Flat White

Finally we've got a Slacker in the new Flat White colour built and photographed. Feast your eyes...

If you've been following Airdrop for a while, you may remember that we did a Fade 'flat white' limited edition a couple of years back. We only produced ten bikes and they all sold immediately. It was really nice, and I've kind of regretted that we didn't keep one ever since. When we got together to discuss options for the new batch of Slackers, we wanted to change things up a bit and Craig suggested an 'off white' type of colour. It was all the excuse we needed to bring Flat White back...

s...and here it is. We sampled the colour and the finish on a bit of tubing and of course we've seen the Fade before, but until now we haven't had the chance to see the whole frame put together. And it's turned out better than expected. Even Craig likes it, and he always has black bikes :-)

Just in case you're wondering about the finish, it's a matte powder coat. We've had such good results with powder finishes, it's our go-to now. Much harder wearing than wet paint. A bit heavier, a bit more expensive, but so much tougher, and the process emits fewer VOCs into the air. We've had it baked to a 50% matte finish so it's got that lovely soft sheen to it.

This is the new spec Slacker Park in Flat White. The 2024 Boxxer in the new Electric Red colour looks especially sweet with it. Some people will be wondering about red springs - its an obvious question really. We've got good news and bad news on that front. Firstly, Rockshox are now doing springs in 25lb (instead of 50lb) increments which is great, and we took the opportunity to order all the new spring weights. It'll allow for much better fine-tuning. But their initial intention to do the springs in the same Electric Red as the Boxxers hasn't quite materialised yet. Apparently it's coming soon. So we've gone with black springs all round, but if you really want a read one we might have one of the older 50lb increments in stock.

Nice little closeup showing the new Silencer chainstay protector. It's something we have been planning to do for years, but anything other than a proper injection-moulded, perfectly fitting one wasn't going to be good enough. So we had to build up to doing this which involved some quite expensive tooling. But we're glad we did it. 

We've produced a very. similar one for the new Edit MX and Edit 27.5 - although of course that's a slightly different size and shape. And for customers who bought a Slacker from batch one, we've ordered enough stock to do and aftermarket kit for you too. It'll be on the site next week at £35 for the kit, including a seatstay patch (which you can only just see in this picture). 

The Flat White frame seems to go pretty well with black. We decided to go with a black anodised rocker, which possibly doesn't show off the quality of the CNC finish as well as the silver one does, but altogether makes for a better colour combination. Especially when paired with a black head badge.

You're probably not wondering why we called it 'Flat White' because it's kinda obvious. But I'm gonna point it out anyway. I love a good Flat White. In fact I would go so far as to say I need a good Flat White, at least once a day. I'm not too much of a nerd about it, but I do like the process of making pretty much anything, and that extends to coffee. Plus I run a small business in the bike industry, which means I need caffeine to survive.

Anyway, there you have it. The Slacker in Flat White. You can buy one here.