Originally Posted by
Dreww10
The industry saw dollar signs at the idea of forcing every road cyclist on the planet to buy a new bike (and, at the same time, lowering its production costs by making road, gravel and CX parts all standardized), and it aggressively went after that initiative by either making its entire lineup disc, or its most desirable bikes disc-only, and then marketing the daylights out of it so people had no other choice but buy disc.
I'm not saying disc brakes aren't better, or that they aren't advantageous for some riders' environments, but this shift was engineered by a financially sagging cycling industry that needed to boost sales and lower costs, not by public demand.
Conspiracy theorist hey!
So "The industry" with all its rival manufacturers and suppliers all sat down together and came up with this marketing idea did they?
Or alternatively Shimano and Sram realised about a decade ago that the future of road bike brakes was inevitably destined to be with discs, following on from success in mtb and Cyclocross. It was always just a matter of time.
Her's a quote from an article written in Jan 2013 speculating on the introduction of disc brakes on road bikes:-
[Dom Mason, Kinesis Bikes designer]
“Yes. I think that we will look back with disbelief at the days when we used to squash rubber against alloy/carbon in an attempt to scrub off speed...sometimes our rims even had grit and grime smeared over them to add into the *********** mix!
“Discs make total sense for road bikes and as soon as they get light enough and all the mechanisms are housed in the hoods, then I'm sure we will see them being accepted. Rims can lose some weight because they won't need to be squeezed and have material built in for wear, so the overall weight of the system can be reduced.
“Braking in the wet with carbon rims is a little hit and miss, disc brakes solve this and of course there are the issues of rim wear, melting sidewalls, and brake rub with untrue wheels that discs negate. Disc brakes for 'winter' bikes also make huge sense.
“I realise there are issues surrounding heat build up in small/lightweight rotors and that the force induced on a small diameter road disc with a high friction coefficient riding surface is huge, but these problems will be dealt with and then, we will see disc brakes in the Pro-Tour.”
Well he was dead right and it all came to pass. As soon as Shimano et al. released viable road disc brake solutions, frame manufacturers jumped straight in. For sure it was a gift for sales and marketing, but it was always the tech leading the way. It's not a conspiracy, it's just an inevitable technical development like brifters etc.