Call it serendipity: a ride the other day, looking down at a rainbow-accented Ritchey WCS stem, wondering how they get away with it. After all, cycling’s governing body – the UCI – has historically taken a dim view of rainbow-adjacent branding, licensing its stripes to a select few partners (like Santini, or its Official Big Bobbly Hat supplier) and cracking down on uses beyond that.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out an answer. A day or two later, Ritchey published a post on Instagram, announcing that the company’s long-established WCS branding was being replaced due to the end of an agreement with the UCI. Going forward, the company’s well-regarded WCS (World Champion Series) componentry will feature a “uniform shade of metallic grey” where the rainbows used to sit – and just like that, one of the more enduring little design elements in the cycling industry comes to an end.
At a superficial level, it’s a pretty minor change. All other aspects of the components will remain the same; in fact, the more muted appearance may even broaden their aftermarket appeal – but the story of how it got to this point is an interesting one that speaks volumes about the UCI’s brand rigidity.
Ritchey’s WCS tier has been in existence since 1990 – five UCI presidents ago – with the company adopting the rainbow bands in homage to the achievements of the athletes it sponsored: riders like inaugural MTB World Cup champion Don Myrah, world champ and Olympic silver medallist Thomas Frischknecht, and more recent Ritchey-sponsored athletes like Nino Schurter and Jenny Rissveds.
The UCI, meanwhile, has used rainbow bands to denote world champions from 1927 onwards, something it says is a “a unique identifier of the UCI World Championships and of the UCI alone. The ‘Rainbow Stripes’ is a brand of the UCI and is perceived as such by the public.” In typical form, there’s a sternly written UCI PDF full of technical guidelines about how the rainbow bands can be used (and by whom) – everything from Pantone shades to proportions.
But there’s a kicker: a deeper dive into the UCI’s trademark of the rainbow bands shows that it was first granted on February 18, 2010, a full couple of decades after Ritchey began using them on its frames and components. By the letter of the law, Ritchey appears to have been in a pretty safe spot as the company’s usage was well-established long before the UCI’s trademark came into effect, but the UCI has become less permissive over the years as it has sought to protect its brand identities and bolster its licensing revenue.
Because of its earlier usage, Ritchey has never paid a fee to the UCI for use of the rainbows. “I will say [that] we used the colors before UCI really took ownership of the colors and began squeezing brands about its usage,” Ritchey’s US marketing manager Fergus Tanaka told Escape Collective. An attempt by the UCI to clamp down on Ritchey’s WCS stripes mid-last decade meant that the company tweaked its design to better comply with the UCI’s brand guidelines, leading to its latest iteration (pictured below).
After that, “they notified us about their intention to shore up any usage of the WC colors, but we were using them well before their actions – so that gave us some leverage,” Tanaka said. A “goodwill agreement” set in from that point, before the UCI finally called time on it, giving Ritchey until the end of 2024 to settle on a new, rainbow-free design.
It’s a knotty issue; Ritchey’s application of the rainbow bands seems fair, but continuing to pursue the usage of them when the other party no longer wants to play along put both parties on what was likely a collision course. “We attempted to negotiate to use the stripes longer, but in the end realised we were in a place where we needed to move on and evolve away from that relationship,” Tanaka said.
Ritchey’s rainbow stripes have now been discontinued on all new production of products – a move that affects not just the company’s WCS-level componentry (which includes stems, seatposts, handlebars, and wheelsets) but also all of its frames, which previously featured a rainbow logo in a seat tube graphic denoting Ritchey’s ‘Logic Tubing’. According to a company statement, “some WCS products in Ritchey’s stock still have the former logo” as it sells through its existing stock, so if you’re a rainbow enthusiast now’s the time to roll the dice.
From Ritchey’s public statements, it seems a bittersweet moment, and one that the company is taking a high-minded approach to, “acknowledg[ing] the decades-long partnership and thank[ing] the UCI for the use of the celebrated symbol.” It ties into the shifting nature of the company too, over the years, which Ritchey says “has evolved beyond pure racing as our ethos”. The discontinuation of the rainbow bands “transcend[s] the limitations imposed by a singular focus on competition”, a company statement reads. Nice platitudes at the end of an era.
For what it’s worth, the new grey branding looks nice, and all things come to an end eventually. But for all the grace that Ritchey’s shown through the process, I will still look down at the rainbow stripes on my WCS components and be a little bit sad that bike parts are now just a little bit more monochromatic thanks to the UCI’s trademark attorneys.
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