BRANDS
“Throughout the year we organise many events to ride
together, and the Tribe is when we try to bring them all together. Being together is a pleasant experience, but it’s also an opportunity to collect information, feedback, suggestions. “No market research can describe the needs of e-mtb enthusiasts in such detail quite like the Thok Tribe.” The question of ‘why?’ is also relevant for retailers and
IBDs when considering what brands to stock. Thok believes it offers a number of benefits to its dealer partners over the competition. One of those is the brand’s decision not to produce a new model each year.
Ambrogio Grillo, Thok sales manager, said: “As a consumer, we want to buy something that lasts longer. So we are not running any model years. “So we’re not building bikes and changing colours and specs just to push people to buy the new one.” Grillo referred to the TK01, which was introduced in
September 2020: “A Thoker that bought the bike in 2020 is still proud to be riding the bikes today and this is a very, very strong part of our philosophy.” “Our dealers are also happy to work with us because we are not a yearly production and trying to put the bikes in the shop. We are managing the stocks.” Although Thok has a direct-to-consumer arm, it does not run significant discounts on its products. This maintains a level of trust with its customers that they will not be seeing their bike at a heavy discount only a couple of months after they bought it
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Grillo added: “Same price all over Europe. We are controlling the price, so from both the B2B and B2C side, the prices are clear.”
Performance First Earlier this year, the Italian company released its first carbon fibre enduro bike - the Gram and is already in the prototyping phase of its next all-mountain model, but not in a traditional way. Thok has created its latest full suspension prototype using a 3D metal printer, or selective laser melting (SLM), in what is believed to be an industry first. To enable the brand to test geometry and components
quicker, it has looked to a company in the aerospace industry to make its latest aluminium prototype. The process required about four weeks of work, without counting the design phase, and included a leap from the first Rapid Prototyped plastic model, which had a merely aesthetic purpose, to a fully functioning model that was tested on the ground, without prototype moulds and/or numerous CNC machined pieces being necessary. “These are the first bikes that are rapid prototyped, fully suspended, in alloy, in the world,” said Migliorini. “It’s a very important step that Thok has made. “I’m very proud to say we printed our frame with this technology coming from aerospace.”
Thok is now handling its own distribution in the UK. Any retailers interested in Thok can contact Stefano Melis via
s.melis@
thokebikes.com
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