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Santa Cruz Bikes Get New Color for 2011, No More Anodized Options

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SEA OTTER CLASSIC 2010 – The Stigmata cyclocross bike is a Santa Cruz model that doesn’t get a lot of hype, but at the Otter, it was situated right in the middle of their tent.  Marketing man Mike Ferrentino saw me checking it out, and the conversation went something like this:

MIKE: Saw you checkin’ this out, we don’t hype it much, but it’s a really sweet bike.  It’s handmade by Sapa in Portland (Oregon, U.S. of A) from Easton EA6X alloy.

ME: Cool.

MIKE: And this clearcoat will be a new color option for all of our aluminum VPP bikes (Nomad, V10, Blur LT and Driver 8) for 2011.  Oh, and we’re doing away with our ano for 2011.

ME: Why?

MIKE: Well, we could say it’s because ano’s a terribly nasty process that uses all sorts of enviromentally bad chemicals, but it’s really more to do with inventory control.  With our powdercoating, we can do small batches of each color based on current orders, and do onesie-twosies if necessary.  With anodizing, we’re stuck with ordering a ton of frames and if a color doesn’t sell well then we’ve got a ton of inventory just sitting there.  Plus, we powdercoat in-house, so we can maintain better quality control.

ME: Gotcha.  Makes sense.  So, can you tell me more about the Stigmata?

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The Stigmata comes in right at 17lbs as built with Edge Composites wheels and fork, Avid Shorty Ultimates, Thomson seatpost and Shimano Ultegra group.  The frame weight is 1,200 – 1,300g.

Besides being able to see the tube-stamp from Easton on the frame, he other benefit to the clearcoat versus powdercoats is that you save about 50g – 60g per frame.

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Jamie Maguire
Jamie Maguire
13 years ago

Who’s the Greg Minnaar looky-likey taking a dump in the top picture?

Gene Cliatt
13 years ago

Re: Ano / Powder coat. You could just powder the Ano frames that don’t sell. Charge extra for “double the corrosion resistance”.

mike ferrentino
13 years ago

powdercoat over ano? we wish…

our anodized frames are shot peened then the logos are etched in. this gives them some “texture” which in turn makes them pretty funky to coat over. we’d have to blast a substantial amount of material off the frames to get them smooth enough to lay on an acceptable powdercoat finish. in other words, “that won’t buff out.” we’d prefer not to have to deal with the consequences of thinning out our tube wall thicknesses by a half a millimeter just for the sake of reducing a potential inventory overage, although the extra frames we’d then have to send out as warranty replacements would go a long way to reducing said inventory overage.

Oh YES
Oh YES
13 years ago

These stigmata’s are a great ride. Our team has 4 different riders that are on them and they all love them. I was leaning towards the white PC one but this new clearcoat is gorgeous with the easton logos showing through. Thanks for making a CX Santa Cruz!

Mountain Cycle Shawn
Mountain Cycle Shawn
10 years ago

It looks like that guy is trying to squeez out a hot one!

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