Santa Cruz Ships All Bikes With Stan’s Sealant
All photos by Mike Thomas
Ever get a brand new bike, build it up and think you’re all ready to go ride it only to realize that you’ve still got tubes in your tires? Well, that’ll never happen when you get a new Santa Cruz. The California-based bike company has been shipping all of its new bicycles with Stan’s sealant for the past decade.
“We send every single one of our bikes out with tubeless rim tape and valve stems already installed and tires already mounted,” said Todd Ford, Product Manager for Santa Cruz Bicycles. “All you have to do is put in the sealant and air up the tire, and you’re good to go. It’s nice and easy.”
And no, you don’t have to remember to stock up on Stan’s sealant in advance because the sealant that you’ll need for the initial tubeless setup also comes with every new bike. “We include the right amount of little bottles of Stan’s to go with each bike based on the volume of its tires. For example, we’ll send more bottles for a bigger, higher volume 29er tire, but fewer bottles for a gravel bike tire.”
For the popular mountain bike brand, which also has one gravel bike in its lineup, facilitating such easy tubeless setup is all about making sure its riders experience the best ride quality possible.
“It’s one of those things. We know that the performance of tubeless is phenomenal compared to using tubes,” said Ford, “and in reality, once our bikes get to shops, retailers are going to set them up tubeless anyway. So we just make it really easy for them to do that.”
Santa Cruz’s approach is also good for the environment because it reduces waste. “We avoid a bunch of wasted materials because you don’t first have to pull out a tube and figure out what to do with it before setting up our bikes tubeless,” said Ford. “People have told us that they love that we’re doing it this way. They appreciate that we’re not including tubes that will have to get recycled or thrown away.”
In fact, Santa Cruz has gotten nothing but positive feedback from retailers and customers, so the company plans to keep setting all of its future customers up tubeless.
“We’re super happy with our partnership with Stan’s,” said Ford. “Stan’s is the name of the game when it comes to sealant, and we love using it!”