Reviews

The thing is that I can't really complain. Only I'm going to.

When we get a good review, people point out that reviews are 'rubbish' and that reviewers talk drivel. When we get a - well, we haven't had a bad one - but when we get a less positive review, people suddenly start quoting lines from them back to us.

Last week we came 'last' of the 5 finalists in Cycling Weekly's 'Race Bike Of The Year' review.

I actually don't mind that. To be in a final 5 alongside the likes of Cervelo and Litespeed is amazing and a testament to how fast we've developed already. We've been going as a business for 20 months and our product development budget is small - tiny - compared to these market leaders. But we, or specifically Iain as far as design goes, work really, really hard.

So, in a way, we can live with coming 5th. I can even live with the fact that of the 6 reviewers, 4 of them liked the bike, one of them, a leading UK elite, absolutely loved it and one really, really disliked it (sadly, the lead author of the review), so we found ourselves 5th.

I don't mind that the bike - our Mondays Child model - wasn't to all reviewers tastes. We have 2 race-specific products in our range to accomodate different likes or dislikes in terms of feel, so anyone looking to buy who got onboard a Mondays Child and found the ride too stiff and harsh could find solice in the ride of the equally raceable Silk Road Pro. But the reviewer was testing a specific product, not the Sunday range or, indeed the buying and fitting experience, so i guess i'm being unfair in this respect.

What i can't live with though, is the nature of the criticism and the inconsistency in the write up.

Let me explain.

When I asked Iain to design the Mondays Child frameset, I specifically wanted him to disprove the popular assertion that 'you can't make a frame from titanium that's as stiff as a carbon frame'. As they observe in the review, we met our brief. In fact the central complaint from the reviewer is that the Mondays Child is just too stiff and harsh. I've worked as a journalist. I would have thought that the central story here is that, 'yeah, maybe it needs refining, but these guys have created a ti frame thats actually stiffer than its carbon competition. I didn't like it, but they're clearly onto something.' But no. Instead we got odd contradictions.

In the Litespeed section of the article, there's the observation that ti frames can't be designed to be as stiff as carbon. In the conclusion, there's the complaint that our bike was too stiff. Confused?

We heard that Mondays Child was both 'dead and wooden' and 'immensely rigid...super responsive' in adjacent paragraphs. Odd?

As I say, I just feel the point was missed. I love my Mondays Child. It's what I ride. I wouldn't - and I don't - recommend it to many customers, but it is genuinely remarkable for its quick handling and super sharp stiff ride. A bit of a ti revelation. Don't want that? Buy a Silk Road (hey, that got a blinding review, and its a great, fast sportive bike, but I wouldn't want to ride a UCI road race on one particularly.)

I was going to write a conclusion. Instead I'll just make an observation. Race Bike of The Year had no disearnable criteria. In absence of this, we looked to the rule book for race bikes when we submitted our Mondays Child build. I note that all three bikes finishing in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the review are below the UCI minimum weight of 6.8kg - so, you couldn't actually start a race on one legally... I think that's the sort of detail that let the article down.

I'm not sure I'll read many more reviews with a scientific interest anymore. I'll continue to put more credence in our solid design briefs that examine the legal criteria for a bikes intended end use, and which push bike design forward, than in arbitrary reviews.

And yes, you're right. I will be happy next time we get a great review, scientific or otherwise. In the meantime, I'll keep riding my own Mondays Child as a matter of choice.