Why we offer different 15 TPU tubes
When another company recently introduced their TPU tubes, they offered three models. With two carefully chosen widths, they cover 700C tires between 24 and 64 mm wide, with no overlap. For their narrower tubes, they offer two valve lengths; for their wider tubes, only one. From a production and warehousing perspective, that’s the way to do it.
So why do we offer no fewer than fifteen TPU tubes? Well, we’re the first to admit, we often let our hearts and desires overrule the strict business necessities.
We’re offering our tubes in three widths. We cover a bit more of the tire spectrum—from 20 to 68 mm wide—but that’s not the reason. Rather than stretching the tubes to the limit, there is some overlap between the tube models. If your 43 mm tires balloon to 45 mm on ultra-wide rims, your tubes won’t rupture because they’ve been stretched too far. And if your 44 mm tires don’t quite reach their ‘nominal’ size on narrow rims, there won’t be folds in your tubes when you inflate them. This just avoids frustrations and makes installation easier.
As a plus, our road bike tubes are ultralight at just 32 g—without compromising reliability with ultra-thin walls. That’s because they’re sized for tires up to 32 mm wide. (That’s also why they go down to 20 mm, even though hardly anybody is running tires that narrow these days.) If you’re running 28, 30 or 32 mm tires, you get tubes that are lighter, faster and easier to install. (There are some drawbacks to using the same tube all the way up to 43 mm tires.) This just makes sense to us.
We’re also offering three valves: polished and black 50 mm valves, plus black 70 mm valves. We could eliminate the polished valves, but they just look so much better on bikes with silver rims.
Our TPU tubes come in sizes for 700C wheels as well as 650B / 26″. These days, 700C is definitely the more common size, but we’ve long championed smaller wheels. Not offering tubes for those bikes would not be right.
We knew from the beginning that there wouldn’t be much demand for ultra-wide 650B tubes with 70 mm valves. But there are bikes, like Natsuko’s new Rene Herse x OPEN, that need those tubes. And that’s our problem: Rather than asking: “Does this make business sense?” we usually ask: “Do we—or other cyclists—need this part?” And more often than not, the answer is yes.
Our bike shop partners also appreciate that we offer so many options. Nobody expects them to stock the entire program. Instead, they choose the models that make sense for their customers. Above is the tire and tube rack at Cascade Bicycle Studio, one of Seattle’s best shops for custom bikes. They carry a carefully curated selection based on the needs of their customers.
We may not get rich doing things this way, but for us it’s more important that we—and our customers—have the parts we all need to enjoy our bikes more. That’s why we started making tires and components in the first place, and we’re not about to change that.
More information:
- Rene Herse TPU tubes
- Natsuko’s new Rene Herse × OPEN WI.DE.
