100 - Beyond Marketing: Vittoria’s Approach to Mountain Bike Tire Design & Manufacturing (Guest: Ken Avery, SVP Product Development) - Mountain Cog

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dane Higgins (Suspension Guru (00:24):
I think it's the end of the day,
like being tired or something.
But it could be what happenedearlier today, like it was
really weird.
I asked one of the guys at theshop to, you know, hand me a
Diet Pepsi, and he threw it atme Seriously yeah.
You know, I didn't see himthrow it and it hit me in the

(00:45):
head and so maybe I'm a littleout of it.

Josh Anderson (Magellan) (00:48):
I mean did it hurt.

Dane Higgins (Suspension G (00:49):
Yeah , it's the surprising part it
didn't hurt.
Uh, do you know why?

Why didn't it hurt?

Dane Higgins (Suspension (00:54):
Cause it was a soft drink.

That's not good man.

Dane Higgins (Suspension Gu (01:00):
All right, that was as good as the
last one.

That's good, that's good.
Okay, I'll give it to you.
That's the dad joke, if anyonedidn't get that nobody threw a.

Dane Higgins (Suspension Gur (01:08):
No soft drinks were harmed in the
making of this podcast.
Yeah, for sure.

Hey, so it's a Thursday night on the
MCP and we are Joe, joined withthe honorable Mr Ken Avery, who
senior vice president of productdevelopment.
Do I have that right?

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Pro (01:29):
Is that still your title?
It is yeah, yep, it is.
I usually just tell people Idraw pictures and talk about it.
But yeah, that's technically mytitle.

That's awesome and you've been in that
role since.
Like I think I saw a bicycleretailer announcement in 2015.
Yeah so.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Prod (01:40):
I used to also do North American
marketing, but a couple of yearsago it was kind of it was a bit
much.
Yeah, I moved to a global rolejust doing product.
We brought in some, some NorthAmerican marketing team.
They've been doing a great job.
So, yeah, for me it's it'smostly product and doing some of
this stuff now.

Yeah , yeah, a little promotion.

Yeah, there's lots and lots of great
podcasts out there.
If you search on Ken's name,you'll see him.
Gmbn has a great YouTube videothat has the Victoria Bike Park
and your testing facility Ithink it's outside of Milan, so
we'll put some links in the shownotes to those episodes and if

(02:20):
you haven't watched that video,it's super cool.
It's a little insiderinformation on how you guys do
testing and it was surprisingactually for me.

I didn video it's super cool.

It's a little insider information on
how you guys do testing and itwas surprising actually for me.
I didn't realize it was thatinvolved.

Well , so I liked it because there's
a bike park at the facility,like they're out there riding,
riding what drops, jumps, youknow, they have like rock
gardens, all kinds of stuff.
It was kind of cool At the shopwhere, you know, we, we really
really mainly carry two brands,maxis and Vittoria, and Vittoria
is like my favorite for a lotof reasons, I don't know, um,

(02:50):
but uh, it's funny cause I dorun into people at the shop that
don't know what Vittoria is andI find it frustrating cause I
think they've been around a lot,but 70 years, yeah, can I give
you a little, a little, umlittle trivia that maybe people
don't know is they used to be onthe mountain bike side under a
different name.

Oh, is that true?
What was the name, ken?
It was called gx.
Okay, thank you for pronouncingit.
I've had gx tires.
I didn't know that was the same.

See , that's what I'm talking about.
That happens all the time.
So, yeah, and um, it's so funnybecause I waited for you to
pronounce it, because it getspronounced Geeks.
All kinds of stuff.
Yeah, like we got, oh God, yeah, we've heard it all yeah.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP P (03:30):
Yeah , yeah, you get that awkward
moment where, like when youforget someone's name and you're
trying to have them introducethemselves, yeah, yeah.
You want them to say it Exactly?
Yeah, no, I could.
I could hear it coming.
So, um, yeah, it was it'spronounced gx and uh, it was.
Basically, it used to bevittoria's mountain bike line.
We folded that in technicallyfor the 2015 season.
Uh, I've been working undervittoria umbrella since about

(03:54):
2012, yeah, in fact.
Uh, I have actually some funnystories about gx, um, when we
get into that.
But, yeah, no, that's the quickversion yeah, that's so.

So once I say that, people will
recognize them.
What was the tire that I loved?
There's uh, man, I can'tremember big block tire, it's no
, it's like a saguaro probablyno, the saguaro was huge.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Pr (04:15):
The so, so, so where you guys are,
yeah, so so we call it saguaro.

But uh, saguaro is totally
acceptable, just like if you saythat's like yeah, it totally is
just like prescott or prescottyeah, exactly, yeah so but uh,
yeah, I can't remember.

Uh , goma, that's the first tire I
ever did yeah, oh did you dothat tire, yeah I did that one
for gx right when we first camein and it was sort of the last
gx tire actually yeah, that,that's the one that got me
hooked honestly, uh, because atthe time we were doing 26s, this
is a while ago 2015.

Yeah , and it was um 20, 2012, like I
can't remember.
The 2-4 goma was huge, like itwas just bigger than everybody
else's.
Yeah, and as a big hit rider, Ialways wanted the biggest tires
I could get.

They were really good tires, so so,
ken, um, one of the things thatI've heard you do very well and
I think would be beneficial forus as well, and I'm sorry to ask
you to repeat yourself, but yougive a really good overview of,
like, how a mountain bike tireis constructed and the case and
the tread and all that andeverything that goes into it.
Maybe you could take our, ourlisteners, through that real
quick, just to to, to, yeah, Imean, and this could be.

This could be a podcast in and of
itself.
If you want to dive super deepon this, there are a series of
white papers that I did on theVittoria website, vittoriacom,
so go check that out in theVittoria world section.
Basically consider a tire asreally a few different
components.
There's going to be the casingconstruction itself, which is

(05:50):
like the carcass, which istypically nylon or cotton in
most tires In mountain biketires it's almost exclusively
nylon.
There's going to be the bead,of course, which hooks onto your
rim.
There's going to be the treaddesign itself and then the
compound.
So for the most part onto yourrim there's going to be the
tread design itself and then thecompound.
So for the most part, like Isaid, it's going to be nylon
material and that material istypically measured in what's

(06:11):
called TPI, which is threads perinch.
So you basically have a cordstructure and if you can imagine
how many of those cords fit ina given inch, that can kind of
tell you a bit about how thickthat cord is.
So the idea is the highernumber on the TPI the thinner
the cord, which means that it'smore flexible, I mean.
Of course.
Also it's not going to be quiteas robust in that way.

(06:33):
So there's always sort of likea give and take on that.
Now, of course, you're going tohave the beads that are going
to go, you know, around your rimand they're going to sit on
that bead seat on your rim.
Now there's hookless and andand hooked rims and all that
stuff.
But, regardless, a tire,whether it's hookless or not,
we'll always have a bead.
Now, a hookless bead has tohave certain, um you know,

(06:56):
attributes which which make ithookless compatible, uh the same
, with tubeless.
In fact.
Uh, you have to have a certainattributes with that bead which
enable it to, you know,withstand kind of just the
demands of having a tire thatdoes not have an inner tube in
it, right?
So those beads are typicallymade out of some sort of an
aramid fiber or metal or likewhat's known as, typically like

(07:18):
a rigid bead or a wire bead,right?
So historically it was justvery easy to throw like a wire
in there.
But you know, with all thisother technology that came out,
aramid, which is commerciallyknown as Kevlar, suits that well
, simply because it is verystable in terms of being not
stretchy, essentially, right, soyour tire is not going to kind

(07:39):
of like pop off because of thebeads.
Typically, if things aredesigned well and pressures are
respected, the casing materialgoes around that bead.
It goes up and around around theother bead and then back up in
the middle and overlaps itselfand then typically the tread is
vulcanized onto that structure.
So when the tire is being made,there's a machine that is

(08:01):
cleverly called the tirebuilding machine TVM for short
and it basically resembles sortof like a rolling barrel that a
person would sit in front of,and so they can basically put
the material onto this rollingbarrel and it rolls around,
overlaps itself, and then theystop, they put the beads on
those, roll around and then stopand then they cut those.

(08:21):
Then there's a sort of a buttonthey hit where the mechanism
closes that bead within thecasing structure and then they
put what's known as the greencompound, which is the compound
pre -vulcanization, around thattire and then that sort of green
structure then goes into themold for vulcanization.
And when that happens, you knowthere's a few different ways to

(08:41):
do that, but a common way issome sort of like a steam
bladder that pushes up into kindof like the underside of the
mold, sort of like a female mold, if you will, and yeah, that
gets held there for a fewminutes and then the clamshell
opens and the steam is releasedand the tire pops out.
In order to do that, of course,you have to have the compound

(09:03):
formulation and a tread designthat's going to be compelling
for the type of terrain thatyou're trying to conquer.
So that is, I would say, thesuper quick way to talk about
how tires are typicallyconstructed, but that's going to
open a can of worms, I know, ina few different ways.

I have so many questions right
now.

Yeah , so hit me with it.

One quick question no-transcript.

(09:52):
That's actually not whathappens.
Okay, those are actually ventholes.

Okay , um, if you can imagine you
ride your tire I know in arizonayou don't have like a lot of
mud, yeah, but like if you, ifyou were to ride your tire
through mud, right, and you havelike a footprint of the tire on
the ground, that's sort of likewhat the mold looks like on the
inside.
Okay, okay, yeah.
But it's made out of metal andthen so the rubber is actually
just a strip, a solid slab, astrip of rubber, that's, you

(10:17):
know, a certain dimension, givenhow wide the tire is and given
how deep the tread is going tobe, and each tread has a
different dimension.
For that little slab of rubberthat goes in the center of that
green tire, that, that istypically, that slab of rubber,
is typically extruded and thenand then cut on that tire
building machine.

So like Play-Doh, so it kind of
wraps around and then theyliterally cut the rubber.
So is it like sorry, I keepinterrupting.
So I'm wrapping my head.
So is it like a piece ofPlay-Doh rather than a liquid?

I would say it resembles a piece
of Play-Doh more than anything.
Yeah, okay, basically they cutit so that you know the seam is
butting up against each other,right, and I realized that it's
going to be vulcanized so it allmelts together, okay, so it's
not as if you see that seam oranything, yeah, and then that
gets pushed up into that thatmold that we were talking about.

(11:05):
That kind of looks like afootprint of the tire and in
doing so, you know, thatdimensional kind of piece of
that slab that we put down isreally so that we don't have
sort of any sort of an overflowor waste or things like this.
And so you can imagine, youknow, a tread that has like a,
say, a seven mil deep treadblock versus like a super fast

(11:26):
gravel tire that has like athree millimeter tread block or
something like that.
You know you wouldn't want towaste the difference in the
rubber if it was sort of justlike a standard thing, right.
So for that reason they'respecific for the model that your
truck produce.
And yeah, that's really aboutit.
Other than that, while it's onthe tire building machine you'll
also throw on the hot patches,which are basically just the
logos on the tire, but in thebiz those are called hot patches

(11:50):
.

Nice.
How long does the vulcanizationprocess take?
Roughly.

Yeah , it's going to depend on the
dimensions of the tire, right?
If it's like a bigger tire,there's more material.
It's going to take a littlelonger, but yeah it's usually
only a few minutes.
Okay, you know that said, do themath.
You can only make so many perday per machine, right?
So when you do this on scale,you typically say you know your
most popular SKUs meaning modeland also size will have

(12:15):
dedicated molds lined up and youmight do like a you know a huge
batch of those that way,whereas if you have a tire
that's maybe more of like aspecialist type use, say like a
downhill mud tire, right, likeyou're going to sell some of
those but they're not going tobe as popular as like sort of
like a mixed terrain, crosscountry tire, for instance.

(12:36):
You know what I mean, so youknow you'll have less molds for
a tire like that.

That's crazy.
I I love that because I youknow.
You hear vulcanization, youhear all of this stuff, the bead
, you know Kevlar Aramid, all ofthese terms I've heard for
years and years and years.
But I can totally with theircarcasses tearing, which gives

(13:08):
you like a wobble in the tire,and I've not seen that with a
Vittoria.
Do you know what causes that?

Yeah , that can be cheap materials.
It could be a molding defect.
It can be sort of like youovercooked it.
Yeah, I mean tolerances, right,and, to be honest with you,
I've never seen it happen on atire that's come out of our
factory.

Yeah , I haven't either.
I've seen it with other brandsI have too, there's one brand
that we won't carry in the shopanymore because of the trauma it
inflicted on me as a dealer,and then the other brand is so
popular we have to carry them,you know, right.
But it's been an issue and oneof the reasons, I think foot at

(13:52):
least where we're at, because wehave lots of square-edge bumps
and lots of hard-hit square-edgebumps.
I think one of the reasons thata lot of the riders that come
to our shop end up sticking withVittoria's because that doesn't
seem to happen.

So yeah, it's.
When it's put together in asuper high quality process with
tight tolerances, ultimately itbenefits the rider right?
I mean, there are cheaperoptions, of course, but there's
not going to be anything that'shigher quality.
I used to work for another tirebrand and you know, I came to
Vittoria because originally, abuddy of mine wanted to start a

(14:27):
tire brand and he approached meabout it and my time at Maxxis
had just ended, and so he wastrying to scoop, you know, and
let's do something, and whatever.

And I said you know if my name's going
to be on this.

I just want it to come out of the
Vittoria factory.
And I gave him a call and theysaid why don't you just work for
us instead?
And so here I am, 14 yearslater.
Yeah, that's been fun.

So, ken, if we stay on that tech
theme, just I won't go too deep,but do you guys use synthetic
or natural rubber or both, andwhy?

Yeah , both.
You know they have differentproperties.
If you were to make a tire onlyout of natural rubber, it would
crack.
You know there's different, youknow types of synthetic rubbers
and things like this that getput in, and just different
additives to make sure that therubber is stable and elastic and
consistent, temperature stableand all these things.
Because at the end of the dayyou don't want to be thinking

(15:18):
about all of these things whenyou're basically just holding on
for dear life, you know, andhaving fun doing it.
But I mean at the same time,like there's consequence, right,
and so, um, you don't want thatum rubber to also not vulcanize
.
Well, because if that tire youknow tread were to peel off, you
know other other issues.
So, yeah, I mean we do use amix.
Uh, we produce in Thailand, uh,because there's a vast supply of

(15:48):
natural uh materials there.
I live in New Hampshire andthere's a lot of syrup that
comes out of New Hampshire.
We love maple syrup.
I always joke that in Thailand,rubber comes out of trees like
it's maple syrup, and so there'sfarms for this and it's a great
place for those resources, wow.

That's awesome.
You have graphene integratedinto your products and that
seems to be a big part of youryour design process.
Um, maybe tell our listeners alittle bit about what graphene
is and like why you use it.
What?
What does it do to help makeyour tires so good?

Sure it's.
It's very much more about whatit does for you as a rider.
We first launched Grapheneyears ago.
I remember the internal team wewere talking about how do we
communicate this?
The cool thing is, first andforemost, you can Google
Graphene.
We literally tell you oursecret ingredient.

(16:38):
A lot of other brands havethese buzzwords and marketing
and stuff.
When we first launched, peoplewere accusing us oh, this is
just a marketing thing, and Iwas like dude, you can literally
Google it.
So yeah, it's basically likeit's such a thin substance that
it's known as two dimensional.
In fact it's stronger thansteel, it's.

(16:59):
There's all these these greatthings about graphene, but again
, as I was saying, it's reallyabout what it does for you guys.
So if you would imagine sort oflike looking at a structure, a
structure of a material under,say, like a microscope, and
there was like a latticestructure and this graphene can
kind of fill in those voids andit changes the elastomeric

(17:21):
properties of the rubber, do youever have a tire chunk out
where, like it doesn't like itdoesn't like wear down from the
surface to the casing, likechunks come out of it?
You know what I mean.
That's, you know a rubber thatis not going to be, you know, in
terms of strong right, but atthe same time, typically people
when they see that, they say, oh, it's because it's a soft

(17:41):
compound, which is actuallywrong.
A soft compound is just, youknow, it's a low durometer,
right, it's something where youcan make a soft compound still
be quite stable and, yeah sure,like, eventually, if you make it
so soft, then it's, you know,abrasion will become a factor.
But I mean in terms of Dane,where it's put, as I say you
know, like on the tire, graphenehas had tremendous advantages

(18:05):
with this.
Elastomerically, it helps thetire roll faster.
Our tires roll super fast, eventhe more aggressive tires.
If you were to compare asimilar tire from another
company, our tires are, you know, arguably going to be the
faster tire almost every time.
And that's not because, oh,it's a harder compound and
whatever.
It's actually not, becauseoftentimes our compounds

(18:25):
actually softer.
So think about this road tiresuse a super high TPI we talked
about that a minute ago and youwant that tire to be really
flexible.
Imagine sort of like the casing.
Then being flexible is sort ofas if the casing is also soft,
like you know, you push yourfinger into it and the casing
moves away, kind of like a softcompound does the same thing
when you put your finger into it.
But for some reason people havethis idea in their head like,

(18:48):
oh, if it rolls fast it must bea harder compound, it's.
You know, I need the tire tohook up.
I don't care, I just want it tohook up, so I'm cool with it
rolling slower.
In reality you can have both.
You can have a tire that hooksup if it's done properly.

Two things I want to talk about.
Go for it.
Um so tpi?
Uh, sure, in the, your roadtires are phenomenal and
probably the best in the world.
Uh, and we always focus whenwe're talking about road tires,
a higher tpi is more desired.
Um, is that the same inmountain or is it the opposite?

so it's it depends neither.
Yeah, you know I think you'restarting to expect these kinds
of answers from me.
Sorry about that, that's okay,that's okay, pretty much, yeah,
I mean you know we want to makeit as clear as we can for riders
and so I'm going to give youthe technical version, that I'm
going to give you the simpleversion, Thank you.
So if you consider, you know,road tires, they're getting

(19:44):
larger.
I mean, you know, you know a 30C road tires, normal now you
know, used to be.
It's crazy 23 is not that longago.

You know what I mean.
So gravel, like a small gravel,is 50 now.
Right.
Everybody wants more Right.

You know.
So consider that a road tirehas a pretty thin tread, meaning
that, like if you were to cutthe tire right and you were to
look at it in cross-section yeahright, like the tread is is
quite thin and and the casing isextremely thin, of course.
Now there's a few things here.
You know you're riding on acontrolled surface for the most
part.
Yeah, sure, there's cracks inthe road and, yeah, you might
try to like venture off into,like, maybe, a dirt road, for
the most part road, people areriding on a paved road, pretty,

(20:29):
pretty consistent surface, right, yeah, you can get away with
these things.
Um, and and the purpose of thetread and the casing being so
thin, aside from lightweight andwhatever is that, imagine this
every time the tire, a certainlittle portion of the tire,
rolls underneath you right, hitsthe ground, uh, the tire
deforms, right, squishes down atthe contact patch.

(20:50):
If you sit on your bike and youlook down at the contact patch,
it's going to be squished downwhere the rest of the tire is,
like a normal shape, right, yeah, so that little deformation,
right, every time that littlepiece goes underneath you is is
energy loss, right I?
I mean, it's basically the, thecasing is is fighting this, um,
and it's providing sort of apneumatic tire provides a bit of

(21:12):
suspension.
Pneumatic tire just meaning anytire that has air in it, right,
yeah, if you make the tirecasing and construction more
flexible, uh, you can make useof the volume of the tire and
it'll roll faster.
So in an exaggerated case, Iknow we're talking about road
tires here, but check this outLike in an exaggerated case.
Think about track cycling.
Okay, right, like you have apolished wood track.

(21:33):
There are like no imperfectionsin that thing.
Right, you're not talking aboutpebbles and cracks and stuff.
Yeah.
Right.
Especially roads in NewHampshire, where I live, are
like horrible this time of year.
They're just kind of puttingthem back together from the
winter.
Despite that track, tires arelike.
You know.
It's all about this rollingresistance right and reducing
that rolling resistance.
And so people say to me, how doyou even do that on a wooden

(21:55):
track?
And it's all about that littledeformation of the contact patch
.
Yeah.
All that said, consider theratio of the tread thickness to
the casing thickness.
Okay, and that flexibilityright.
A road tire, the entire thingis going to be really flexible,
including the tread.
But then scale that up to amountain bike tire

(22:15):
Disproportionately, the treadgets deeper in a mountain bike
tire.

Okay , so it's a lot thicker Okay.

Yeah , that tread cap on a mountain
bike tire is going to be a lotthicker proportionally than say
a road tire is right so,especially for a given
cross-section width, right.
So, like you're talking aboutsay, you know whatever, call it
seven millimeters for, like a,you know, an enduro tire yeah
and yet the casings, uh, I mean,yeah, they get thicker than a
road tire does.

(22:41):
Of course you know, but you'retalking about traditionally, a
mountain bike tire is going tobe 120 or maybe 60 TPI,
something like that.

Yeah , those are the two numbers.
Get thrown around.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP (22:49):
Right , and, and, and they throw it
around as if it's just all thesame stuff.
Yes, and I'm going to get intothat in a minute.
You know, and, and peopleassume, oh, higher, higher
numbers, better and whatever,because this is kind of um, we
launched a tire called a peyotelast year.

(23:10):
Yeah, we also launched a mezcalin this new cross country race
casing.
So the peyote and the mezcal welaunched on last year came in
this new cross country racecasing.
Now, this cross country racecasing came about through
testing with our athletes, whichyou know.
You alluded to our testing parkearlier, which is awesome.
That's one of the ways we dothis.
We have Victoria labsoria labs.
We have one in Italy and one inThailand.

(23:32):
We have the Vittoria park,which is in Italy, which is like
a control, test environment,test track.
I would love to talk about moreof that in a minute, but, in
terms of this, the other placewe test with is just on the race
course.
Yeah, this Mezcal in the new XCrace case in construction.
I'm going to tell you what themagic is in that in a minute,

(23:55):
because I think you're going tobe surprised.
That won three worldchampionships before we launched
it.
Oh, wow, so it was pretty wellproven, yeah.
And so everybody's like, wow,man, how is that casing faster?
That's got to be like you knowanother brand is doing like way
higher than 120 off road rightyeah.
Yours must be even higher,because we make road tires that
are 330 tpi cotton, right, yeah?
So people were speculating like, wow, what is that?
What's that magic dude?

(24:16):
It's 60, that's what I thoughtyeah, I swear I.
I feel like the best performingtires have a lower tpi in
mountain, but in road it's theopposite, and I don't know why
you know so so what we learnedwas uh, a 120 tpi tire in
mountain bike is sort of common,okay, um, and and that's fine.

(24:38):
But you know where you guyslive.
You have two things you havecacti and you have very abrasive
stone.
Yes, yes, right, and so both ofthose things are really tough on
a high TPI casing off road,right, yeah.
The other thing that happens,though, if you ride a 120 TPI
tire or higher off road with alet's call it a normal mountain

(25:02):
bike tread, right, like you know, say, five mil deep mountain
bike tread, right, yeah, youknow how people, everybody's
going tubeless, of course, ofcourse, not a new thing, yeah,
uh, and you do that partially soyou can run lower pressure yes
so and I have opinions on thatthe tire gets waggy, right, it
does this.
Yeah, the tread cap wags backand forth when you hit a square

(25:25):
edge bump, the tread actuallydoesn't deform first, the side
sidewall does.
Watch this.
Do this on a tire with like areal mountain bike tread and
like a 120 or higher TPI casing,with no sidewall protection or
no sidewall inserts or anythinglike that, just a pure 120
casing, right?
You'll be surprised.
So what we did was we softenedthe tread as much as we could

(25:50):
within reason for across-country application, and
then what we did was we made therest of the carcass more robust
by using a 60 TPI.
Now, it doesn't have any othersidewall insert to protect or
anything like this.
Because, again, this is the XErace version, right, it's kind
of just simple.
And it's simple by design,because what we wanted to do was

(26:11):
have the casing and the treadand the entire tire together to
form in a uniform way.
Okay, right, and what that doesis make use of the volume.
So now these tires are 2.4width.
You know, for cross-country,that's historically on the large
side, right, but it's greatbecause you have more sidewall,

(26:32):
you have more volume to deform,right?
So that's actually a really goodthing, and it was crazy because
we didn't tell the athleteswhat we did.
We just said you have option A,b, c and D, and A, b and C were
120 based constructions and Dversion D was the 60.
And universally, everybody waslike I don't know what that is,

(26:54):
but it's faster and I want it,and, and so we we brought that
to production.
And the great thing is, lastweek, at Sea Otter Classic 2025,
we launched the full line of XCrace tires.
So now you can get that in aTorino, in a Peyote, in a, a
mezcal, in a Barzo, and there'sanother one coming this fall
You're going to hear about, ohgoody.

Cause I love the mezcal.
What I want is a.
I like the agaro, I want like Iwant a little brother to the
agaro.
That's what I want.

Have you tried a Sierra?

Yeah , they're a little too wide for
me.
I like the knobs a littlecloser together.
We're so we're you mean spacingwise because you live in a dry
climate super hard like kittylitter so you know what is it
loose over hard is what the termis but yeah, we call it kitty
litter because it's likeconcrete with kitty litter on it
and so you don't, you don'tneed a deep tread, but you

(27:49):
definitely want to tread that.
So for me I'm a corner and I'm adownhiller, so even on my
cross-country bike I lean realdeep, you know, and so I want
really supportive side knobs.
I've never really been annoyedwith like some people talk about
round versus squared off andstuff.
It doesn't bug me too much.

But if the side knobs don't support
, I get real squirrely in thecorners and I don't care that so
but I mean and there's a lotthat goes into that too I mean,
um, you know, and again we coulddo an entire another call and
just yeah, design yeah trendtheory, but one of the things
that you'll see, likeparticularly on a martello or a
maza, but on the agaro as well,is you'll see three sipes,

(28:29):
uh-huh, uh, that are parallel.
Yes, um, like the face of theknob.
Martello was the first tire weever did with this.

Yeah , I've won a lot of races on
that tire.

Yeah , we call this progressive site
with, okay, and so imagine thisthis is another like tread nerd
thing.
Okay, but hey, that's what youbrought me here for.
So, so basically the idea is asite is just like an engineered
groove right, it's just like alittle cut in the top of the
knob.
Yeah.
And it's usually captured,meaning that it doesn't go all

(28:59):
the way off the edge.
It's sort of like, you know,just like sort of in the middle.
There's like a straight line,right.
What we've done is done a small, medium and large site in a row
and the idea is that the largersite has more air in it Right,
so like it can collapse more.
So that basically means thatit's going to be essentially

(29:20):
softer on the edge Right.
Then you know that getsprogressively, you know less
soft Right, so you have anasymmetrical flex laterally.
So if you can imagine, you'redoing all the cornering work on
that effective edge, the insideeffective edge of your side knob
, well, the largest type isgoing to be right there, yeah,
and then they get thinner asthey go out towards the side.

(29:42):
So if you were to take prettymuch any Vittoria tire and you
push on the inside effectiveedge, like the cornering edge of
that side knob, it willaccordion shut, it will not flop
over.
And so, like you know how, likesome tires, especially where
you guys are like cause you havelike crazy grip and then you
don't.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, so like that's oftenbecause you have an edge that's

(30:08):
holding and then it, and then itlets go because it overcomes
Right.
So by offering that sort oflike accordion, progressive flex
, uh, that progressive site withgives you that feeling and it's
more communicative.
So, like you basically at theedge, you'll hear it start
making noise before it just snapunder steers.
It's actually something that isso simple to do, but it's

(30:30):
become like a trademark forVittoria and you know, for
whatever reason, you don't seeit oftentimes in other places in
any sort of consistency.
So it's become really one ofour big tread design trademarks.

Yeah , martello's probably the most
winning tire for our team.
And then the Mazda is.
We started integrating thatinto the front tire.

We don't do usually that as much
in the rear, I'm not sure why,uh yeah, I mean so maza martello
, super popular combo, yeah, andI mean, and that's really for
like, and both of those tireswork really well in like a mix
of terrain, yep, so I mean youcan ride that in like greasy
north shore stuff, yeah, um, andyou can ride that in the desert
and it works okay, so I so I umso.

so Josh does a lot of research and
gets like all these questions,so you got to make sure that I
stay on that.

You don't have to.

Okay , all right, I got I.
Okay, then I have another one.
So, uh, there's been somechanges.
Um, there's.
There's two questions that Ihave.
One is a lot of people arepushing like an e-bike rated
tire.
Sure, but I'm getting mixedreviews on what that is, and so,
yeah, so what is an e-bike tirecompared to an analog tire?

(31:41):
Well, and I'm going to say thisin a way, that's, I hope it's.
I hope you don't take offense,but it sounds like the Enduro
casing and the e-bike casing arethe same tire with just two
different hop patches.

Yeah .
So these are all greatquestions and you're not really
wrong about any of it.
It's funny in the early days ofe-bike, when we started making
e-bike tires, we actually hadlike say, you mentioned the
Agaro earlier, we had like ane-Agaro, we had an e-Barzo.
Those were the sameconstruction with it of a hop
patch, because people, dealersand and OEMs and OEM is

(32:14):
basically just a bike brand thatwants to put, you know, our
tires on their bike they wereasking for something that said
e-bike I mean people, you canbuy e-bike grips right now,
which is like hilarious to me.
I think they have e-bike shirts.

Yeah , I'm not, I'm not kidding I
think they do, but the thingabout it was is that for us it
wasn't a gimmick.

We weren't trying to fool anybody.
The truth of that is that ourstandard tire was made in such a
quality way with materials thatpassed the e-bike standard so
we could literally just slap alabel on it for the people who
needed the label for whateverreason, and that was fine.
So it got a little cumbersomeand you as a dealer can

(32:54):
appreciate this.
You know you want to put theleast amount of skews on your
wall that are going to hit themost amount of customers, right?
So it's the kind of thing whereyou know, having a separate
category, people would contactus all the time.
Can I run the e-bike tire on myregular bike?
You know stuff like that, andso what we've done is we've
collapsed that down into ournormal product line and now we

(33:17):
are introducing e-bike ready, somuch like tubeless ready.
You can use a tubeless readytire with an inner tube or
without a tube.
You can use anything that'se-bike ready on an e-bike if you
want it's and it withstands the.
You knows all of the ETRTOnorms to get you that
designation and certificationsand all that, or you can

(33:37):
obviously run it as a regulartire, which is the point.
So it should be a lot morestreamlined.
Moving forward, to answer yourquestion, yeah, there are
certain load requirements thatare needed to call a tire e-bike
ready, and particularlyregarding power and speed of the
bike, it's going to be going on.

(33:57):
So there's a couple differentnations there, but the great
thing is that with any Vittoriaproduct you don't have to worry
about it because we developeverything per ETRTO standards.
Most people are going to saywhat the heck is ETRTO?

And including you guys.
Probably right little bit.
Yeah, I've seen it.
I haven't dove into it, buteuropean tread, I don't know,
I'm just making stuff up no, Ilove it.

I start making up you know,
things sometimes mess withpeople, but no, basically, uh,
etrto is european um tire androom technical organization.
Okay, um, you know, itbasically is a consortium of
tire industry.
People like myself.
I sit, uh you know, on thatcommittee, uh, representing
vittoria, along with um ameliano, who's our global director of

(34:46):
product.
He's sort of like my brother inItaly, basically, you know.
So we sit on in this committeeand also I got to give a big
shout out to my, my, my other coworker, tommaso, who's also
spent a lot of time in the ETRto meetings.
So you know, we have all spenttime in there voicing our
concerns for the industry and itgoes everything from rim wall

(35:09):
height to rim width,compatibility and I mean that's
changed a lot in the last 10years to e-bike tires and load
ratings and everything, allthese things.
So all of that gets discussedin there, along with people like
myself from the other brandswhich belong to.

ETRTO .
And so you guys all kind ofagree on.

Uh , this is the set of standards.
Yeah, so that's yeah, reallyyeah, it's, it's.
It's a good thing because at theend of the day, like um, it's
an industry standard yeahwhether you work for us or for
any of the other big brands.
Not all the big brands are inthere, by the way you know yeah
um, but you know it's, if yousee like um, uh, sometimes on

(35:53):
packaging, you'll see like adesignation that looks weird.
You'll see like 60-622 as anexample.
Yeah, so 622.
Is the the actually 700c or er?

29er , that's not measured at the
bead seat.

Yeah , um, and then 60 is just the 60
millimeter cross-section width.
Yeah, so, um, you know, you'llsee that, and people are like
what the heck is that?
And it's, sometimes it's knownas the French size, but
basically it's.
You know, that's what you'llsee on any of the big brands.
You'll see, you'll see.
The second size, which you knowindicates what the cross

(36:31):
section width should measure,given a design rim width which
then also is aligned with thatwidth of tire.
So, for every width of tire,there's a designated design room
with, and there's sort of asliding scale above and below
that, which is is typicallycompatible within reason.

So when, when I see five, 59, if I
remember that was 26, I isright is that what we're talking
about?

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP (36:57):
that's probably four there's there's
like a you know every, everysize is gonna have a bt diameter
like that.

Yeah , I mean, and and that became
important with us when we weredoing a lot of schwinn tires.
You know you would get theseweird right so the schwinn size
is a totally unique one, and wehad to go essentially like a

yeah what was it like a 27?

They would say it was a 27, but it
wasn't an actual 27, but itright, that's what they called
it.
And or a 26 by one and a threecore.
Anytime you see a fraction on atire runaway.
Um, but yeah, one in threebecause the rims would actually

(37:38):
be different sizes, but theywould both say 27 or 26.
And we would have customerscome in and they've somehow
stretched these things on to thewrong rim and they wouldn't.
They wouldn't get them off andwe'd have to cut them off a
brand new tire.
Cut it off Cause they hadbought the wrong one and so we
were using that second number.
So like six, two, two we wereusing I can't remember them all,
but but that's the number wewould find on the rim.
Luckily, they would put it onthe rim a lot of times, and then

(37:59):
you would then go find the tirewith that matching number and
you at least knew the bead wouldwork.
You know, maybe the width wasdifferent, but the bead would
work.

But that's the beauty of having a
person like you in a shop likeyours.
Yeah, that's true.
To be honest, you know people.
You know oftentimes people canbe intimidated going to a bike
shop these days or whatever butyou know there is no better
resource, uh, than a person likeyou in that shop and and we are
so grateful that you are aVittoria dealer for that reason,

(38:29):
you know.

I often tell people that, uh, my
knowledge is just past trauma,so that's what it is.
I just learned from my mistakes, so okay, Josh has got a
question.

No, I can.
My day job.
I'm a corporate strategist fora defense industry and so I got
to get into a little bit ofsales stuff, and if I ask
anything you're uncomfortablewith, just let me know.

Sure , but first do we have a safe
word.

We have a safe word.
Yeah, I don't know, I don'tknow.

Say Saguaro yeah.

Josh Anderson (Magellan (39:00):
Saguaro , that would be awesome.
First, I was interested.
The percentage of your sales.
Well, let me start here.
How much of the popularity of atire is tied to a trend we were
talking before the podcastabout some trendy things versus

(39:22):
the actual performance of thetire huh, it's going to be uh.

So this is again.
This is another kind ofcurveball answer for you, but
basically I'm not trying to bedifficult what I'm trying to do
is give you real world kind ofperspective.
Yeah sure, at the leading edgeof the launch, it will be
disproportionately tied to atrend, okay at at sort of.
After that first year or two,maybe it will be entirely tied

(39:50):
to the performance of the tread.
And so, uh, you know, there are, there are occasions where
you'll see trends, be it size oruse or whatever.
When we launched the Sierra, itwas like our downcountry tire,
because that was a buzzword atthe time.
In reality, that tire won gearof the year award and has been

(40:10):
popular, you know.
So it's not just pigeonholed as, like, a downcountry tire
anymore.
Yeah, I mean, it sits betweenour most aggressive
cross-country tire and our trailcategory in our spectrum.
But at the same time that'stypically how it goes right
You're meeting demand bylaunching a new product one way
or another and in meeting thatdemand, that demand, inherently,

(40:33):
if it's a new product, it'sgoing to be at least associated
with some sort of a trend, right?
So, uh, that's the reason thatit's a new product and one that
hasn't already existed.
But the true test is actuallyhow it does, sort of like second
, third year, you know, if youlook at a tire, like you brought
up the agar earlier, which issuch a great tire for your area.
Yeah, you know it's funny thattire launched it got gear of the

(40:54):
year.
It was a trail category productthat was supposed to be sort of
like not quite an enduro tire,yeah, but very much more than an
xc tire.
It's, it's.
I always say that tire isbasically just like you want to
go mountain biking yeah, throwour cars on your bike.
Yep, you can basically doanything.
Yeah, I have.
I have like testers.
We have product testers allover the world.
I have a couple buddies, oneguy named dave coleman hello

(41:15):
that I.
I mentioned him on the show,nice um you gotta tell him to
listen you gotta tell him tolisten.

Yeah , I'll believe you, I will.

Okay , all right he'll share this now
that I said his name, uh, he'llthrow like an agaro in front of
mezcal and back sometimes inbentonville, just because it's
like sharp rocks and he wants tobe able to like lean his bike
over, yeah, um, so it reallydepends on the intended use and
kind of what you're trying toget out of it.
But you know, for that reasonthat Garo, at first it was very
much a trail tire and it's kindof like as it's kind of been

(41:44):
tried through the years, becausethat tire was launched in 2019.
You know, it's become somethingwhere, you know, xc trends have
then gotten more aggressive andlarger, so it actually aligned
better with this existingproduct in a way.
So it's interesting how thatstarts right.
It starts with a trend, butthen it kind of goes in terms of
longevity if the product hasmerit.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of
sense.
Man Like the, the trend getsyou the initial invitation and
then the performance gets youre-invited to the party.

I have one that I think was a
trend and it's I don't thinkit's in your lineup anymore, and
I I think because the trendwent away, which was the
Bambaloni Bamba.

So Bambaloni, yeah, so that was a
felt like tire actually, yeah,bambaloni literally means like
donut in Italian, which isawesome, yeah, and when we
launched that, we actuallyserved like Italian donuts at
Seattle classic one year.
It was super fun, nice.
But yeah, I mean, you, you know, we're just not.
Uh, we, we did some fat biketires because, again, it was, it
was a trend and it wassomething that I mean, listen,

(42:41):
fat bikes are still superpopular.
I'm not going to say that thattrend is over, yeah, but for us
it didn't align with,necessarily, like, our brand
goals and where we wanted totake it.
So, um, you know, we did it fora few years because we
partnered with some, some oems,whos, who, who needed it, and
you know that that was one thatthat we happened to not make
anymore.
But most of the tires that we'vedone that have been hits.
Obviously we've kept, I mean,you know, you look at something

(43:04):
like Barzo and Mezcal.
I mean, those tires are a fewyears old now, you know, and
they're still winning worldchampionships.
Both have won multiple worldchampionships.
So I mean, mean, um, you know,when you have those kind of like
accolades and really it'svalidation is what it comes down
to, right, and validation, sure, at the highest level, but it's
just validation that that tiredoes what it's supposed to do at

(43:25):
the highest level and this is akey thing.
Within the intended use, yeah,um, and then that consumer who
has a parallel, uh, and you knowintended use, maybe not quite
at the same levels of the world,you know a championship pro,
but they're, they're still goingto find like tremendous amount
of like I don't knowsatisfaction and and and goals,
you know, in that tire.

Yeah , we sell a lot more of the
trail.
Uh, I think I got that right.
Casing cause you just changedit not too long ago, so it's a
little different.
Your different casings, yeah,so like they're calling them
different things.

I never know how much of a change
structurally or if it's amarketing used to be like tnt
and now it's true, no that's awhile ago.

Okay , that changed a while ago, but
uh, they went from.
So, like, for instance, in thetires that I tend to ride the
most, they did the enduro casingand then the trail casing that
came out a few years ago, andduro was a just an added level
of protection, but theirstandard trail casing has the
kind of sidewall protection thatwe need here, and then they had
on the mezcal.

(44:25):
They had a strict xc I think xcrace and it was the thinnest
sidewall, so we didn't.
We actually only stocked two ofthose tires in the shop at a
time because they're not along-lasting tire in tucson, but
I sell them to people like ourracers that do leadville or
they'll do the barn burner up inflagstaff or something where we

(44:47):
know they're not going to be inheavy rock.
Yeah, in the trails that we havearound here, where it's just
super sharp volcanic, you needsome sidewall protection.
So the XC race casings aren'tas popular.

So Ken, maybe take us through your
casing yeah.
So a moment ago or maybe acouple of months ago, we talked
about the new XC race casing and60 TPI and how it deforms and
all that stuff.
Yeah, that again was launchedfull line this past week at Sea
Otter.
The peyote and mezcal came outin 2024 with that new 60 TPI XC

(45:23):
raised casing that completelyreplaces the bright tan old 120
casing that you're talking aboutthere.
That doesn't last very long inyour area because of the
volcanic stone.

Yeah , because it's just tear
resistance, right, that doesn'tlast very long in your area
because of the volcanic stone.
Yeah, cause it's just tearresistance, you know Right.

So , so that was a one 20 TPI
casing which, again, many otherbrands still use there, and
we're really the first brand totake 60 TPI to a premium world
cup and world championshipwinning XC race casing.
Okay, so it's funny, in 22 and23, uh, we won a few world

(45:58):
championships on the Mezcal inthat new casing when it was a
prototype.
We launched it in 24 and in 24,the Mezcal and peyote were used
to win the world seriesmarathon.
Overall.
So like, consider marathon,cross country, like world cup,
stuff has gotten gnarly.
And then you're doing themarathon version, which is

(46:18):
minimum 40 miles, yeah, right.
So like, if you have a tirefailure, it's really tough in a
race like that.
And so you're talking aboutLeadville and things like you
know longer events like thisfirst season out on these tires,
they won the overall title forthe series, um, so I think that
really spoke to all of thethings we talked about a moment

(46:38):
ago with that 60 TPI because,check this out, it's not just
faster because of the way itdeforms.
You then have 60 TPI versus one, 20.
So the core thickness is goingto be more, much more abrasion
resistant, right, but also it'sgrippier because, check this out
, when you make it flexible,you're not.
You know, typically, if you hada lightweight, flexible tire,

(47:00):
be like oh my god, is it gonnapinch?

yeah , yeah, and you're gonna cut the
thing when it when it foldsover.

Yeah , but because it's more robust,
yet more flexible, which, by theway, how do you do that from a
design?
It's like very crazy, usuallylike if it's more robust, it's
not gonna going to be flexible,right yeah?
But it's actually because ofhow the casing works.
With the tread cap as a unit,you're buying a tire.
You're not buying just thecasing or just the tread.
People forget that often yeah,but basically because it's more

(47:27):
flexible, that tread can conformto the terrain.
Whether you're going over, youknow, weird rocks or roots or
anything like that, it can moldaround that terrain and create
surface area grip, whereas astiffer tread will deflect and
actually not conform to thatterrain and not have that grip
while it's then not rolling asfast yeah so yeah, it's.

(47:51):
It's sort of like the magic uhsolution to all of that, so I
shouldn't again I shouldn't beso gun shy on the new 60 tpi
tires.

You shouldn't be.
That's something we should, Imean so I'm 165 pounds okay I
used to race elite leveldownhill.

Um , I'm pretty much a
cross-country nerd now, but likeI run 16 psi holy at 165 pounds
, oh my.

God , you just can't be like.
I think I'm having a heartattack at this moment, like
that's so low, oh, granted, Ihave an airliner, okay.

I have the airliner in the wheel.
Okay, Okay, so I'm not worriedabout bottoming out and stuff.
But that, and it's the fastestway to do it, and if you, if you
talk to people, pressures arecoming down with larger volume
cross-country tires that aremore armored, and then the use
of a liner in that systemtogether and we're the only tire

(48:48):
manufacturer that makes a liner, you know it works.
And that liner prevents burping, prevents pinch flatting.
If somehow you break a spokeright and like it pokes through
your rim tape and you have airloss, somehow it works as a run
flight.
You can get back to your car,your house or finish your race.
I mean, so it's pretty coolstuff.
Yeah, I mean I, I charge stuffon those, those new XC race

(49:10):
tires.
I think you should give it atry.

I think you'd be really surprised
I haven't even tried the newliner, I tried the um, the old
one, uh, the rounder one in mydownhill bike in my.
A short little story on on myvittoria liners is I ran a um
we're at south mountain inphoenix, which is a pretty
aggressive mountain, super harsh, uh terrain, and I was running
a vittoria front liner and akushcore rear and I'm just

(49:32):
testing them to see what I thinkon my race bike and that's
where we're practicing terrain.
And I was running a Vittoriafront liner and a Cushcore rear
and I'm just testing them to seewhat I think on my race bike
and that's where we'repracticing.
And right off the bat I got aflat on my front tire at the top
of the run and I'm with a groupof friends None of them are
competitive and my run with afront flat tire and the Vittoria

(49:55):
insert I was just as fast andstill passing my friends with
the flat tire coming down in thefront, in the front yeah, and
full-on high speed, like stilldoing it, and so I was like,
okay, this is awesome, I can'twait to run these at bootleg,
which is where we race, which isagain super sharp, volcanic,
really sharp, and the the onething that I didn't realize.

(50:15):
So I ran it and all practiceruns I had front and rear
vittoria and I was like lovingand it was no issues, no
problems, this I was just greatruns.
I was kind of excited.
There's a little bit of me thatwanted to run flat down on a
race, run and be like and showpeople that you could run in
flat and um, but I mean, Ididn't.
I'm not so competitive that Iwas trying to win.

(50:36):
I was like my my motto was justroll down the mountain just get
down, um, but I did get a flaton my rear tire and I was it
that the crappiest thinghappened the um the rear you had
a crush core.
You said no, so this I had putbecause of the performance in
the front at south mountain.
I had put a vittoria in the backand I was convinced that this

(50:58):
is the best combo for this kindof terrain, because I'm even if
I get a flat, I can roll down,you know, and and the Cush cores
I have carbon wheels and theCush cores you still felt that
impact of the rocks, and thoserocks are so hard.
You really had to go slow, andI wanted to be able to roll in
fast and um, but, throughpractice, didn't get a flat, and

(51:20):
then, in my race run, got aflat in my rear tire.
What happened, though, is thatwe were on a side slope, and, as
I was riding, I started asprint and my tire just rolled
off the rim and I was like shit.
So because, because, honestly,had that side slope not been
there and I've been on flatground, I think I would have
been fine.
And on all the South mountaintesting it was pretty flat

(51:42):
terrain.
There was no side slopes whereyou were really kind of
sidestepping a mountain, youknow, and you get this kind of
like sideward thrust of the rearwheel Every time you turn it.
It wants to move down themountain and the tire holds it
on the mountain.
Well, when the tire's flat, itjust it tries to de-debeat it,
which it did so so there's acouple things.

So you were running the old round
airliners yes, yeah, the olderones those like you'd kind of
like wrap around common to lagzip tie on that whole thing yeah
, yeah, and so they're not superb.

That was probably the big
differentiation between thatliner and the cush core at the
time, because the cush doorswere the nightmare to get on.
Like you know, they're superhard.
You have to have to use special, special tire levers and stuff
to to try and get them on andand they did a pretty good job
of holding your bead, but theydidn't run flat great, so so the

(52:31):
old round airliners are, um,basically phased out.

The ones you'd want to check out
now are Airliner ProtectDownhill and Airliner Protect
Enduro, and for that use theycome in a hoop now.
They fit a lot tighter but atthe same time they're easier to
install, which is great.
They have sort of like a Tcross section, that kind of keys
into your rim, but then alsokind of gives you that beadlock

(52:57):
and and sidewall stability.
The materials are alsodifferent now, which is great,
and so we make liners for crosscountry, trail, enduro, downhill
and e-bike, yeah and, andthey're all optimized kind of
shape and use.

What's the difference on the e-bike
one?

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SV (53:15):
There's a lot more of it, okay, you
know, um, yeah, so I mean, Idon't know about you, but you
know, like I said, I'm 165pounds.
So, like when I ride an e-bike,I just like lean back and
manual stuff, I'm just like Ipack into stuff.
You know what I mean and like.
So it's funny because, like youknow, say like I'd rather get xc
hardtail and I'm like floatingand popping engine and
everything.
I got an e-bike, I just plowand it's like you know.

(53:38):
So I mean, a lot of people dothat because of the weight of
the e-bike.
But you know, the thing aboutit is is that changing a flat on
e-bike is a pain.
Yeah, so you don't want to dealwith that ever.
So you know, we made thisairliner so that it withstands.
It's like a massive like bottomout bumper ramp up, feel right,
so it displaces air volume asthat tire compresses.

(54:00):
Uh, there's a reallyprogressive feel and uh, I mean,
I challenge you to get a flatwith one of those.

To be honest, so if I want to race
my downhill bike, I got a newum, that's not the new one, but
I got the no, no, it's actuallywell, the firebirds.
My Enduro bike, I got a Phoenixum which is full 29 and it's 38
pounds for my downhill bike,which is pretty light, and, uh,

(54:27):
I'm 200 pounds.
So am I better off on a bigger,like a Enduro, or like the
downhill or the e-bike version,or is the lighter version, like
I?
I still haven't quite figuredout what the sweet spot is on
liners, because I like them indifferent versions.
I haven't quite gotten to whereI'm using them to tune the air

(54:51):
volume, like a lot of people.
Um, for me, I was protecting myrims that that was really the
main thing, sure, but with, like, those cush cores they weren't
actually protecting.
They were not chipping my rims,but they were.
I was still getting cuts withthem, Sure, and so so I guess
the answer is this.

I mean, a liner is a piece of a
system.
Yeah.
And you have to take the systemapproach and we're huge at Vitt
to take the system approach.
Um, and we're huge at vittoriaon the system approach.
So you know, you're puttingliners on your downhill bike,
meaning that you should havedownhill tires as a part of your
downhill system.
Okay, with your downhill liners, right.

(55:31):
So, um, the liner is, uh, onthe airliner protect downhill is
going to be very robust.
It's going to be very much, youknow about bottom-up protection
.
The tire is going to do a lotof the work on a downhill bike
because it's going to have amuch more robust construction.
You know, if you were to putthat liner on, say, like a super
you know the old XC race thatwe talked about, the bright

(55:52):
sandals that we're phasing out,right it would be like a really
wonky combination because you'dhave like a bottom-up bumper on
like a super soft tire, right.
Or vice versa, if you took likean airliner light XC and put
that in a downhill tire which,incidentally, when Pinkbike
tested it they did that, which Iwas like what the hell?
But like anyway it was good inthat they tested a very extreme
test of the airliner light inthat way, tested a very extreme

(56:12):
test of the airliner light inthat way.
But yeah, I mean, you know, itactually showed that our
airliner light was couldwithstand that sort of a thing,
which.
I thought, was, in the end, agreat, a great, you know,
validation, to be honest, yeah,you know, yeah, like you'd want
to make sure that your tire andyour liner match in that system.
Therefore, you know, I would,on your, your downhill bike, go

(56:35):
with the airliner protectdownhill.
Okay, um, if you wanted a moreprogressive feel where you're
trying to tune air volume andyou want that liner to engage
when with your tire, as yourtire uh, compresses, and you
want that to happen sooner,uh-huh, um, you certainly could
try, you know, uh, the enduro orthe, the e-bike version, and

(56:58):
see how that feels.
Yeah, um, but you know, I mean,when you go outside of intended
use, it's inherently anexperiment yeah, yeah, I'm
usually going lightweightbecause I'm pretty easy on my
wheels.

Uh , I rarely like.
I've been riding carbon ondownhill bikes for a long time
and have not hurt them, eventhough I've come in flat a few
times.
Uh, sure, granted, my wheelsare super robot, they're the
reynolds bernard kerr, sothey're overbuilt, you know.
Sure, stupid, stupid, toughwheels, but uh, but yeah, I want
the protection and I want to beable to run in flat.

(57:30):
Those are the two main thingsthat I'm usually looking for um
I don't.
actually, because of my size Idon't tend to run like a lot.
Everybody got into this realthing with tubeless when it came
out like I got to run thelowest possible pressure and I
was resistant to that becauseone what we noticed was if you
go from a tube to a tubeless,everybody was bragging about how

(57:54):
low a pressure they could go,but we kept telling them that
you really want the same kind ofcushion it's just you're going
to have more air volume andtubeless, so it'll be a lower
psi because there's more volumeof air and whereas in a tube you
have the tube taking up spaceand you actually have a higher,
a lower volume.

(58:14):
So you have to run a higher psi.
Is that right?
I think I got that right.

It's always been hard to explain
yeah, yeah, yeah and so, but youdon't want a flat tire.

They would misinterpret that you're
running lower pressure asmeaning you had like that bigger
contact patch or like thesquirmierness, and I'm like no,
the the cushion needs to beabout the same as it was with
the tube.

So yeah, I mean, at the end of the
day you just need to tune yoursystem and with tubeless you
typically can run lower thanwith a tube because you're not
worrying about pinch, flatting asuper thin inner tube.
You'd have to actually pinchthrough the tire itself to then
get a flat on an impact.
And so does it happen.
Sure, you know, but at the sametime you know it's it's much

(58:58):
easier to pinch an energy thanit is to pinch through a tire.
You know you can run lower withtubeless, but my whole thing is
just cause you can, does it meanit's better?
It's like anything we can make330 TPI mountain bike tires, but
would they be better?
We haven't found that to be thecase so far, so we don't, you
know.
So yeah, with air pressure,it's all about tuning.

(59:20):
You do want to make sure thatyou're making use of your full
contact patch.
Typically, that means that youhave a good amount of
deformation when you're fullyloaded in a corner or, you know,
in that sort of a scenariowhere you need that to engage.
So yeah, I mean, there's nohard and fast rule, and that's
kind of.
The beauty of this is that it'sstill like individual and and

(59:41):
also you know a lot about yourriding style.
You know, yeah, if you're, ifyou're popping off stuff and
landing sideways off a whip,you're going to have a different
set of circumstances.

You know what I mean and go through
wheels a lot faster, which Idon't.

I ride really conservative.

I just go straight fast.

That's it very little flash so, ken,
can I ask you like a totallyunfair question, you guys, I
mean, I think you're going I'mgoing to.
You're talking about contactpacks.
There's a lot of buzz aroundwhat schwalbe's doing with their
radial tires, sure?
What are your thoughts on that,and is that something that
vittoria might be looking at?

Ken Avery (Vittoria, S (01:00:20):
vittoria has already made radials, and
we decided to stop makingradials a long time ago, in fact
, um we used to have a tirecalled a diamante radial.
You know I don't want to speakuh too much on 12 days product,
but based on their media kit forthat, I think they actually
even admit that it's not like alike a traditional radial.
And what I mean by that is ifyou go to, like, say, wikipedia

(01:00:41):
and you look up radial tireconstruction, you'll see that
the strands typically goperpendicular to the rotation
and the idea behind that is sortof, as they roll, say, over
like a square edge of something,it's sort of like inchworms
over it, right, so you're notsort of like bouncing off of the
thread.
If the thread was was sort of,you know, in line with the

(01:01:04):
rotation, which would then beperpendicular to the impact,
right, like, say, rolling up acurb or something like that.
Yeah, so that is to say, mosttires use what's called bias ply
.
Again, there's a white paper onthis on the Vittoriacom site.
Bias ply means in a traditionalsense that the chords oppose
each other roughly 45 degrees.
Now if you change that uh anglefrom 45 degrees to say, I don't

(01:01:30):
know, 30 ish, you could startclaiming that it's more like a
radial gotcha.
But a traditional radial wouldbe pretty much closer to zero or
10 degrees, something like thatin terms of, yeah, that chord
direction.
With regard to opposing thedirection of rotation of the
tire, yeah, it's been donebefore.

(01:01:52):
They've done a tremendousamount of communication on this
and I commend them for that.
In a bicycle tire, it'sinherently so flexible because
it's so thin.
As I said, we've previouslymade radials and what we found
was that the the constructiondidn't last very long because
that you hit your brakes and itkind of inchworms and collapses

(01:02:12):
and it creates an excessiveamount of wear and uh, in fact,
and then the grip and therolling wasn't improved in our
in our testing, which is why wedon't make them.
We basically kind of solvedthat puzzle another way with
some of the other things that wespoke about earlier Using
silica with graphene in thecompound and then using, of

(01:02:34):
course, different cords andmaterials.
We've been able to optimizeperformance that way.

Josh Anderson (Magellan) (01:02:41):
So we've got a trend going on.
We'll see if the performanceholds.

Dane Higgins (Suspension Gur (01:02:46):
Oh so one last thing and I'm going
to kick myself for bringingthis up because I think it's
stupid and I don't think itshould be brought up, but I'm
still going to bring it upbecause it happened.
What?
Is it 32 inch rims, is thatsure?

Is that a thing Is?

Dane Higgins (Suspension G (01:03:01):
that going to be a thing and I would
love it if you said no.
But I want you to be honest.
I never say never.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Pr (01:03:08):
The bike industry is famous for
taking things further andfurther and further and further,
sometimes past the point ofeffectiveness, I would say plus.
Tires are a phenomenal versionof that, uh, where people said
oh, bigger, bigger, bigger,bigger, bigger, whoa, and then,
they pulled it back.

(01:03:28):
Yeah, uh, you know what I mean.
So you know, and that that's aprime example of a trend and a
versus longevity and and youknow, there there was a certain
other brand that really pushedthat hard too, and and you know
that that was something.
Um, there were claims made andand I don't even know if they
exist anymore.
If I'm honest, our, our 32, isgoing to be a thing.
I think if you're super tall,it could be a thing.

(01:03:50):
Um, I don't think that I mean29 or took years to get down to
a place where you could make asize, small, 29er that was
viable.
Yeah, you know, much less thanextra small.
Yeah.
And 32, you know it's going tobe tough.
Even I ride a medium ally BC40.

(01:04:14):
So it's like yikes.
I probably I don't know thatI'm big enough to really handle
a 32.
I think in gravel it could be athing.
I think in in cross countryperhaps it could be a thing I
mean, who knows Like somebody'sgoing to come out with a 32
downhill bike next year and it'sgoing to be, like.

(01:04:34):
Oh no, I mean, it'll happen.

Oh , there's not a gearbox and a
belt drive too happen.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Pro (01:04:43):
Oh , there's a gearbox and a belt
drive too, for sure, nothingwill surprise me, yeah, um, I'm
sure there will be.

You know data and and and the data
will tell the tale.
But as of right now, you're not.
You're not tooling up to startmaking a bunch of uh 32s then I
mean, I can't tell you if we arethat changes your whole answer
there have you heard of?

have you heard of faction bike
studio?
Yeah, okay yeah, we did acouple podcasts with them.
So I kind of I I'm getting kickout of talking to all these
industry and finding out howmuch a little bit of secretness
is out there right, it's waymore, uh, secretive than you'd
know, you know.
So it's it's, it's I, I, Ireally I get a kick out of it,

(01:05:24):
yeah that's cool, but hey, ken,maybe one final question for you
.

What is the tire or tread maybe just
the tread that um is notperforming like you guys thought
it would, and people should gocheck out oh, yeah, under
Underrated.

Is that there you go?
Yeah, underrated.

And I.
It's weird that we've spokenabout this a few times on the
show, but I would honestly say,agaro, hear me out on this, okay
.
So if you just go up in ourspectrum of off-road tires, you
know from when you when you gofrom gravel into cross country.
The first one is Torino,multiple-time world championship
gravel tire.

(01:06:05):
It won European championshipsin cross-country.
One step up from there you gotPeyote Cool that just won the
cross-country marathon WorldSeries overall.
Mezcal has won God I don't evenknow how many world
championships at this point Halfa dozen world championships

(01:06:27):
across short track,cross-country and and now it's
using gravel crazy.
One step up, barzo, multipletime world cross country
champion sierra is a you knownewer tire.
It's not really a competitiontire in that it, you know down
country isn't a competition perse.
But I mean that that's that gota gear of the year award, great
.
And then you go to a Garo andpeople are like it's so funny,
everybody loves that tire.
Who rides it?
Yeah, I don't know if it'sbecause it's not a competition

(01:06:50):
type tire where you know trailyou don't go like you're not
going to go like your trail raceright, like it's like a trail,
it's like just you go mountainbiking Right, but in terms of
like a tire that just kind ofworks everywhere and rolls fast
and lasts a long time, it's likereally hard to beat.
You know, from there it goes upinto like Martello Mazda, blah,
blah, blah, yeah.
And the cool thing about thatAgaro is the trends stay in the

(01:07:14):
same, but watch this space.
Later this year, okay, we gotsome, some kind of news about
that category coming out, whichis going to be pretty cool, but
I think personally that's themost underrated tire in our
off-road category.
You know, I mean again Martello, like you know, best overall
rear end enduro tire on PinkbikeMazda, I mean five-star reviews

(01:07:39):
like crazy if you Google thattire, yeah, and in the middle of
there is that Agaro and it'sjust this humble workhorse of a
do-everything mountain bike tire.

Yeah , it's the tire that I would
tell people all the time you canride on Mount Lemmon, which is
aggressive, descending.

Ken Avery (Vittoria, SVP Pro (01:07:56):
Or downhill.

Dane Higgins (Suspension Gu (01:07:56):
And then you can go out to Honeybee
, which is like they're supertame, smooth, kitty litter, you
know, um, cross country, crosscountry, and it just does great
on both.
You know we don't have loamhere, so you don't need huge
knobs to to reach down into thesoil and, uh, those knobs
support in corners and they'refast and you still feel super

(01:08:19):
confident when you're on thechunk.
So, yeah, it's a, it's.
It's probably my favoriteall-around tire.

On the big bikes I do go bigger just
because we're just hitting stuffso hard did you notice that we
gave ken his last question andhe managed to sneak in the whole
product?

yeah , that was very, that was
superly.
It's almost like you've donethis before.
Yeah, don't act like we didn'tnotice.
Yeah, so we totally get that.

Well, Ken, thank you so much, man.
You got any final thoughts forour listeners?

Man , I'm just so grateful for what
you guys do.
It's so cool to you, know.
I mean, there's an old sayingthe only thing that mountain
bikers do more than mountainbike is talk about it yeah, oh
my god, that's so true, you knowuh, I think, um, your show is
so great I'm grateful to be on,you know, on the early end of
things and and hopefully we stayin touch.
You can do this again no, it'sall good.

All right, it's all good.

Yeah , I think this will be somewhere
around episode 100 yeah, I mean, but he's right though, like
when I we just talked to jessthe maker and, uh, getting of an
idea.
She's only been doing that forthree years, you know, and so
it's.
It's kind of crazy, but you're,you're right, though I, I think
I, I definitely talk more thanI ride.

You and me both man.
Thanks a lot Ken Nice.
Thanks a lot, ken Thanks.

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100 - Beyond Marketing: Vittoria’s Approach to Mountain Bike Tire Design & Manufacturing (Guest: Ken Avery, SVP Product Development)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}100 - Beyond Marketing: Vittoria’s Approach to Mountain Bike Tire Design & Manufacturing (Guest: Ken Avery, SVP Product Development)