The following is the story of the former Team OUCH pb Maxxis (Team Healthnet pb Maxxis) and their integral research & developement relationship with fi'zi:k. Documented in 2008.
While fi’zi:k has been long been supplying European and US professional cycling teams with saddles, Team Health Net presented by Maxxis is counted as fi’zi:k’s longest running saddle sponsorship in the US pro peloton. Now in their fifth year with the team as a saddle, handlebar tape supplier and contributing sponsor, it’s not just what fi’zi:k provides to the team that sets this partnership apart from most others, but equally important, what the team gives back to fi’zi:k.
“Fi’zi:k has always been involved in professional sponsorship for very specific reasons,” explains their US Marketing Manager Suzette Ayotte, “and this is why our sponsorship deal with HN pb Maxxis is really more of a partnership. I suppose when we first started sponsoring US pro road teams in 2000, it was more about getting our product out there in the peloton. Shortly thereafter, however, we stepped up our game ten-fold terms of product development and we really needed to be able to work with a team and management staff that could provide us with the necessary feedback to continually improve our product line.”
A case in point can be illustrated in early 2004 when fi’zi:k was still in the initial development phase of their microtex handlebar tape and bar:gel. With the agreement that the HN pb Maxxis team would act as guinea pigs to afford fi’zi:k the opportunity to make a differentiated and better product, fi’zi:k sealed its first ever handle bar tape sponsorship deal with a professional cycling team.
The team was first supplied with standard cork handlebar tape emblazoned with fi’zi:k logos, and the gel was served up to the team on plastic sheets that literally had to be cut out from the sheet and peeled off in what proved to be a rather tedious process. “The logos disappeared from the cork tape after about one ride,” Ayotte remembers, “and coupled with the all too thick gel, the bars become these fat cushiony pillows.” But the team used the sample cork tape throughout most of 2004 season while fi’zi:k continued with development. The purple tape came next.
The infamous purple tape eventually evolved into what is now one of the best handlebar tape brands in the US market. “Purple just happened to be the only color that our tape manufacturer was able to sample us with using the unique buffed surface,” explained Ayotte. “Suffice it to say, the purple coupled with the orange Maxxis scheme made quite a stunning ensemble so we sent that off with some of the riders in the back training roads of Tucson and Iowa to try to keep the team’s classy reputation in tact. The purple tape, product-wise, was closer but feedback indicated that the tape was so thin it was curling all along the edges. “
“We were looking for the perfect medium so that the tape would be comfortable with or without the gel,” Ayotte explained. “Microtex is a completely different material than cork and doesn’t necessarily have that natural springy-ness to it. But we wanted to use microtex because it’s stronger than cork, it has a longer life, looks better over time, and is the same material we use for our saddles. Matching tape and saddles still held a small void in the marketplace and was thus, an opportunity ready to be seized.”
Eventually the ‘final’ product made its way to the team but not without additional problems. One would think, tape is tape is tape is tape. But when it comes to service and mechanics, and the time involved with replacing tape, nothing short of perfect really works. “We thought we were finished but the tape was too sticky and when the mechanics tried to replace the tape, it stuck to the gel and to the bars like super glue. Sounds fairly trivial but spending fifteen minutes picking tape off the bars throws a real monkey wrench into the mechanics time-management program.”
By the time 2005 rolled around, fi’zi:k had officially entered the aftermarket tape category, and is now in its fifth year of supplying handle bar tape and bar:gel to Team HN pb Maxxis as well as to all of their other US and European teams. “The point is, whether they fully realize it or not, Team Health Net was perhaps the most integral player throughout the entire development process for what has become our best selling product of all time.”
The opportunity to work this closely with professional teams is perhaps fi’zi:k’s number one reason for sponsorship involvement. “The easy answers are visibility and affiliation but the reality is, sponsors pay for that,” continued Ayotte. “Being able to work as intimately as we have with Team Health Net pb Maxxis is not necessarily a ‘right’ but a privilege. It’s not easy for the staff to ask or expect the riders to always be 100% motivated to act as product testers. Some will be into it and some will not. Training and racing is a job and there’s pressure on those guys to achieve decent race results. Anyone that logs a lot of miles knows that training is both physically and mentally exhausting. Add wives and children to that mix and you just don’t feel like thinking about anything else, especially not something as indiscernible as whether or not you’ve noticed a 20 gram difference in a saddle on a six hour ride. We get that. And that’s why it’s a privilege.”
In 2008, many of the Team Health Net pb Maxxis riders will be using fi’zi:k’s new Arione CX, the newest member of the number one selling high-performance saddle on the market, the Arione. The saddle boasts a 70 gram lighter-than-the-original-Arione difference by using newly formulated high density foam padding. Just after its 2007 Interbike aftermarket introduction while the saddle was just making its way to the production line, and when fi’zi:k needed to truly understand if the newer Arione CX could measure up to the comfort standards of the original Arione, Team Health Net pb Maxxis again stepped up to the plate.
“D.S. Mike Tamayo literally took the hand-off and one of our few only available show samples and sent it out to Rory Sutherland the next day. He’s been logging miles ever since,” explained Ayotte. The end result? According to Ayotte, the last email received from Sutherland went something like this:
As long as I am able to ride that prototype saddle that I am testing out now, for next season, then I’m happy :-) Rory is still riding it.
