I think Hope probably know this would be a bit of a pointless product in any other market, functionally it won’t be in anyway “Better” than Shimano/SRAM/FSA/etc equivalents and the economies of scale thing is unlikely to ever tip balance in favour of nibbling a few cranks a day out of billets Vs forging hundreds of the buggers…
They sell items like this on a couple of points, exclusivity/plain old cost (a bit of a vanity purchase?) people who are into bikes will know how much you’ve spent on blingy cranks, Britishness this is of value to some people… Its not a bad business model, they’ll sell every one they make, limited supply and a highy RRP make for an aspirational product…
I can see hope expanding further into the future – a full groupset maybe?
You Can? Considering it took them 4~5 years to go through designing, prototyping and testing their 9t sprocket based cassettes (a really good idea TBH), only to end up dropping the product and jump on the big top sprocket bandwagon with everyone else, I’d suggest Hope’s design to development cycle is simply too slow for them to ever approach competitiveness in the drivetrain market, it’s still mostly the territory of the two big S’s…
i thought small companies (that also do production in house) had incredibly fast R&D
There’s no rule that says they have to do “Fast R&D”…
Hope probably need to stick to the “Slow burner” products, parts that don’t require rapid development and subsequent re-development; hubs, brakes, chainrings, bottom brackets these things don’t really need to change much year on year. Their hoops were a good move, people like buying a complete package not having to source/spec parts and find a builder… But their lights are a lost gamble IMO, lovely (expensive) housings but in a market where the electronics inside can change rapidly (new awesome emitter every 8-12 months) and the far east/importers are growing their share of the market fast, hope were a poor fit in that segment…
All IMO of course…