an all mountain compound or heavy trail or something like that because I'm pretty sure all these top guys are running downhill or double down or you know something pretty heavy duty because they don't want to have a flat at the end of the game over for them. And when you've ridden or when you've done that thing where they've weighed enduro riders' bikes. These guys are riding enduro bikes that weigh 45 pounds. It's heavier than lot of downhill race bikes because they want to finish the race. Big exercise. And the guys are super fit and strong. It doesn't really matter. They can get to top of the climb. You can put them on a downhill bike and they'll able to get to the of the climb.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah, and they have bigger cassettes, have like dropper posts.
Yeah, doesn't matter.
Yeah, with the rise of e-bikes, was quite remarkable. But the first time you're riding an e-bike downhill, you're like, wow, this actually tracks. This has lot of like, this is planted. It's actually good. And now you see in the World Cup, like everybody putting on weights and having different systems of shopping in Tungsten. It's really impressive.

Keith Scott:
Mm.
Yeah, yeah.
It is funny. The funniest thing I saw the other day was the company that's making an analog conversion for e-bikes. know, the bounce in place of where the motor is. So you can ride your e-bike as an analog bike. I mean, maybe there's certain places you're not allowed to ride e-bikes and you've only got one bike. Fair enough. But yeah, mean, there's something to be said for weight can be a good thing. Weight in the right place can be a good thing. And I mean, in an ideal world,

Jens Staudt:
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.

Keith Scott:
would I want downhill tires to weigh next to nothing? If I could get the strength, stiffness and performance of a downhill tire much lighter? Yeah, I'd maybe want it little bit lighter, but I wouldn't want it to be weightless because there's a lot of stability that comes from that. Yeah, it's a momentum of stability. So, yeah, it again, it comes down to this thing. What do you want for you? Yeah.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah, there's physics.
Talking about weight distribution, what's your take on gearboxes?

Keith Scott:
I like the idea of gearboxes. I wouldn't say I've written a gearbox that I felt worked well for me yet. I still think there's quite a lot of friction in them and resistance that saps a bit of energy. I find them, as a designer, a lot of them are too big and bulky and get in the way of... you end up compromising your whole frame to fit the gearbox. Which isn't great. They cost a lot. know, I'll say that. Drive trains cost a lot. Yeah, I like the idea of them. I still... I kind of feel they're a bit overcomplicated.

Jens Staudt:
linkages.

Keith Scott:
you you got this gearbox and it might have 550 % range I'm just making a number up there but you know some of them have got huge range on them and loads and loads of gears and smart shift systems and blah blah blah I would quite like it and I've always said this and you could probably quote me 20 years ago I quite like somebody to come out with an 8-speed internally geared hub that doesn't weigh a ton I think that'd be quite nice

Jens Staudt:
putting a Nexus hub in the front of the frame like some companies did, or just going full Honda.

Keith Scott:
Well I wouldn't mind even running it at the back. Yeah, I wouldn't even mind running the hub at the back. I know it weighs a bit more but when you're taking into account the cassette, the derailleur, the extra chain, the hub itself anyway, how much more does it really weigh if you had a simple system? And I mean the Nexus hub maybe isn't strong enough for mountain biking I'm sure. And it's also, you know, it's a relatively cheap gearbox hub. I'm sure if somebody came along with better materials and this and the next thing that actually could end up having a pretty good internally geared hub and there's something that seems to just been abandoned recently everyone seems to be going for you know hub around a gearbox hub around the cranks type thing yeah it's I'm not against it I just don't feel it's evolved to where it is as good as the alternatives yet. For all types of riding now, it's different for downhill. But if you're trail riding a gearbox, I think they're just bit too heavy and a bit too much friction in them. If you're downhill, on a downhill bike, they have more of this place there. But they are expensive. and there are limitations for design of the frame. yeah, there's also, don't know if when, you know, if I want to, because I don't design a new bike every year type thing, I want to stick with a standard that's going to stick around. If I'd done e-bikes, I'd be, we'd be out of business because the standards constantly change the different motors. You know, if you're on the wrong motor, you release a bike with the motor that goes out of date. month into it suddenly you're done. So yeah there's like a universal mount for gearboxes in a smaller form factor, much more compact so you can work more around it. I think it could go well there's an example coming back to the e-bike world where an example of sort of fitting things into a smaller factor there's a company in Scotland called Intradrive that have

Keith Scott:
done, I know a few others have done similar, where they've got a gearbox and motor combined in one small unit around the bottom bracket. And so that is kind of an example of sort of squeezing things into a space. And the fact that their gearbox and motor can fit into a smaller space, think that it uses the same footprint as a Shimano motor, I think, or similar. You know, if they can do that with gearbox and motor... What could the gearbox be? And actually, could they take that whole system and get rid of the crank compatibility and just put it as a rear wheel? And then as a hub? You know, so that it could fit in any frame. Maybe be something I'd be looking at doing. And then, I mean, I was talking about this the other day, weirdly, if you had a, I don't know why I'm even talking about this, because there's nothing to with fancy, but if you had a an electric motor slash maybe gearbox combined. In fact no, you wouldn't even have to. If you had an electric motor at the rear wheel, it was not attached to your cranks by chain at all. It was entirely electronically controlled. So it's like fly by wire, pedalling where it sensed your torque input and sort of translated that power input to the rear wheel so it simulated having a chain. You wouldn't need a gearbox because motors run over a large RPM range. You could have a really simple, simple motor. like a, what do call them again, a shunt style motor. It's like high torque, low rotation speed, purely controlled by the torque going into cracks. But I'm going completely rogue here. But I think something like that could be the future for e-bikes, where actually you can get rid of a lot of the complexity, reduce the cost significantly, reduce the weight significantly. Maybe I should get into e-bike design.

Jens Staudt:
Speaking of new bikes, don't know how much you want to share, but it seems like it's been a while, like there's a new Wii.

Keith Scott:
Yep, it has been a while. So there's a few factors on why it's been a while. First of all, we don't like to change things regularly. You we like to come up with a good design and stick with it until there's proper reason to change it. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is, like so many brands, there's been a stock factor of having too much stuff. So to give an insight into this from our perspective, and I suspect quite a lot of other brands, when COVID came along, obviously there was peak demand. And we sold out of a lot of stuff very quickly. And we next to nothing. So when we went to order, we got in quite early and we were putting orders in with our factory. And we did up things a little bit. But the factory also said, you have to give us our next two years of orders in a oner. Because the entire supply chain is jammed up with everybody trying to put in orders right now. So we were like, all right, OK. So we forecast. We did increase slightly what we could think we could do, but we also figured the demand was still high, we could do that and then we could, you know, it could last an extra year if it needed to. We did not, we ended up halving what originally our sales guys were really pushing for. Because I, well, I have to, I was like, no, I don't want to take that risk. think we can just, we will be good at this level. Let's just not be gritty. Other brands went ridiculous and mental. especially some the big guys. And so yeah, we got to this point where we had to put in two years worth of orders in a one-er and we split it into different productions. We did not see any of those frames for 18 months because of supply chain issues. So our forger and tube manufacturer couldn't deliver what we needed. And then when we got them, we had to wait for our suspension shocks. We had to wait another eight months for the shocks to become available. So we basically had this stuff that we couldn't sell. And we were seeing the sales dropping off. Which way around am I? This way? Symmetry. The sales were dropping off a bit of a cliff. More so than I anticipated. I expected them to drop down significantly after COVID, because of various factors. But I mean, they really crashed off that. And everybody is like flooding the market with cheap stuff. trying to get rid of and then finally we got the shocks and we shipped them out and the shipping was really expensive and I mean it honestly it was just such a there's words I could use for it there was it was a complex situation where everything kind of went difficult for for the whole sort of from supply chain to the market so we ended up with like basically almost every brand out there too much stock at a time when demand was low. And we have been working through that. I we've had significant sales. Take it into bed. We've had significant sales across the world. We control our own warehouses. We've simplified our own distribution network. So we've got our own warehouse in France, one in America, one in the UK. And so we've been selling off at different levels, depending on what we've got overstock in to balance things down and get to a point. So that's the first part. We couldn't have come up with new model anyway because we had to sell old stuff. And that's still rumbling on to an extent, although we're pretty much in control of it now. And we are, we have been developing new stuff. The KS2 bikes, the Titan, Rune, Prime, Phantom, Spitfire, they will see updates, but not in the next year. We've been testing some stuff out. but it's going to take a while till we are able to bring it to market. We want to some proper testing of some new stuff, completely new stuff. Before those ones, there will be a Darkside. I think most people are guessing there will be. So we had the Darkside, free ride bike, which was a big seller for us, which we planned to replace much earlier, but finances and whatnot.

Jens Staudt:
There's currently a hole in the lineup. I mean...

Keith Scott:
It's a big whole lineup, especially for a brand like us, which are, you know, we were famous for free ready stuff. So yeah, the dark side definitely. I mean, I designed it two years ago. I finished design two years ago. I thought I finished, I've refined it bit since then, but I could have released the bike two years ago if we had the finances to do it, but we had our money tied up in stock and things. We could have maybe pushed for it, but we'd be risking this. the financial stability of the company in process. We could have got private investment, in we were offered it by a couple of individuals to try and push this through, but I didn't want to take that route. I don't think it would have worked well for us. So the dark side will be coming and at some point, not far after, or maybe even at the same time, a legend as well. And they're based, I mean it's a total new design for both of them. but they'll be based on the same sort of foundations, the two of them. I'm pretty excited about it. It's basically, like everything I do, it's taking what I know has worked really well and evolving it and taking all these sort of elements that have been successful and combining and improving each time. So it'll still, I think people will look at it go, that's a Banshee. There'll be certain things that they'll see and be like, that's a Banshee. But we're trying to up our game on a whole number of fronts with these bikes. So I've been taking my time with that, I've been redesigning it for about two years now and testing and whatnot. And actually the Titan I had stolen had one of the prototype rear ends for a dark side in terms of dropout mounts and things like that on it. We're not going with that one as it happens, it's been improved since then. But I mean, actually it worked really well, but just, there's a couple of things I wanted to do better. I wonder if could, it's a quick, somebody will pause that. There's a little 3D printed dropout flying past. Yeah, there's... Yeah, those bikes will be the first two, Darkside and Legend, and then other bikes will follow. But we're not rushing it. I mean, our bikes still perform really well. mean, you said you enjoyed the Titan. Okay, probably the number one thing that people say it's not today is the fact that it's not UDH compatible. And I get asked this question a lot about why don't we just make UDH dropouts? The main...

Jens Staudt:
Hahaha.

Keith Scott:
The for that is that SRAM will not warranty anybody using our frames in the low setting with UDH dropouts because the clearance for the derailleur is not within their designed specification. The irony is actually that the UDH was designed on a Titan years ago by one of their German engineers. Because we had modular dropouts, he used our bike as a test bed to try out different designs. So it's a bit ironic that we don't do it. Do I feel it's necessary? I mean obviously it's necessary if you want to use transmission drivetrain. Are there other drivetrains that work just as well? Maybe better, maybe lighter, maybe cheaper? Yes. But I do get that some people want to use the latest, supposedly greatest. So yeah, we do that. There are people out there who are actually making their own. fine. And there some people who are even selling them to modular dropouts for our frames. That's fine, that's on them, it's nothing to do with us, we cannot endorse it. So that's probably the area. I geometry wise we're actually cutting edge right now because everyone's coming back to our geometry. Performance wise I think our frames are as good as anything out there. The UDH is probably really the only significant factor that's black.

Jens Staudt:
You could argue, I mean, we've been in contact and we can't really talk about the project, what we tested, but some clearance could be for the shark.

Keith Scott:
you
Yeah, yeah, the new frames will have better clearance, the new frames will have more seat post insertion depth. I'll probably go back to external cable routing because I feel like our customers prioritize that. And you can still do it cleanly. What's that?

Jens Staudt:
You want to hear a funny thing? I actually run my rear brake external because... Yeah, I'm running it...

Keith Scott:
Well, if you're chopping, changing and testing stuff, pain in the ass to have internal brakes. Yeah, I get that. I totally get it. It's like, I mean, all my bikes have been external and it's so easy to build a bike. And also when I look at it from, you know, the bike shops we work with who are doing custom builds, how much time is tied up in running brakes through, re-bleeding, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's a pain in the ass for bike shops as well. I mean, I know they're good at it and fast, but there's no need for it. I we are kind of, I wouldn't say we're function over form because I like to think our bikes are good looking and I do feel like the aesthetics of a bike are a really important part. But I think you can set up a good looking bike with external brakes and external cables in general and it's so much easier to work on.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah. Hey man, you could come up with, I'm trying to poke you here, maybe running through it through the headset.

Keith Scott:
Thank
Oh yeah, great idea. I remember seeing that years ago. Akros sent me this thing of, you can run your things through a headset. And I looked at it for about a minute. was like, oh that's a really cool, that'll be really neat and nice idea. And then I just thought about it, what about the steerer tube? How does that work? then I just more thought about it, was like, oh no, let's not do that. I'm amazed how many people have done it. Even brands who have adopted it, when it's been so obviously rejected.

Jens Staudt:
Wait a minute.

Keith Scott:
they've moved to it and a lot of are stuck with it and I mean to call it brands I guess Scott, my namesake, are a prime example where they want to be everything to be hidden inside the frames and the frames and incomplete bikes look very nice and minimalist as a result you know you can't see the shock you can't see the cables you can't see

Jens Staudt:
It's different approach.

Keith Scott:
It's a different approach and it's not one I would want to own because I would not want to work on that bike. And I like to work on my own bike. I like to build custom bikes. I like to change individual parts, know, I'm that kind of rider. And again, like anything in bikes, everybody's got personal preferences. So that's fine. But yeah, no, I will probably, I mean, I always try to listen to our customers and I did a sort of poll about this a while back about internal and external or both. And most people voted for external, some people voted for both, and a few voted to have internal only. So, yeah, as long as I do it cleanly, then I almost don't think people will notice. Apart from, yeah, it should be hassle-free, and our current one's, it's relatively easy, but it's not hassle-free. And, you know, we did have some cable rattle things and stuff like that, which easy to fix, you know, it's...

Jens Staudt:
It should be hassle-free.

Keith Scott:
It's just problems, it's like creating a problem, solving a problem that doesn't exist, you know? Creating problems in the process of trying to solve something. And why did I go internal in first place? Because there was pressure from distributors and dealers to do what other brands were doing. I didn't actually want to on the Titan, I wanted that all to be external from the get-go. Do I regret doing it internally? No, because I learned quite a bit from it. I could have probably done a couple of things better. But yeah, going external is simple. And yeah, you know, listening to the other feedback, mean, probably the number one, well, number one, two things are universal driller and seat post insertion depth, because seat posts are getting longer these days. people have this funny thing where they insist that the seat post is slammed on the frame. Which I always find kind of weird because like, you know, but how tall are you? It's got... Unless that perfectly matches your body's ergonomics, it's not really a idea. yeah, so a bit more seat post insertion. I want a bike that's easy to work on, reliable, performs well, and has the ability to work with as many parts as possible. So one thing with the Titan is the the ability to fit all the different shocks in the market and now there's a huge spectrum of shock shapes and sizes and things like that. Not like sizes of reservoirs, that's more of what I'm referring to. And some of them don't fit with our bikes because of the shock cage and the limited space of the design. It was designed around shocks when I made it and it could fit everything then and then lot of the reservoirs went to being across the way. and then we're too far down. And a lot of them now have moved up, so for example...

Keith Scott:
DVO ones didn't fit and now they've changed it so actually some of do fit now and the new Fox X2 does fit even though it's got a crossway reservoir, things like that so yeah I have to think about that more although I'd also request that shock manufacturers think about frame designs a bit more yeah I think if you're big enough like Fox or RockShox or whatever they feel like they can design whatever they want and the frame companies will have to adapt to accept it. Maybe it's fine if you're again that brand that releases new models every year but it's harder for small guys like us and I think the industry does need small guys like us because otherwise you're going to end up with all these you know 12,000 euro

Jens Staudt:
Lookalikes.

Keith Scott:
e-bikes that are all exactly the same, they've all got their horse linked, they've all the same battery tech, they'll all be on the same motors. I I heard something the other day about DJI ordering a hundred thousand bikes and I, this is just word of mouth I'm hearing this, but they've ordered a hundred thousand bikes. This is in Taiwan, it's coming from a source in Taiwan.

Jens Staudt:
Rumors.

Keith Scott:
I'm glad I'm not in the e-bike sector, put it that way, because they will presumably limit the best stuff so that they are the only ones using their best stuff and they'll be able to do it cheaper because of economy of scale and I mean they're already doing pretty well with their latest stuff and other brands are scrambling to keep up. So you know, you might end up with a sort of one option. setup and I think one huge thing that's overlooked in the mountain bike world, it's fizzled away a bit, biking has always been about fun but it seems to have kind of become more about racing and more about the show and having the latest stuff to show off and I kind of feel like the the grit of mountain biking has been a little bit eroded and having different brands with different approaches. different characteristics is good. It brings strength to the industry. I do not want to be working in industry where everybody is some big corporation that just cares about making big margins, cutting costs, because it headed, you know, especially with COVID and you know, fact the bike industry, bikes were in such high demand that the value of bike brands went up and all these...

Jens Staudt:
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.

Keith Scott:
companies came along and bought so many bike brands that, I mean we're seeing the price being paid for it now. But yeah, maybe that is the reason why there's a lack of evolution within the bike world as much as anything else. And the focus maybe more towards the electronic side of things.

Jens Staudt:
And if you want to appeal to everybody and everybody has a say in how the bike should look like geometry wise, paint job wise, as you said before, everybody is building the same bikes. yeah, it's. Yeah, 100%.

Keith Scott:
you converge. Everyone converges. I mean you see in car designs, like, number of cars that look so similar and nothing really stands out anymore, you've got this sort of generic, meh, that you end up in. Okay, they've got different features and gadgets and marketing. And so many car brands are now actually owned by the same company and the same parts across all of them and a similar design and just, you know, bit of body work changes and that's all that happens. It's important to be different and have, give the option. That's how I feel. And we don't need to sell tens of thousands of bikes a year to have a nice little business and look after customers and have happy customers. So, you know, while we might not appeal to the masses, there's enough that we really appeal to and can give them a better experience than they would otherwise get. And, you know, we get emails regularly from customers who are super stoked and stuff and really happy about things and I just convinced my buddy to get one of these and it's like that is what keeps us going. And I think, kind of feel like, again going back to this thing of that, the industries, if I compare the industry now to what it was, maybe it's just because I'm getting older and more grumpy, yeah. But you know, when I was like properly riding hard back in the seed and like...

Jens Staudt:
Grumpy, grumpy old white dude.

Keith Scott:
early 2000s. It was so exciting and a new bike came out and it had radically different things or the brand had a really strong identity. There a big spectrum, even if you just look at linkages, there was a lot of development about linkages and that was what sold them. The VPP, DW, the big ones came out. and everybody bought their bikes based on that and then it kind of feels like now they're buying the bikes based on colour. know, it's a bit... Colours may be a bad example but you know, price is probably actually what people are buying their bikes on now. I can't blame them based on the price that some bikes are. Yeah, but I mean there's lots of really good deals on bikes right now but then the new bikes that being released are so expensive.

Jens Staudt:
It's a blowout.

Keith Scott:
A big part of that, a lot of them have gone to transmission drivetrains and transmission drivetrains even at OEM are incredibly expensive. And they're like, god, okay, another reason why I'm not too pushy in that direction. Not that we do complete build so it's kind of irrelevant. And actually I'm moving towards not selling frames without any shocks at all. So in future we'll be just selling our product. So we won't have Fox or RockShox or Olens or anything like that. Because we end up tying up our money. in stuff that's not ours and we have no control over and so when it suddenly goes out of fashion for whatever reason we get left with it and you know it's I think it's quite common knowledge that the older model Fox X2 had some reputation damage and we're still selling them because actually the ones we've got it works well with our bike we don't tend to have big issues but you know it's it has been detrimental to our sales the fact that Fox potentially had these issues. They don't have control over it and actually most people, not most maybe but a lot of people take our bikes and take the shock out and put on a custom shock. That is our market. Our market is the kind of guys who know what they want and they're prepared to build up their bikes custom ways and you know they'll tune their shock. They're the kind of guys that'll take their forks apart and service them themselves you know. So you know selling without a shock.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah. And you don't have control over that.

Keith Scott:
is actually less waste, really. Not just financial waste, but physical waste. The only problem is it might make us a bit of an outcast in the bike world, that we don't do any OEM stuff. Yeah, mean, but you know, you can rely on some big brands sometimes, if you're doing trade shows, or you need parts for things, you need parts for demo bike or show bike, you might get some free stuff to put on it for show. You know, if we're not buying from them, we don't get that anymore.

Jens Staudt:
More niche.

Keith Scott:
And yeah, so the small guys will probably, I'm well connected with quite a lot of small companies that we kind of look after each other in certain ways, spreading costs and cross-promoting and stuff.

Jens Staudt:
I it's really good and that's maybe a good wrap up on I want to have like this little rogue outer left field companies and just doing it very differently and just don't giving a F on what the big guys do.

Keith Scott:
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we don't compete with the big guys. We can't compete with the big guys in the way that they do things. There's no point trying. I mean, I'm not going to say names, but I know a big brand carbon bike company. I've been to the factory where they make their bikes. I know how much they pay for their frames. They sell them for double what we sell them for and they make them for half what we make ours for. But they've got lots of good marketing.

Jens Staudt:
And these, I mean, it's fair enough these people needs to get paid as well. And it's the overhead we started on under the overall discussion. And if you're a tiny company, you're more agile. You can just get away with that. You don't have to heat a big warehouse. You don't have to pay hundreds of works.

Keith Scott:
Yeah, yeah, it's a business.
Mm.
I use third-party warehouses, so I use warehouses that they sell lots of other stuff and it's far more cost-effective, it's far more flexible. We do not, you know, I look at some of these, go and visit the, I guess we can probably talk about YT now because they're not really anymore, and you look at like, you go to the YT showroom in America and it's like this huge big fancy building, it's like a museum, they've got all these fancy pieces of art on the wall and huge displays, like how many tens of thousands? possibly hundreds, possibly millions that they spend on each of those, which could have been spent on product or customer service or whatever. possibly one of the many reasons why they're not operational right now. Yeah, we just like to things small. And this is Banshee headquarters. It's a four by two meter space, a shed in my garden.

Jens Staudt:
You need to make that money back.

Keith Scott:
This is the workshop, it's very good. We all work from home, we don't have an office. My colleague Jay works from the factory, he lives in Taiwan, he's Canadian but he lives in Taiwan, he's the other owner. He's lived out there now for, oh god I must be approaching 15 years because being at the factory is really important and it costs a lot of money to fly back and forth. I he's well established and set up there, he's got family and everything. And we work for a small factory, which gives us lot of flexibility. mean, our minimum order quantity is 50 for full suspension frames and 100 for hardtails. Whereas we go to another factory, the minimum order quantity is probably 500. Or some of them is like well into the thousands. We found how to operate at the scale we operate at. And we are that sort of in that middle ground between the big brands churning out frames and the small boutique guys who are building individual frames. for people. And I'm quite jealous of the small guys sometimes. I quite like that vibe. But we've got our place and we know it and we are very lucky to have a really solid customer base. And I wouldn't say we're doing good business right now because nobody, well, how do I say nobody is, but not many are. But we're surviving. We've played it quite carefully and that's paid off. And I'm looking forward to the next chapter with new designs and the market starting to hit, improving. But we will still stick with the roots of the way we do things and just keep on doing it our way. If there's a market for it, great. If there's not a market, then we're doing it wrong. We don't deserve to be in business.

Jens Staudt:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing these insights and a little glimpse on what the future will bring on Banshee. Then there is not like a standstill. There are new bikes in the pipeline and yeah, looking forward to see them.

Keith Scott:
of how it goes.
You're very welcome. No. Yeah.
Yeah, there's some really, I'm really quite excited about coming out, which I think a lot of people will really enjoy. And that's the thing, bikes should be about enjoyment and fun. And these bikes are gonna be just that. So yeah, so thank you for listening to my rambles. I do ramble. And yeah, I appreciate, you know, I appreciate people like yourself who are in the industry who don't just...

Jens Staudt:
Perfect.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If this kind of podcast is your thing, consider subscribing to our channel. You are in the car and still have another hour to go: you might listen to the episode with Joe Mc Ewan from Starling Cycles expanding frame building into Europe or how Cam Zink is pushing forward his own bike brand in the US.