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Trust Performance lowers the cost of the Message, continues mission for better rides

Ben Craner with the Sea Otter Cat 1 40-49 dual slalom win on his Evil trail bike with Message for.
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The new Trust Performance Message fork is eye catching for a lot of reasons – one of which is the price. With a focus on the pinnacle of front suspension performance, the Message also had a price worthy of that top spot. But in a fairly short period of time, the original retail price of $2,700 is now dropping below the $2,000 threshold.

Trust Performance lowers the cost of the Message, continues mission for better rides
The Message spotted on Bobby McMullen’s Santa Cruz at Sea Otter.

Understandably, dropping the price by $725 just six months since the fork launched in late October may be a bummer if you’ve already purchased the fork or ordered it for your shop. So in an attempt to make things right, Trust Performance is offering customers who have already purchased a fork (and who register it by May 31, 2019) a $1,000 credit towards their next Trust Performance suspension purchase. Obviously, you’d have to shell out even more dollars for that to matter, but if you do, you’ll be up $275 in the end. Trust is also offering dealers and distributors credits if they brought in forks under the previous pricing structure.

Now the forks will sell for $1,975 and you can still demo the fork on your own bike if you take advantage of the Trust Performance demo program.

trustperformance.com

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Todo
Todo
5 years ago

What a total crap show and already an under performing product to begin with. I would be fuming if I had been one of the very few early adopters (also read sucker). This will end worse than a kick starter campaign and I’d bet they are out of business in less than a few years at best.

Yep
Yep
5 years ago

Ouch. This won’t bode well for Trust..

TheKaiser
TheKaiser
5 years ago

Assuming I am doing the math/s somewhat correctly, if you are an enthusiastic current “Trust” owner, and take them up on their current $1k discount for early adopters who want a 2nd fork, you would have shelled out $2700 (1st fork) + $1700 (2nd fork ) = $4400. For new prospective owners, you could buy 1 fork for $1975, or 2 for $3950.

In other words, early adopters will have paid a $725 premium for 1 fork, and a $450 premium for 2 forks, as they have only offered early adopters an additional $275 discount on a new fork (off the current price), not the “$1000” the spin doctors are claiming, which doesn’t offset the $725 premium they paid by supporting this company when they launched 6mos ago. This stands in stark contrast to the article saying “you’ll be up $275 in the end”. I get that you can do the math and phrase things however you’d like, but this still leaves early adopters significantly down in my mind, not up.

Having said all that, for linkage fork curious people, I would also suggest checking out the Motion Ride fork (because it is crazy outside the box thinking), or better yet, the Structure full chassis (including frame and fork), as along with this whole price drop spin, there is also a lot of spin going on in relation to the technicals of the Trust fork. They are selling this thing based on it maintaining trail throughout compression, but not mentioning that in so doing, it will substantially change front center/rear center balance and overall weight distribution, for the worse. The Structure chassis, on the other hand, has the ability to maintain trail via decoupling of the lower/upper head tube angle, rather than via a rearward migration of the axle relative to steering center as on this Trust fork.

Greg
Greg
5 years ago
Reply to  TheKaiser

TheKaiser… Early adopters paid $2,700 for their first fork and would pay $975 (new price of $1,975 minus their $1,000 discount) for their second fork. That is why it says they’ll be “up $275 in the end” because $2,700 + $975 = $3,675 which is, like the article states, $275 cheaper than buying two forks at the new price ($1,975 x 2 = $3,950).

therealgreenplease
5 years ago
Reply to  TheKaiser

My $0.02 is that the Structure frame is really the way to go if you’re going to go down the linkage fork path.

js
js
5 years ago
Reply to  TheKaiser

You are doing the math wrong. The second fork would be $1,000 off the new price (not the old price), so only $975, so the total for two is $3,675… leaving early adopters $275 to the good, as the article mentions.

pm732
5 years ago
Reply to  TheKaiser

spot on. great post Kaiser. thanks.

gibbon
gibbon
5 years ago

Hope did this with the HB160 bike.Only they reduced the price because they were selling so many and were offsetting the development costs over a lot more units than they anticipated at first (and took into account all the lessons they learnt in the process).
So they refunded ALL the original owners the full difference (£1000!!!!) in price.
That’s how you do it.

Pinko
Pinko
5 years ago
Reply to  gibbon

Are you sure hope lowered the price because they were selling so many? I have heard they were not selling any.
Regardless, crazy prices.

JNH
JNH
5 years ago
Reply to  Pinko

At the ‘Ard Rock Enduro last year the guys from Hope said they’d sold ‘more than 50’ in the first six months and that it was a lot more than they planned for, but they wouldn’t go into specifics. There were certainly a few in the race, but then the ‘Ard Rock is smack bang in the middle of Northern MTB land, it felt every third bike was an Orange, Cotic or Airdrop.

CHSAD
CHSAD
5 years ago

So wait a second, you get a 1K credit for “future purchases” but they only make one suspension product? I think they judged the market wrong with their premium pricing for a product that looks so radically different then what riders are accustomed to.

pm732
5 years ago
Reply to  CHSAD

heh yep. just in case you own two 100-120mm bikes. which maybe ppl that buy these forks actually would? idk lol.

Hurricane
5 years ago

$1000 of any DW link equipped bike?

JBikes
JBikes
5 years ago

Am I the only one that thinks any upset early adopter has only themselves to blame.
Does anyone think there is an actual contract from the seller to buyer that says “thou payest equal or lower than any future price for all eternities”
Were they born just a few decades ago? Maybe just 1? Live and learn.

Dan Jeffris
Dan Jeffris
5 years ago
Reply to  JBikes

For the win!

Brad Comis (@BradComis)

Meh, how many people have actually bought these things at this point? Like 5 people? This pricing snafu will be forgotten pretty quick I bet.

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