Race Face to close?

Author: | 12 March 2011 | 43

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Rumours are rife on the super-internet-highway that the iconic Canadian manufacturer Race Face which was a global leader in the design, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of high performance cycling components and apparel is to close after 18 years of producing some of the sweetest kit going.

Tyler Morland,PR and media manager for all things MTB at SRAM, RockShox, AVID and Truvativ said this on his Twitter “Rumour has it that Race Face shut its doors yesterday”

WhistlerMTB on Twitter “Rumors confirmed. Race Face is closing their doors.”

John P, a Race Face employeee posted this comment over on RideMonkey:

“…we’ve been told the company is going to be liquidated, and 90% of us are unemployed as of next week. They’ll keep a few people on to assist with the liquidation…”

Sad news indeed for Race Face, we’ll bring you more news when we get it.

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43 Responses to “Race Face to close?”

  1. Tough times. RaceFace was some of the best kit ever.

  2. anonymous internet asscheeks
    March 12th, 2011 at 9:50 am

    Little early for an April fools isn’t it? Damn… If it is true, there’d best be a buyout from somewhere to re-float the company. They’ve produced some amazing kit over the years!

  3. unbelievable – all of my bikes have some race face products on them. Bad times

  4. Oh no thats terrible news race face is an iconic brand surely someone must be interested in buying and saving the brand.
    :(

  5. That sucks! I feel for all those who have lost their jobs.I hope somebody can stump up the cash and save them! They make some of the best components around!

  6. word on the street is shimano buyout…

  7. Sad times!

  8. That is probably the biggest loss to the industry of our sport ever,terrible news indeed. :(

  9. Let´s have a hat going `round and make it a reader-owned company! Seriously though, I feel sorry for the guys losing their jobs (and on such short notice, too). If Shimano or SRAM should make the buyout, I hope they re-employ the same people and not just use the brand.

  10. I guess every once in a while a thing like this happens. It must be bad management or the times that got harder and harder for some companies, who knows? Since everybody is reminscing about all good things Race Face, I can’t help but write down a little list of my own.

    First of all, Race Face has a legendary fame and on of the best names in the industry. More than sure they will survive one way or the other and it’s pretty logic that the employees will as well. It happened to other companies and they got back in the game; in the end who cares so much about who’s the owner? The second thing that comes to mind is Race Face promoting freeride, which, at the time, was something fresh and breaking away from certain values. It doesn’t matter if you like hucksters or not, that was a good thing for the growth and evolution of the sport. Think about Kranked and Disorder (not my favourite two series of films, by the way); Race Face supported those. Think about the Ultimate Freeride Challenge and what athlete it boosted; Race Face did it. So BIG UPS to Race Face! On the other hand, I can’t forget the most ugly graphics on the overbuilt and overrated Diabolus series, the crappy bearings in the X-Type bottom brackets (Canadian quality my ass!), the overdose of image in the low-end series of a few years back (Prodigy etc.) or maybe the slippery clamping on Next Carbon seatpost (ouch!).

    Either way I put it, Race Face is a name that belongs to mountainbiking by definition and they will stay here some way. XY seatpost, Real Seal headset, Air Alloy riser, Diabolus stem, Evolve seatpost, Turbine LP cranks, Good ‘N Evil grips: they are all still great and surviving on my bikes.

    Thank you Race Face; you’ll come around!
    Mx

  11. I really hope there’ll be no Shimano buyout or something like what GT and, more recently, Ritchey did to Syncros…

  12. Shit happens for real ! This is a HUGE loss for the industry and pretty much every rider around. I guess that everyone owned RaceFace components at one time or another !!

  13. [...] Tyler Morland,PR and media manager for all things MTB   …  Details [...]

  14. AmplusTarenBrasil
    March 12th, 2011 at 3:07 pm

    Sad news..
    I really like my Diabollous cranks, overbuilt and all its the strongest i use in 20 years off dh/fr/am.
    Hope they come up again fast as a tsunami..

  15. I cannot believe this, my respond stem is absolutely quality. A truly sad day for mountain biking.

  16. Very sad news, but I’d like to see the whole picture before jumping to any conclusions about why this has happened – there must be more to it than just bad management.
    Barring a few slips, their products have been consistently sound and evolutionary. Plus they are largely responsible for bringing colour back into Mountainbiking (red, blue & gold don’t count!).
    Credit where it’s due, although their range did seem to be getting pretty huge for a relatively small company, which had me wondering..

  17. I hate to hate during this love fest, but my experience with Race Face goes like this. I bought the cranks because they were cool and I liked that they supported free riding. They broke. So did the next four pairs. Finally, in desperation, I asked the warranty guy for anything else he could give me. I got a t-shirt and a bottom bracket which broke on the first ride. I’m suprised that they lasted so long given that they seemed all image and no quality.

  18. Omg I can’t living with out raceface cos I using crank set load time and handel bar too any they just great, I don’t other brand cos their thing almos same as other company and not rely able !

  19. So if I understand this right you’re called Big Bird and you keep breaking cranks that no one else has an issue with, yes? Then you broke a bb on the first ride?
    Weight and limit are two words that spring to mind – I’d be impressed you even got a reply from warranty let alone some free stuff!!

  20. Ha ha ha Borris has hit the nail on the head I reckon. Ha ha ha.

    Big birds either living in a ‘i’m soooo hardcore’ fantasy world where he tries to impress people with his hardcore antics or he’s 22stone. Ha ha ha

  21. Wow thats some major news man , and Big Bird I had some similar experiences with RF cranks back in 2000-2002 , went from prodigys which failed on me , up to what ever the next best models were and then got some turbines which failed like the rest , this was hard tail riding and I treated them how I would expect top end cranks to be treated.

    Granted their later stuff is apparently a lot better but all of my experiences were bad , still feel gutted they have left us though as they have been around for donkeys years and were a major player , I just hope some one takes over the brand

  22. Like many I will not miss their rather random approach to product design and testing. However they seemed to have a great rider support network and did a lot to build up the northshore scene by all accounts.
    Shimano have been putting a lot of effort into their Pro brand recently, not sure what they would gain from a buyout unless it’s name only.

  23. I do think that RaceFace were/are honourable in trying to keep things being made in Canada, but it’s so difficult to compete against Asian manufactured goods. Fact of life. If Race Face’s products were head and shoulders above others then they might survive, but they aren’t. They’re good, but £ 4 £ they can’t compare. 18 years is still something to be proud of though…..

  24. CRC just bought the lot name and all….RaceFAce frames out soon!!

  25. I’m really sad about this, had a lot of raceface stuff ova the years and nothing has eva let me down. Hope they bounce bk and soon.

  26. These are very bad times. I’ve used Race Face all my life and very upset to hear that they’ve gone bust. Lets hope this is not a thing to come.

  27. They have not been bought out by Giant, Shimano or anyone else.

    From the horse’s mouth – the reason they went under wasn’t poor sales or typical mismanagement, it was because one of the owners took out a multi-million-dollar loan based on fraudulent inventory valuations, all the while paying himself a minimum of $30k/month, until the bank found out what was going on and froze their lines of credit, effectively making the business inoperable.

  28. That’s what I read too.

  29. Idiot.

  30. I haven’t bought Racface stuff for years now. Raceface made THE kit to have in the 90′s but have since been over taken by many other brands producing better, cheaper stuff. They’ve been trying to push the same cranks for over a decade. Their BB bearings were shocking and some of their clothing just didn’t last. I heard they had major quality control issues too, so really I’m not to surprized this has happened.

  31. This is sad news made even worse because of the reason. I always loved Raceface stuff – you couldn’t beat the Rocky Mountain / Raceface combination.

  32. One thing this thread reveals is the commonality of UK and Euro riders to focus on how their bikes look, as opposed to how they ride — as if Blingy Kit makes a bike ride better. I do enjoy that form of comedy, though I wonder if the subjects enjoy being mocked without their knowledge.

    RaceFace made quality parts early on, and by the early 2000s had turned into an image factory rather than a smart machine shop operation. Granted they helped riders with sponsorships and that’s to be admired. But I haven’t seen a single good piece of RF gear since 2005 or so. It’s either lead brick heavy and uselessly “burly,” or lightweight and failure-prone. The Deus seatpost is nice & light and the angle-adjust collar was an inspired design but if you weigh more than 150 lbs it slips pretty often — and once it slips enough it loses its friction and therefore won’t ever stop slipping. The Diabolus stuff is built as if the most advanced bike on the market were the Banshee Scream — for idiots doing 25-foot drops to flat, without trials skill.

    Their recent expansion into road gear and dicey (questionable quality) carbon gear… foolish. They were better off when they made Turbine cranks and that’s all. Sad to say, but that’s how it is.

  33. Ahhhhhhh man. Bad times.RaceFace are first class. Their parts have been on every bike I’ve owned.They need to carry on..!!
    What cranks am I gonna buy now..??…

  34. Erm…. Shimano, Truvative, FSA…….

  35. This is good for the smaller Canadian companies like Chromag and Black Spire etc

  36. The truth no one wants to mention yet is that Craig Pollock the owner fucked it all with a scam involving bank money. Bank found out that he was falsifying documents and his 30 grand a month pay check were in question. Good people work there, this is a shitty shit situation brought on by the owner.
    I wish someone had the balls to call it as it is, it is not a secret, he just effected 90 people and the global chain with his greed.

    Shame and I do hope they find a way to avoid liquidating, maybe staying open is a better way to recoupe the money owed.

    C

  37. If I was a venture (vulture) capitalist, I would suggest that Hope would be logical buyers for Race Face. They both design / produce / distribute their own metal milled goods and their product lines do not overlap too much.
    .
    ….BUT CRUCIALLY – Hope have figured out how to keep costs acceptable and still produce awesome kit. You never know – this might actually be an easy way for Hope to break into the American market.

  38. Pretty sure Hope have broken into the US market…pro2′s are quite popular over there.

  39. Bars and stems go on forever. Shame if they go under, I’m just saving up for some new Atlas bars to replace the stock ones that came on my Cannondale.

  40. one greedy bastard Fs all his people? sad yes. suprised? no.

  41. Just for the record, I’m called Big Bird because I’m tall, not fat. I’m two meters tall and 190 lbs. Not sure how many stones that is. My bad experiences happened in the late 90′s before I even got into downhill. I’m not at all sad that they’re gone.

  42. Sad to hear, feel for all the employees. Maybe they could buy the good will and assets and set-up a new employee owned company?

  43. I always thouht it was overpriced stuff considering the quality which was average on most things they made

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