While walking between appointments at Interbike, element22 and I spotted a large, well-lit booth with carbon fiber mountain bikes, all decked out with high end components. The name, Triace, wasn’t familiar so we stopped to investigate.
We were told Triace, out of Bentonville, AR, just launched this year with five well-equipped hardtail mountain bikes (four carbon, one aluminum, none of them 29ers) plus road and commuter bikes. From what we saw the bikes were all top-of-the-line, some with SRAM XX components, though it was surprising to see so many expensive hardtails with 26-inch wheels. The bikes all have decidedly un-sexy names like the “KA903” and the “KA501” which made me think of Shimano and their obscure product numbering system. Element22 and I agreed that such a seemingly large-scale mountain bike launch was ambitious.
Hoping to learn more after the show, I checked out the Triace website and wasn’t too surprised to see that the entire thing is written in Chinese. It turns out Triace bikes are already sold in Wal-Mart, though none of the bikes we saw at the show were of the Wal-Mart variety. Could we see carbon mountain bikes at everyday low prices sometime in the future? Or are the high-end bikes just show pieces to make the cheap stuff seem sexier? The Triace USA website hasn’t launched yet so I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Stay tuned…
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