Rocktown Bicycles and Pivot Cycles Part 1: The Story

We decided in November 2019 to bring Pivot Cycles into the shop as our second main line (we carry All City, Surly, and a few others but more on a special order basis). This decision was years in the making. When I took over as shop manager in September of 2014, the shop was only a year and a half old. Rocktown was a Specialized dealer and having worked with almost all major bike lines in my 14 years (at that point- Gt, Jamis, Diamondback, Trek, Giant, Cannondale, Felt, Fuji, and Scwhinn to name most), I was surprised by the level of customer support, durability, attention to detail, and performance of the line compared to most of what I was used to.

I frequently thought it was necessary to have a second line in the shop to compliment Specialized and to simply have some more choice for our customers, but in looking at many, many companies out there the questions that would always remain were: Is it the same quality or better? Are the price points reasonable? Are parts readily available?

Over the years I have seen many lines that have a particular model that people get really excited about for one reason or the next. What was extremely important to me was that the whole line was solid, with a legacy of creating great bikes.

Having a different suspension from Specialized was also a consideration. We get many questions regarding suspension design in the shop, and it’s always fun talking about it, as it makes or breaks the bike!

Without going too deep, Specialized and Pivot both use a variant of 4 bar suspension. This maintains an independent drivetrain that can remain fully active but at the same time is not power robbing. But many companies use a type of 4 bar linkage, so it isn’t just having a certain type of squish, it’s how the linkage is set up, shocks are tuned, and frame geometry works into it all. In my experience having a company that understands these complex relationships and puts the resource into solving the issues that can come up yields a far better bike than those who do not.

The most important parts in the decision were though, do we like them and would we ride them? Are they exciting? Do they represent something different? Are they durable and built to hold up/ replacement parts are easy to get if needed? Yes!

We’ve been riding our Trail 429 bikes for a month now. They’re so much fun- (we’ll address the ride in a different post though). We have had some customers with older Pivots come in for some work. One of these customers wanted a suspension linkage part that they had beefed up to make the bike stiffer about 6 years ago. After an email we had that part on the way, which is really nice considering many companies do not keep parts around that long.

Part 2 of this ‘series’ regarding how the bikes ride will hit the website shortly.