Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Bike Ownership Patterns and Cyclo-computers

It's funny, you know. There seem to be two different types of bicycle owners. The first kind has one bike. Maybe he or she personalizes it, gives it a name. The second kind of owner owns several bikes: maybe a road bike, maybe a fixie, maybe a twenty-niner, maybe a folder, maybe a vintage 70's model. Either kind of owner can be a dedicated rider or not.

But in the case of the second type of owner who happens to be a dedicated rider, there's a market need going unfulfilled, and that is, cyclo-computers with more than two available wheel size settings. They just don't exist as far as I know. The multi-bike example I gave above (and honestly, from perusing the blogosphere, I don't think this is such a rare occurence) could have 4 different wheel sizes on his bikes.

Later this year, as I rebuild my beloved touring bike, I will be in a situation where I have bike with 3 different wheel sizes, and I will be forced to go to wheel reset mode on a regular basis if I want to properly accumulate mileage (and I do.) I'll bet that the desire to have a reasonably accurate cumulative mileage (coupled with the ability to learn one and only one set of controls) would be highly attractive to a growing market segment.

So here's a great opportunity, all you manufacturers of cyclocomputers (and there's probably only about three, maybe four, of you) -- give us some flexibility!

1 comment:

Amy said...

I solved this by buying two computers, one for each size wheels (one per bike). But of course one of my computers flew off during a commute and I just didn't feel like paying for yet another one. I realized I mostly used the same bike all the time and I just set the computer to that one.

You are right, more flexibility would be great! But the mere presence of the computer is so awesome that I'll put up with the limitations.