Like a teenager unable to distance themselves from embarrassing childhood stories at a family reunion, the memories of Hunt’s early days as a purveyor of open mould carbon wheels have likewise hung around.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that setup as a business model – the wave of affordable carbon wheelsets which have come to market since Hunt’s founding in 2015 was instrumental in forcing the manufacturers of the best road bike wheels to slash their prices in response.
But it does smart a bit when that is what’s remembered – rather than the subsequent years of research and development: shuttling back and forth to the GST Windkanal, in Immenstaad, Germany; the regular ‘white paper’ releases; and some extremely cool new kit at their headquarters in the South of England.
Hunt remains a tightly-knit and modestly-sized company. They’re still based at the very same industrial estate in which they started up eight years ago – though now they’ve spread out across most of the complex, beyond the small office and warehouse they started with.
But that can play to Hunt’s advantage. Smaller and more nimble, they chase opportunities wherever they present themselves – most recently that manifested in a European grant, which has equipped the Sussex-based brand with some game-changing tech.
But I’ll get onto that second, first let’s start with pretty much the polar opposite: an insight into the market for rim brake wheels – oh yes.
Spares and rim brakes
(Image credit: Roo Fowler)
It didn’t happen suddenly, there’s been no fanfare heralding the discarding – the purging – of rim-brake wheels from the model lines of the big manufacturers. Nevertheless, the the end result isn’t much different.
Interestingly, this seems to have worked out well for Hunt. Although the share of rim brake wheels it sells has likewise decreased, the run-off has been much slower than they anticipated and rim brake sales still make up a sizeable portion of their turnover.
Demand has dropped from where it was – but so to has the broader supply, which has balanced things out. “As long as people are still wanting to buy them, we’ll keep making them,” is the sentiment at Hunt – although, like the wider industry, the company’s primary research and development is on disc brake models.
(Image credit: Roo Fowler)
Regardless, the team at Hunt aren’t disposed to forget where they came from when pushing ahead: they keep spares for every product they’ve ever produced – which is made easier by their…