3 Sixty Degrees - A 20 year overnight success
Peter Hinds, the man behind the highly regarded 'X-treme' brand and now the inspiration for the new 3 Sixty° brand, has a pedigree that few can match when it comes to the research and design of high performance carbon fibre bicycle wheels. Peter's wheels have been ridden by some of the world's best pro cyclists and triathletes. These include Britain's Chris Hoy, a 4 x Gold Medallist in track cycling at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the late Jason MacIntyre, Australian cycling legend, Robbie McEwen, Germany's Eric Zabel, former World Triathlon and Duathlon Champion, Jackie Gallagher-Fairweather, Australian Olympian Loretta Harrop, and powerhouse Australian triathletes, Jason Shortis and Rebecca Keat, to name just a few.
Innovation driven by passion
When Peter started the 'X-treme' brand almost 20 years ago in 1989, it was a part-time venture driven by a love of cycling and competition. Working from a small workshop in Sydney's northern beaches, the former freestyle skiing champion was driven by a passion for improving performance through technological innovation. Without the backing of a large organisation or a big marketing budget, Peter was driven solely by an innate need to always find a better way of doing things. In 1994 Peter moved to the Gold Coast and for the next 12 years continued to build wheels that saw the X-treme brand sought after by discerning consumers, retailers and manufacturers alike.
Meeting a global demand
Unable to copy the technology behind Peter's wheels that made them the lightest and strongest available, more than a few market leaders sought to rebadge X-treme wheels as their own, while several major U.S. based bicycle manufacturers approached Peter to supply his wheels on their top models. A victim of the brand's own success, meeting such demand has always been a problem but 'selling out' the intellectual property rights to the highest bidder was never considered an option.
However, like nearly every other manufacturer of carbon fibre bicycle components, when presented with the dilemma of trying to meet a growing global demand for his wheels and the escalating costs of hand producing in Australia, in 2005 Peter outsourced production of the X-treme brand to a company in Taiwan. Shortly after Peter was approached to form a new partnership with a firm which had a majority of Taiwanese ownership. The new entity (X-treme Composites Hong Kong Ltd) operated under a license agreement using Peter’s intellectual property. Unlike most bicycle companies which are just marketing entities that buy 'open mould' product clones, re-badge them and then market them under different names, X-treme wheels were manufactured from 'closed moulds' designed and owned entirely by Peter Hinds. However, unhappy with the lack of quality control and the direction of X-treme Composites HK, which failed to fulfill its contractual obligations, Peter revoked the license agreement and in July 2008 walked away from the X-treme brand, taking only the intellectual property rights.
Project 3 Sixty° - 'back to the future of carbon fibre wheels'
Peter took the break from X-treme as an opportunity to start with a clean slate. Collaborating with the world's best aerodynamics engineers and using the latest in computer optimisation software and 3D modeling, 3 Sixty° has designed a completely new range of wheels that are built in Australia and represents the future of carbon fibre wheel technology. Peter is now back to doing what he does best, hand crafting high performance bicycle wheels for a global niche market of people who can tell the difference between 'high performance' and 'hype performance'.
It wasn’t long before athletes started to get some staggering results on the new 3 Sixty wheels. Like rising Ironman star Adam Holborow who came within a whisker of breaking the Port Macquarie Australian Ironman bike record! This was on a day that could be only described as having appalling weather conditions with variable wind and often driving rain.
For the record his time was a lighting fast 4.44.42 on what is one of the toughest IM courses out there.