You're making bikes that will hover around that 14 pound rate that have genuine built in comfort features that would have pushed bikes past 15-16-17 pounds trying to build that compliance or features in to just 5 years ago.
You have an excellent point there in that my bike (a precursor of your typical Gran Fondo bike if you like, the Kuota Kahn which I take you know but may not remember in detail) does not benefit from the latest tech in CF development.
I'm very confident that the latest developments in CF tech will eventually be implemented in CF rims as well.
In the mean time however we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place and it still begs for the question whether or not a small amount of vertical give a la box type rims would be detrimental or benificial to the pro rider as well.
I'm inclined to think so based on my own experiments but short of conclusive tests......
TA,