What was the story behind it?
Why did he leave them?
I don’t feel like posting the whole story, but basically, he contracts out his unicycles to manufacturers in Taiwan. They build them all, them ship them here under his company’s name (except for the KH pro’s, which were made in Canada).
During the initial manufacturing stages, they did a run of unicyces that had a frame that was way too heavy and overbuilt. Kris rejected them and asked for another redesign. So now they had a bunch of unicycles with no company to sell them. Summit bought them, and that’s where the summit unicycle comes from. It wasn’t really a fiasco so much as a mistake. It did give you an idea of how much unicycle.com marks them up, though. Back when both were for sale, in theory you could buy a summit, then sell the frame back to them and buy a KH, all for a price of around $300. I tried, however, and they said no.
I would speculate that those unicycles cost around $50-$100 to make, another $20 to ship, and then maybe another $20 in distribution. However there are enough middlemen, etc, that the base price for unicycle.com or Darren could be as high as $250. Doubtful, though.
The whole fiasco was:
They were both orange, everyone called the Summit a ripoff of the KH and badmouthed it, then Summits died off and now everyone wants them, so they can be cool…
if i remember right, there were around 350 to 400 Summits sold then they were gone. Mine went to Steve Howard.