The Littlest Giant
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p>After my most recent trip to Taiwan (including a tour of the Giant Bicycles factory in Taichung county), I’ve been rather keen on Giant bikes. Having sold my old mtb over a year ago, I perused hardtails on Giant’s US webpage. I was a little disappointed to see that the carbon XTC SL frame in size small was a little too big for me.
Here at Bike Hugger, we try to keep it a secret, but the truth is that I stand just a bit shorter than the national average…if the nation is the Phillipines. For the US, I’m way shorter. But WTF? Giant is the archetypal Asian bike company. If German bike company Focus doesn’t make a frame my size, I could accept that, but I figure Giant should be on my side. More than that, they sell to the Asian markets; there’s gotta be a demand for shorty bikes.
So I did some digging online. I clicked back to Giant’s global page and then navigated to Giant Japan. The funny thing is that Giant in the states offers the XTC in S, M, and L, but in Japan they only offer XS, S, and M. And the XS size is exactly the geometry that I would want. I knew Japan was cooler than the US!
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Why didn’t I just check Giant’s Taiwan site? Because I can read more Japanese (really elementary stuff and bike-related terms) than Mandarin (ZERO). But I thought I may as well check Taiwan, since I’ve gone there more often than Japan the last few years. Head-snap what? Taiwan only lists a S and M. Well, that makes no sense to me.
Just to make sure, I checked Spain, and they get the XS-size all the way up to an XL. I’m not sure how I should interpret it all.
Bike Room Sin (Japanese retailer)
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