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Crossing the Pacific!

Alex — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:20:13 +0000

Surprisingly for the off season, January 2012 has been one of our best months yet for sales, buoyed in part by an exciting new development within our company: overseas distribution. We have agreed with a Japanese firm, Groovy International, that they should be our first distributor outside the USA, bringing in our mountain bike components for sale to the burgeoning Japanese MTB market. We’re excited to bring our wheels to a whole new biking community, and to be involved with an excellent company to help us make our mark among Japanese cyclists.

Headed by former Japanese national Four-cross champion, Hiroshi Shirakura, Groovy International specializes in the importing and distribution of boutique American mountain bike parts like ours. Situated in the town of Joetsu, Niigata prefecture on Japan’s west coast, the firm occupies a favorable a mountain biking area. Sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, Groovy International is close to the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, and all that region’s terrain, conducive to both skiing and world-class mountain biking. It is a natural situation for them, therefore, to supply the growing Japanese mountain bike market with high-quality parts.

We are confident that we’ve found an excellent match overseas, and look forward to Japanese riders and racers ripping it up with our wheels!

Dealer of the Month: Laguna Beach Cyclery

Alex — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:39:50 +0000

When we opened in 2009 and were searching for shops to help us find our footing, we were lucky enough to find ourselves involved with one of the coolest shops in Southern California: Laguna Beach Cyclery in Laguna Beach, CA. That summer, they were our very first dealer, and were responsible for getting Hermes Sport production wheelset #1 into the hands of a delighted customer. Since then, they have been our mainstay dealer in Orange County, and have continued to be a top provider for our new products. As such, now that we have our own company blog, it’s only fitting that they be the first dealer we profile.

From the outside, right off Pacific Coast Highway, the shop cuts an unassuming but charming presence against the wonderful backdrop of Laguna Beach. Built inside an old barn, and with a few beach cruisers outside, the shop doesn’t give much hint of the wonders within until you enter; bikes from Pinarello, Time, Lynskey, Ibis, Santa Cruz and others. Make no mistake, these guys definitely know how to deliver the goods. Owner/operator Patrick Fetzer, with his distinctive dreadlocked coiffure, has seen the shop become a major institution in the town and beyond, with their rasta-colored shop kits appearing in races throughout California. We’re proud to begin our third year of association with this fantastic shop, and wish them continued good luck.

Next time you’re in the area and in need of a fine bicycle in general, or Hermes Sport wheels in particular, pop in and tell them we sent you! Further contact details can be found in the “Where To Buy” section of our site.

Happy trails!

Firefly Bicycles and Hermes Sport

Alex — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:39:30 +0000

We take pride in our connections to small framebuilders and bike companies across the US, and with our new relationship with Firefly Bicycles, we have good reason to be proud. Formed last year by former employees of Independent Fabrications, Firefly Bicycles quickly established a reputation for themselves as one of the country’s most exciting new framebuilders. Definitely people we wanted to be involved with! Based in the Boston area, they specialize in custom-made, stainless steel and titanium frames for just about any application imaginable. Among their formidable talents, they maintain a unique expertise in metal finishing, which enables them to make anodized titanium frames that look completely unlike anything else rolling today. Beyond that, they produce an excellent line of handlebars, stems and seatposts.

We have been fortunate to associate ourselves with this fount of new energy in the handmade bicycle segment. In keeping with that handmade, haute-couture spirit of their frames, we are pleased to announce that our own Ritual GG wheelsets are available as stock equipment on all Firefly bikes. With Tune hubs that can be colored to match any custom frame, and performance to spare, they posit themselves as the best possible fit for Firefly’s top quality, high-performance machines. Should you find yourself desiring a fine, custom made American bike, we wholeheartedly recommend Firefly Bicycles with Hermes Sport wheels. Have a look at www.fireflybicycles.com!

Hermes Sport – MTB Zero-Hour

Alex — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:43:42 +0000

With the new year and cyclocross season winding down, it’s almost time for the 2012 mountain bike season to begin here in the Southwest. This is a particular exciting time for us, as our new ODB carbon MTB wheelset, so widely loved among testers and industry audiences at Interbike, will at last be getting to do what it was made to do: to provide racers and enthusiasts’ bikes with a new level of speed and performance. We are also one of the few manufacturers to offer a carbon tubular MTB rim, for those seeking the very zenith of off-road traction and ride quality.

Our ambassadors for this exciting new product range are San Diego’s Rodder Racing/Geekhouse team. As 12/24 hour racing specialists, they’ll have plenty of saddle time to spread the word of our products far and wide by personal experience. We wish them the best of luck! Look for us at the 2012 Kenda Cup racing series, offering free wheel truing services on-site! We are, as in multisport, looking to expand our sponsorship portfolio specifically in the MTB arena for 2012. Are you involved with a great XC racing team, or are just a talented individual? Send all pertinent info to contact@hermes-sport.com.

Hermes Sport and San Diego

Alex — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:55:02 +0000

We’re very fortunate to be continuing to do business in the San Diego area for 2012. Our firm was founded in Los Angeles, and after a year and a half of doing business there, it became apparent that pastures were just a bit greener further south. The decision to come down south has paid great dividends. In our efforts to ingratiate ourselves into the cycling community here, we’ve met some awesome riders and shops, and savored some of the best scenery Southern California has to offer.

It isn’t just surf, sun and company which has greeted us down here, either. San Diego has long been a hotbed of the cycling industry, with many illustrious names starting and continuing to do business here. This has left us with a great reservoir of expertise and talent, which has helped us have our best ever year in 2011, and promises to continue the upward trend through 2012. So, with the new year upon us, we at Hermes Sport would like to celebrate all that this town has given to our business, and also the other places whose patronage has made us what we are today. We’re here for the long haul!

Rider Profile: Peter

Alex — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:18:51 +0000

At the end of 2010, we were making our first steps into Northern California, and clearly we needed something, or in this case someone, to close the legitimacy gap between our products and those of our competitors in the area. Enter Peter of the Third Pillar racing team. Perhaps the sort of rider which causes the most lost sleep among wheelbuilders, Peter is a 200+ pound sprinter with an appetite for crit racing, who wanted Hermes Sport wheels and promised to abuse them. He ended up with two sets: a specially-built Aerodynamic wheelset with red hubs and decals, and a super-deep version of the same model built to track hubs to use at the Hellyer velodrome.

Something must have been going right, because after a season of heinous abuse, courtesy of his merciless, 2000+ watt power output, all he could do was to sing the continued praises of our product. His confidence helped us position the Aerodynamic wheel as the weapon of choice for the sorts of riders who aspire to be a Mario Cipollini or an Erik Zabel; the kind of wheel that when there’s a bunch sprint, won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. For all the in-house use and abuse our wheels receive, it’s still a great feeling here seeing the wheels we built with our own two hands not only endure, but excel under the nastiest of conditions. Wishing Peter and all Hermes Sport racers a fantastic 2012 racing season!

Socal Crit Season 2012: Ontario #1

Alex — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:31:55 +0000

If you’re reading this in an area perhaps not so fortunate with regards to weather as Southern California, this may come off as gloating, but we’re here and we might as well make the most of things. If one is to observe the site of our local USA Cycling conference, the SCNCA (scnca.com), you will see that the first Ontario Criterium is right around the corner, January 15^th. Thus is brought to an end the brief off-season which we enjoy, from about September to now.

These races, famous (infamous?) for their 6-corner layout, and occasional bike handling misadventures have long been an important part of our company. Ontario is the traditional testing ground of our road wheels. The Aerodynamic, the Levitator and the Excellence all had their first acid test here. They have, in the past, provided us with a great opportunity to both subject our wheels to grievous abuse, and do so in front of a large local audience. 2012 promises to be no exception.

Why this new racing season is important for us in particular is that it is the debut of a new team under our sponsorship: Las Vegas’ Chamois Butt’r team. One of the fastest masters’ teams in the southwest, this team has taken up Hermes Sport wheelsets as their product of choice for criterium dominance. Under the leadership of former Carrera Jeans racer and Italian masters national champion, Roberto Pascani, the 2012 Chamois Butt’r promises to be a real scorcher, and a fantastic start to our involvement in masters’ racing.

Super Spokes

Alex — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:11:31 +0000

Spokes don’t often occur to people as being particularly exciting parts of a bicycle; unless special interest is paid, one can be forgiven for thinking that they’re all basically the same and coalesce themselves out of thin air. However, when it comes to the Superspokes our Ritual GG wheelset uses, it becomes apparent that some animals are more equal than others. Custom-produced by Sapim for Tune, these spokes are really something special. Double-butted 15-gauge wire and a special drawing profile give these spokes both phenomenal tension capacity and super-light weight while also having an excellent fatigue life. Tune reports a 20% increase in both fatigue life and a 20% decrease in weight over Sapim’s next-lightest spoke, the CX-Ray. The spokes were used as stock equipment last year on the bikes of the German national DH mountain bike team to establish their bona fides, which they did with flying colors.

All of these attributes lend themselves to the production of high-end, high-performance wheels, and were a natural fit for our new high-end alloy clincher last summer. We see them as being no small part of the Ritual GG’s sudden success, enabling it to be both lighter, stiffer and more resilient than any other wheel in its class. Currently, our number-one online source for Ritual GG wheels is Western Bike Works in Portland, OR. If the Ritual GG wheels interest you, mosey on over to our “Where To Buy” page and have a look!

The Disc Brake Revolution

Alex — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:08:39 +0000

With the recent revelation of Sram’s new hydraulic road bike gruppo, featuring disc brakes, to be released this summer, a wave of new energy has shot through the bicycle world. Like the introduction of Shimano’s DI2 electronic shifting system a few years ago, disc brakes will likely become de rigeur equpiment on all road bikes, building on their recent popularity in cyclocross. This development places new demands on all sorts of bicycle components, including wheels.

The benefits of hydraulic disc brakes on road bikes are obvious to anyone who has used them off-road; improved power and modulation, and no more concerns about heat-induced brake fade in carbon rims. In practice, this will mean that mountain descents among professional racers, amateurs and enthusiasts alike will soon increase dramatically in speed, and safety as well.

This new development is a source of both excitement and apprehension in the bicycle business. Disc brakes mean lots of new products, or adaptations to existing ones to deal with provisions for mounting disc calipers and rotors, as well as the new stresses associated with these brakes. Frames, forks, brakes, levers, and wheels are all affected. We welcome this challenge, and the opportunity to help lead the way in setting the standard for on-road disc brake performance in a wheelset.

With this in mind, we’re fortunate for our association with the good guys at Tune. Through their cooperation, we are pleased to announce that all of our Premier Line wheels are already able to be ordered as disc-compatible. Even better, the cost premium of the disc brake option is a palatable $40 for both the Ritual GG and Excellence models, and the weight penalty is kept to an absolute minimum thanks to the already spritely weights of Tune’s excellent disc brake hubs. Tried and true on the ODB GG wheelset, Tune is more than equipped to meet the challenge of the most discerning road racing daredevil.

The German Connection

Alex — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:00:24 +0000

Hermes Sport is now entering its third year of operation, making us still young among our competitors. Our progress has advanced beyond our years through our association with one of the world’s oldest, most respected names in high-performance hubs: Buggingen, Germany’s Tune. Located just east of the Rhine, 15 minutes south of Freiburg at the edge of the Black Forest, this pastoral alpine idyll conceals a small factory, where some of the world’s finest hubs and other CNC-machined goodies are made.

Tune was the brainchild of Uli Fahl, a German MTB enthusiast-turned-inventor, who founded the firm in 1989. In the 1990s, they provided a German answer to the American CNC parts craze, providing fantastically light, gaudily colored hubs and other parts the the European market. However, as their US contemporaries began to flounder at the end of that decade, Tune expanded and continued to refine their product range. Entering into their 23^rd year of hubmaking and wheelbuilding expertise, their contribution to the success of our own products is something we cannot understate, and it is our pleasure to continue to collaborate with them in the new year.

We remain one of the US’ only specialists in this excellent line of hubs, and if you’d like to see the difference for yourself, drop us a line!