Clever Standard's Clever Tools - Taipei Cycle Show 2024
This little injection molded kit snaps out of a frame and combines into a clever (sorry) tire plug kit. Super fun to build, and seems easy to use.
Tomo Ichikawa is a Japanese designer who makes (you guessed it) clever designs to solve some of mountain biking's most annoying issues—especially involving flats and chains. You'll find his designs across many different companies' catalogues, but Clever Standard is his own brand.
As Tomo graciously walked us through his product lineup, we couldn't help but laugh as "but wait, there's more" moments piled on top of each other. The way all of his products work with each other and build on the system is like grown up Lego for bike nerds and I absolutely love it.
Tomo has his products manufactured in Taiwan, often using recycled nylon from fishing nets reinforced with glass fibre. I really like this material, it's strong and resilient like nylon, but also incredibly stiff. Bonus that it's using recycled material.
Grown up Lego.
Once you snap out the parts and build this DIY plug tool it's very nice.
Storage for rocket plugs.
The plastic plugger is robust enough for long term use if you're careful, but there's an optional aluminum upgrade as well.
The rocket barb stays in the tire.
The Anchor Stack Net is a tubeless tire repair plugger that holds a spare link, has room for a bunch of preloaded barbs, and uses a captive plug plus bacon strip to seal a hole. The optional metal barbs are reuseable, although if you're careful you'll be able to reuse the plastic ones too.
Clever Standard's barbs fit on 2mm and 3mm allen keys for alternative plugging methods.
Modular plug options.
Tomo's aluminum TCS Rocket Plug kit is licensed by WTB.
But wait, there's more.
The Captain Hook is a valve cap that doubles as two different spoke key sizes as well as a valve core tool.
Use two to undo stubborn, gunked up valves.
The $8 Adaptool 2.0, licensed by Maxxis, adapts presta to schrader...
...but it also doubles as a valve tool to pull the valve core and maximize airflow for seating tubeless tires.
And still more.
The C02ools ratchet threads onto a new or spent C02 cartridge for full-size leverage on a tiny ratchet.
The $15 C02ools truing tool is a 3.23mm and 3.3mm spoke wrench, a disc brake truing wrench, and a tubeless tire plugger that uses 3.5mm plugs.
Oh wait, a bunch of his tools also fit into a spent 22.2mm lock-on grip for leverage.
And the ones that don't you can attach via an adapter that also has a bunch of functions I've forgotten. Sorry it's all a bit overwhelming.
You can buy Clever Standard's tools through their e-commerce site. The DIY Anchor Stack Net will be available in April and cost around $20 USD. The first batch of Captain Hook valve caps are waiting for anodizing but should be on the site soon as well; they will cost $8 USD for the pair. You can also follow Clever Standard on Facebook and Instagram.
Tomo Ichikawa, a clever guy.
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Loving all this tool content from great designers.
Ok. Now we get a flat and our tire is pressed between the ground and the sidewalls of the rim. Seems like there are two possible places for the barb to be:
1) out to the side, pinched between the layers of folded tire sidewall.
2) flopping around in the between the tire and rim’s center channel.
What am I missing?