I've been overwhelmed with the interest in these racks (in a good way!), and unable to keep up with demand when making them myself in my tiny shop. So, I've enlisted the help of a top-tier rack fabrication shop to assist in the production of racks. This Taiwan-based shop is behind some of the best chromoly (steel) racks on the market from other brands too. They've been a real pleasure to work with so far. Some Mica components continue to be made by me and my current Canadian suppliers.
My vision for the future of Mica still involves making things myself - because I love making. But, I believe my capacity for making is best spent on experimentation. Experimentation is at the core of how this has all unfolded - a custom rack from Daambuilt got the wheels turning for me in 2017, and my own experiments to design a universal-fit equivalent eventually sprouted into this business. Now, since launching Mica, I see all the rack production I've done as experimentation too: testing to see if there was a market for it, to see if other people saw value in my design as well.
The "yes" result of that experiment has left me feeling grateful and encouraged! Thanks to your support I'm able to shift towards this new production model that will allow me time to experiment with new ideas, new designs, and hopefully new products, while still being able to supply high-quality racks to more than just a handful of people.
If I'm going to one day have more than one product, the products will need names right? Now seems like the moment.
Rat Tail, a cool cut for a bit of je ne sais pas in the rear.
Widely considered a "bad hairstyle", rat tails have always been more of a working class style. Why do we let rich people tell us what's cool and how to look? That ain't right, so I want to celebrate the rat tail. Now your bike can wear one at least.
What's different?
As mentioned above, the metal parts are no longer fabricated by me alone. Whereas racks powder-coated locally in Vancouver were "semi-gloss" black, Rat Tails will be a more durable matte black.
The biggest change is a switch from USA-sized tubing (3/8"/9.5mm) to metric tubing (10mm) which is much more common outside North America. Standard metric tubing also has slightly thicker walls. In North America we can get 0.028"/0.7mm and 0.035"/0.9mm thick chromoly tubing whereas in the rest of the world it's 0.8mm and 1mm walls.
All said, this adds about 40-50g to the weight of the rack. The silver lining is that the weight is added in the most useful possible way - these will be stronger and stiffer. I'm keeping the recommended max load at 15lbs/7kg for now, but I expect to increase this once I conclude some more dynamic testing.
Besides that the racks remain the same as before.
Buying racks
I am opening orders for this first official batch of Rat Tails before Christmas, but given the ongoing shipping delays, no one should expect to receive their racks before Christmas. There will be some available for shipment in December, and there will be more ready to ship in early January so I'll make a pre-order option for those.
Thanks again to everyone for the ongoing support. I'm wishing you all a happy Solstice and winter holiday.
Let there be light, dude,
Skyler
P.S. Oh yeah, and the rack won an award!
