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December 2024
I have been asked a time or two-hundred about how we come up with product ideas. I respond by talking about how a good product manager reads the market looking for aberrations. They are looking for instances where riders are using products in unintended ways to meet a new and unexpected riding need or desire. Such instances are indications of an opportunity to develop a new product. However, product ideas can surface a variety of other ways. Ideas could start with a request from an OEM customer, lab or ride testing observations, new competition, customer product registration comments, or a media product review. As for the recently introduced Cane Creek GXC stem, this is the story of how it came to be.
From the early nineties until around ten years ago, handlebar stems for road and mountain bikes were basically the same. The stems were forged aluminum, fit a 28.6mm steer tube and a 31.8mm bar, and had extensions between 90mm and 120mm. Sure there were some outliers — a few esoteric carbon stems and some DH bike stubbies — but the majority of bikes used the same type of stem. As MTB riders tackled more extreme terrain, bike geometry and features evolved, and stem design started diverging. Stems for the aggressive MTBs (aka Enduro/All-Mountain) bikes became burlier and shorter. And on the road side, aerodynamics and hiding control cables moved stem design in the opposite direction.
In 2004 it was very common to see the same stem on a road bike and a mountain bike. In 2024, road stems are usually in the 90mm to 110mm range and still fit a 31.8mm bar, but the design is driven by functional and visual integration. Increasingly these road stems are forged aluminum with various plastic bits bolted on and can look and feel like a Transformer toy. In contrast, MTB stems are now 30mm to 60mm in length, clamp to a 34.9mm bar, and are mostly angular blocks of CNC’d aluminum.
While building my own new gravel and XC mountain bikes over the last few years I found it frustrating to find the appropriate stem. It seemed the stem that made the most sense for these bikes was missing in the market. My gravel and XC bikes needed stems shorter than modern road stems but still needed to fit 31.8mm bars. The weight and look of the CNC’d enduro MTB stems were too much, and they had migrated to 34.9mm bar clamps. The modern matte black aero road stem lacked the simplicity, versatility, and visual that I was looking to attain for my new gravel and XC bikes, and the enduro MTB stems’ chunk of angular aluminum looked out-of-place as well. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. While we won’t claim the GXC stem as an invention, the spirit of the phrase sings true.
The GXC stem was created to fill this growing gap between aero road and enduro MTB stems. Specifically, the deliverables for GXC were: 60-100mm extensions, versatility in the form of a flippable stem, light weight (100-120g), 31.8mm bar clamp, size and shape to fit in with the square-oval tube cross sections of modern gravel and XC bikes, and quality features such as a polished finish and stainless steel hardware.
When considering the GXC, esteemed product reviewer James Huang pondered Cane Creek’s positioning of the stem, saying “I have to admit that I’m a little surprised to see this product come to market since I thought Cane Creek’s focus was on offering products that truly offer something different. That’s not to say this doesn’t look good (weight, pricing, aesthetics, etc.), but from a functional standpoint, it caught me off-guard. Does this indicate anything as far as where Cane Creek might be looking to expand moving forward?”
James’ perspective and questions are totally reasonable. Cane Creek’s strategy is to offer premium alternative product that offers real benefit that riders notice and value. Our perspective is that premium does not have to be unaffordable, and alternative can range from peerless titanium eeWings cranks to stems that offer a hard-to-find combination of attributes as the GXC does. Based on initial sales and feedback, it seems that a number of you agree.
