Bah Humbug

And it does suck when an unpopular product you like goes away; it happens to me too. However, the likely scenario is the sale wiped out the corporate inertia keeping the unpopular lines alive, and they'd be gone before long anyway.

WhyFi

RIP Windows Phone - goon too soon.

Koyote

Do you see as many riders with Speedplay pedals as with, say, Shimano? Look?

Not arguing, just curious. But I wonder if there is kind of a cohort effect -- people just tend to buy what their friends are using, and that's why no one in my old group ride had 'em.

Marcus_Ti

It only took Microsoft a quarter century to admit they sucked at and could not sell phones. They tried and tried to sell buggy products that didn't work and were buggy and sucked.

By the time they finally had something good, the Lumias, it was far too little and about a decade too late.

Sy Reene

I see them more often than I see eg. Canyon or Felt brand bikes.

WhyFi

I wasn't contending that they're as popular as Look-type pedals. I was contending the notion that they're dying.

Bah Humbug

Was thinking about tagging you and calling that one out specifically. Will pour one out (that is, a water bottle) for it after tomorrow's ride.

Hapsmo911

Speedplay cutting dead weight it seems. Yeah you had your pedals for years and now you cant get cleats. But reality is, they don't sell tons of these models. I would rather them cut and refocus so we get better products. I rode X pedals for years. Then after the walkable cleats came I swapped and just ran them with full float. No problems, and my cleats last 10x longer. Would love to see some power pedals...

ericcox

So you're the other person that loved Windows Phone! My Lumias were my favorite phones ever - if only they had apps.

guadzilla

Weirdly, I just put my old Frogs on my MTB - and opened up my last pair of cleats - and now I see them on sale for crazy prices on Ebay. Wonder if i should just flip them instead.....

Bluechip

Some years ago I bought a bike that had Speedplay pedals on it.
Now I have them on all of my road bikes.

If Wahoo has to cull some of the less popular pedals to keep the Zeros going I am fine with that. Why have three very similar models?

AlgarveCycling

I'm a fan too.

Speedplay are absolutely the best pedal for my knee issues. Bike fit + Speedplay worked for me and so I have Zero's on both road bikes. Never serviced, over 10000 miles so far, no problems.

Sy Reene

I think the disappointment is not so much discontinuing some pedals (though abandoning all of their mtb/gravel models is a bit odd), but rather feeling that they should at least continue to supply the more consumable cleats for a while.

WhyFi

If you consider the Zero to be the X-Series replacement, and many felt that long before Wahoo made it official, you've had, what - 17, 18 years? I mean, really, this is something that Speedplay should have done long ago.

Sy Reene

Agree, they should have started that process years ago. The fact though is that X series pedals were sold as current and new product even less than 1 year ago. So when cleats were gone from shelves (though there have been some infrequent restockings) just a few months later, it struck a sour note. In my case, I actually bought a X-series Rebuild Kit in 2019 to refresh my pedals, so I'm happy I found a couple rare packs of cleats just recently to extend their lifespan.

topflightpro

This.

I switched to Speedplay probably 10 years ago and went with the Zeros. The X-series seemed outdated by then, and it was hard to tell the difference.

And it's not like this is the first time a company has dropped a pedal line. Look replaced the Delta line with Keo. Granted, you can still get Delta cleats, but they are lot simpler and cheaper to manufacture than Speedplay cleats.

As for popularity, I'd guess that Speedplay has 40% of the road pedal market. Shimano and Look split the other 60%. in fact, based on what I see on other bikes, I'd guess Look and Speedplay via for first/second place for popularity with Shimano a distant third.

Regarding the Wahoo purchase, I'm optimistic that it will result in a Speedplay-based power pedal. Brim Brothers was close to building one - they were even taking orders and cash before declaring bankruptcy and closing.

phrantic09

But ITT there are a bunch of Titans of industry who clearly know more than the leadership team at Wahoo

nycphotography

While discontinuing the pedals may make sense, I'm surprised they don't at least do a restock mfr run on the cleats to keep existing customers happy for the next 3-5 years. I mean how many could they sell? And if it's a lot, then all the more reason to keep selling cleats.

Sy Reene

This.. The X-series I think is very hard to tell the difference unless you were a rider looking for reduced or no float, hence many folks saw little to no reason to switch to the slightly more expensive Zeros and in turn have to replace cleats on their sometimes multiple pairs of shoes. My suspicion is that the Zero redesign was in part so Speedplay could claim updated patent protection (and we've already seen discussion on how important that was to them). I haven't discovered yet a downside to the 'outdated' nature of the X series -- aesthetically or operationally I'm trying to imagine how I would be more pleased with a set of Zeros. The walkable cleat is nice, but I don't have issue really with a pair of Keep On Kovers installed on my X cleats.

JohnJ80

^this.

Many companies will do a last run of parts like this (cleats) and put them in inventory to supply customers until the expected lifetime of the main product (in this case, the pedal) is done and sales are zero. They generally have a pretty good idea of how that's going to play out.

What is a little odd about this is the language - "This product is currently not available. At this time, future availability has not been determined." I'm guessing here, but I think they may be trying to sell the product lines and that would be a good thing. If they were not going to do that, they'd just put a "Product Obsolete" heading on the part.

So I think this is likely the result of one or more of a few things -

1. Wahoo being inexperienced in M&A.
2. Crappy planning in the M&A activity leading to a discontinuity in customer support.
3. Wahoo couldn't give a $hit about pedal revenue except as it relates to power meters they are developing and they needed a pedal user base.

TiHabanero

We sell a lot of Speedplay pedals. Had Frogs sitting on the shelf for 2 years before they were sold to someone specifically looking for Frogs, not a new user. The X pedal had to go away as it made no sense in the line up as things have moved on from that design. Kudos to Wahoo for cleaning up the line and streamlining selection. Makes sense to me as a dealer.

Never heard about the bearing story. Must be the use of the Speedplay name in advertising that they went after. Silly for sure, but the corp lawyers have to justify their price, and the executive branch likely had nothing else to determine during a Monday morning pow-wow.

Sy Reene

This is another one folks may remember.. eg. the prior mentioned after-market spindle business -- which is understandable when SP brand spindle sets are $130 by themselves.

Toronto Cycles: SpeedPlay Inc. vs. Toronto Cycles Productions Inc.

woodcraft

JohnJ80

I certainly can see why the X and Frog were discontinued and I agree that made some sense. Sort of traditional product management would dictate obsoleting the product, continuing to supply cleats for a number of years and then obsoleting. That’s not what is happening here.

And I think the Zeros (and derivatives like Pave), Light Action and Syzr are all in a different category. Those are the current product line and were all selling. The Syzr product line (mtb pedal) was terrifically suited to be marketed to the gravel industry because of it’s metal on metal contact and it’s lack of dependency on the condition of the sole of the shoe.

Hopefully, Wahoo is going to sell some of these off to someone who will actually produce them (hence the odd disclaimer on the website). But what I fear is going to happen is that Wahoo is going to make a power meter and not support the bare pedal business much at all. Everything they sell is based in electronics at some level.

What I want them to do (and I realize that they don’t really care what I want) is to continue to produce the Zero/LA road pedals, the Syzr product line and continue to provide cleats for at least a 5 years for the rest of their product line.

Bah Humbug

Continuing to produce a EOL product for five years is an utter non-starter for almost any situation. That gets away from the goal of making it EOL in the first place.

I do suspect they'll continue to supply dumb pedals - you don't need PM pedals on your KICKR Bike, afterall.