AHHA! Is the Toaster the World’s Simplest, Most Portable Bike Rack?

I made a bike track with pvc pipe I had in the garage and a few fittings that I had to purchase. Even if I bought all the parts and charge for my labor the cost is way less than $429 and it will last forever.

$430!?! Lol damn some people got money to blow for sure!

I took the plunge and recently bought one of the Toasters for my two road bikes. I plan to use the stand on my apartment’s porch or when I travel with my bikes to events or with friends. I called one day to get an ETA and the owner and I had a fairly long and friendly chat about the Toaster and its reception with one of the main sticking points being the price. He fully understands that $400 as of today is really high, but for the volume that they are doing, the item be US built, and the quality of the item there really wasn’t that much room to go lower at the moment. He did mention how larger orders could create the opportunity to scale the price better so the idea that this will always be some $400 luxury niche product will be fluid. The concept for the Toaster is simple, make a portable, sturdy, and light stand that can fit multiple bikes basically anywhere. At the moment I have my toaster slid under my bed in my apartment and setting up the toaster takes literally seconds. The packaging, the instructions, and build quality are all top notch but where I think the Toaster can improve is in the paint job, since my black painted Toaster out of the box came with some uneven paint and some nicks and chips. If this was a $20 bike stand from Amazon no one would bat an eye over a few paint chips but when you are charging $400 before shipping expectations greatly increase. In the end paint doesn’t matter because the Toaster was meant to be used and abused and frankly I will probably just use some of the Ahha stickers provided to cover up and decorate my Toaster. My biggest issue with the Toaster is actually with the one thing it really needs to nail and that’s holding up a bike upright. Granted I am using two road bikes with 28mm-30mm tires, but the wheel cutouts are pretty massive, thus my wheels just kind of flap around and have my bikes standing at a somewhat uncomfortable tilt. Now Ahha has a solution for this in their grommets but these don’t come with your $400 Toaster and they have yet to be released for purchase yet. When I spoke to the owner he claimed they were having troubling getting the right feel for the grommets but they should be sorted by February (Today is 2-19-24), yet no word on when the grommets will launch. My huge issue is that unless you are running some beefy mountain bike tire, the stock Toaster is a fail and in my opinion the bike stand should come with a pair of either the Bike Sky or the Giro grommets, heck even both for $400. I fully understand my review should be ever changing because the product inherently isn’t even fully developed because it lacks the grommets. As of today I would give the Ahha Toaster a 3.5 out of 5 stars because I love the concept, the quality, and the heart behind the product but the price and its ability to excel in the main thing it was built for is lacking. I see myself as a Beta tester because I hope within time this might become a $300 product then $200 product and maybe sub $200 product and I really hope Ahha sees this review and considers shipping grommets with the Toaster