Yeah there was some chat about it here earlier with several comments wondering what the point is of having an endurance bike that's so close to the Melee.
I think the consideration is different here for Enve than for most other manufacturers. We must remember that they entered the frameset market with full custom first:
https://enve.com/products/custom-road-deposit. And in addition to custom geometry that also offers "two unique personalities–Race and All Road". That sounds **very** similar to Melee/Fray to me.
If they were set up to do custom geometry and layup from the start then wouldn't that actually make it pretty easy to do a relaxed Melee (or a Melee/MOG crossover if that's what it ends up being)? And I imagine it wouldn't matter nearly as much if they only sold a handful of Frays in that instance. The wider customer appeal *as a whole-bike brand* would be worth way more than just the revenue brought in by the Fray itself.
I'm making some guesses way beyond my knowledge of frame manufacturing or Enve's unique processes here, but I look at the Fray and I just see a recognition that the whole Custom Road concept was a bit too ahead of its time and beyond the price tolerance of most customers, so they're throwing their weight behind the Melee/Fray off-the-shelf offerings instead. I know there are other differences (seatmast for example), but both Melee and Fray look to me like the mass-production (or at least batch production) versions of the Custom Road and I'd be shocked if the custom and production framesets used completely separate manufacturing processes.
TL;DR - I suspect Enve's manufacturing process is so easily adaptable that the biggest financial consideration of introducing a new model is just whether it can generate enough revenue to cover the admin/distribution of the additional SKUs.
