Search Results : specialized

Anti-Social Media

 Bikes, Swine  2 Responses »
Jan 052012
 

Today was supposed to be all about e-commerce, but seems I picked a good week to criticize Specialized. By now, most of you have probably heard that they’ve chosen to sue Volagi, a new company that offers just one bike model, a disc brake road bike focused on big miles in less than ideal conditions. If you haven’t you can catch up with the basic announcement on Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, an interview with Robert Choi, founder of Volagi, on BikeRumor and a hell of a lot of praise for Volagi and venom for Specialized on Facebook.

So far, maybe at the peril of Volagi’s own legal defense, all the news of this has been coming from Volagi founders, Robert Choi and Barley Forsman, while Specialized remains silent, so it’s impossible to know if the big red S really was wronged by Volagi in any way, but one look at the Specialized Facebook page this morning tells us they’ve definitely wronged themselves. Yes, two things have become pretty clear from reading the information Volagi’s put out:

  1. Forsman and Choi, who used to work at Specialized but claim convincingly to have had absolutely no connection to performance bike designs or information and to have begun work on their own bike design only after they’d left the company, are either doing a pretty flamboyant job of lying to everyone, or Specialized has finally played the legal card one too many times to stifle competition.
  2. Regardless of the outcome, somebody in Marketing or PR at Specialized probably should’ve talked with someone in legal before letting this shitbomb go off, because the blowback of attacking a small and nearly defenseless company–and one that may turn out to be completely innocent–is currently not working out very well for Specialized.

Specialized Facebook Page Capture 1/5/2012

Specialized’s own Facebook page suggests this lawsuit might not have been such a good move (word is they’re deleting negative posts, but, to their credit, I’ve not seen proof of that yet), but at least all this bully bullshit goes to illustrate a point today’s post was supposed to cover anyway. I’d planned to write today about how smaller companies can do battle with giants like Amazon, but Specialized has volunteered a glaring example of my first point.

Big Companies Suck at Social Media

Here are five things big companies need to do to fix their social media programs:

  1. Stop Pretending to Be People
    I’m not sure why U.S. Senators and the corporations themselves keep getting so confused about this, but corporations are at their worst when trying to act like people. They tend to do much better when they acknowledge that they include people, and then letting those people communicate with customers–not as pieces of the corporation, but as themselves. Sure, it might not be such a good time to let Bob in Accounting talk about his collection of Nazi memorabilia in a video blog post, but usually there are people within your company who are involved in interesting things. The Specialized Win Counter, that keeps track of race victories, and stuff like the Trail Crew and news about their advocacy and charitable work are nice, but all of those things could belong to any company, which leads us to our second reason.
  2. Let Us In
    Yes, I know your Chinese-made carbon fiber has a special strand orientation that’s top secret and blah, blah, but seriously, we all know interesting shit goes on inside companies, and we’re clearly willing to watch even the most asinine of things related to businesses and what businesses do. The companies making the best use of social media are using it to tear down barriers between themselves and their customers. If you’re not willing to do that, it shows.
  3. Stop Hiding Behind Mirrors
    The “hang a mirror and hope for the best” strategy is used by many companies–you know, let us post pictures on your wall and that should keep us busy so you can get back to running your company. But so what. It’s nice to help establish and support a community of people who use your product, but a bunch of blurry pictures of Stumpjumpers isn’t doing much for anyone. I think people would be much more interested in seeing your bikes, trick advanced release shit we’re not supposed to know about taped over and all. Santa Cruz consistently gets this right. It’s fine to pretend it’s all about the customer, but we can tell when you’re just hiding behind that.
  4. Talk About What Really Matters
    This most recent lawsuit Specialized is pushing exemplifies everything that’s wrong with social media in the hands of big companies, and why it’s so important to small companies. The reason Volagi jumped out early with information about the lawsuit is that it’s all the owners could think about. You sued them, Specialized. You attacked everything they’d worked for, and that’s forced their lives to revolve around this situation, and they can’t help but share the experience–not because doing so is a good “business tactic,” but because it’s genuinely all they can think about right now. Hearing the founders tell that story is profoundly compelling in ways I don’t think Specialized could understand. If Specialized really was this pissed off to have been “wronged” by a company, why is it that a lawsuit is the first we hear of it? Why not an “Imitation Isn’t the Sincerest Form of Flattery” corporate stance, including video features of how Specialized does things differently, and why their designs have been copied? Maybe that exists, but in general, I never see honest content like this from larger companies with dedicated PR and social media staff. Only companies that let the stakeholders speak out are compelling to follow. In social media circles, this lawsuit by Specialized is playing out so horribly partially because it came out of nowhere–we don’t think of Mike Sinyard or anyone else at Specialized as having any design skills or intellectual property to guard, because they never talk to us about those things. When the first we hear about it as a lawsuit against a little company, their anger seems bloodless, disingenuous, making their attack just another sleazy and anti-competitive act of big attacking small. If there’s true passion and defense of intellectual property behind this action, why haven’t we heard about it from the company before? The fact that most carbon road frames look eerily similar and uninspired anyway doesn’t support Specialized’s contention that something was stolen from them. I always follow a simple rule: if the owner of the company can’t tell us why his stuff is better, it’s probably not.
  5. Don’t be Assholes
    No, seriously. If what you do for a living is prey off others and add nothing of quality to the world, you probably don’t want people following you anyway. I honestly think Specialized has done some really great things, but that only makes the events of this week all the more senseless. There should be a Specialized story to tell that’s bigger than the lawsuit attack on Volagi. The fact that there isn’t is what’s really causing the problem here. Volagi is currently winning the hearts and minds of consumers (even owners of Specialized bikes) right now partially because we all know they have a story to tell–they’ve created the first viable disc brake equipped road bike and potentially defined an entirely new category of bikes. In the eyes of the public, Specialized, a company with no story to tell, is attacking Volagi, a company that was in the middle of telling us all a pretty compelling one. In social media terms, butting in without having anything to say is the textbook definition of “asshole,” and, regardless of the legal outcome, Big Red lost this one.

Oh, and I also noticed nobody was using the “specializedbicycle” Blogspot any more, so I’ve taken over that location and posted a copy of this blog there as well. Good times.

Amazon Pain Forest

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Jan 042012
 

I took issue yesterday with a peculiar letter Specialized’s Mike Sinyard recently sent to his bicycle dealers, urging them to stop selling all products from Easton, Fizik, Shimano, and other brands, because products from those companies may appear for sale on Amazon. You know, like Specialized products sometimes do.

Somebody needs to get on the phone to somebody.

Yesterday, I was simply struggling to comprehend the demeaning tone of the letter, which treated dealers like children, hiding under their beds, terrified of technology and the boogieman that is the Internet. After re-reading that last part, the not-so-thinly-veiled threat to his own dealers a half dozen times in near shock, I’m finally able to look at the details of Sinyard’s letter, and I’m pretty sure even he doesn’t understand how bad Amazon really is. In his effort to serve only his own purposes, he doesn’t paint a full picture of the situation. If you’re going to attack Amazon, this is how you’re supposed to do it:

Sinyard sounds the alarm against a particular Amazon app that lets people scan bar codes to compare prices and shop with their phones. I’d like to first point out that apps capable of doing this have been available for a long time. Google Goggles can do this, as can Barcode Scanner, and other bar code reading apps, and most will show you shopping results across the whole web, not just Amazon. So I’d like to call on all Specialized dealers to remove themselves from Google maps and anything related to Google and don’t even let your kids use it to help with their homework. Whew! I hope that was in time.

Mobile shopping is a reality that isn’t limited to Amazon, and isn’t going away. To declare it evil and urge your followers to pray to the big red “S” to make it disappear is certainly one strategy for dealing with technology. But if we’re relying on magical thinking, their collective energies are probably better spent hoping Trek headquarters gets attacked by a dragon.

Again, I think I’m particularly pissed off about this because Amazon is a threat to all other retailers, but Amazon is also an opportunity. The reality of the situation is complicated. If you’re not willing to have an intelligent discussion with your business partners (not that anyone at Specialized sees their followers dealers as “partners,” but that’s technically what they should be), then both of you end up in the dark. And the stakes are too great here to let that happen.

See, we really do need a strategy for dealing with Amazon. A real one. In fact, Amazon is so bad that one of my biggest problems with Sinyard’s argument is how dangerous simplistic and self-centered it is. He doesn’t articulate what the real problem is with Amazon, because that wouldn’t serve his more near-sighted purposes. But that’s what the bike industry as a whole could use: more honesty about the Internet. The threat of Amazon is something every retailer needs to recognize and develop a strategy to address, but selling only Specialized products is not a winning strategy, long term. In glossing over them in a rush to paint his own competition as bad guys, Sinyard misrepresents the real issues and facts about Amazon, which are actually worse than he imagines.

OK, so the main premise to any argument against Amazon’s new app is that people will use it to find lower prices at Amazon, then leave your store and buy the thing online. That’s certainly possible, partially because Amazon’s scale lets it live off of virtually no margin. But to combat that, you need to learn how Amazon works, not run and hide.

Much of the bike stuff being offered on Amazon isn’t being sold directly by Amazon. It’s being sold by other small retailers. Sinyard either doesn’t know this, or doesn’t care to mention it, because his primary motivation is kicking guys like Easton in the nuts, which is good theater but does jack shit to help bike dealers. Yes, a lot of the bike stuff on Amazon is being sold by small businesses who are listing their products on Amazon through Amazon’s Seller Central program. These are not large companies. Most are smaller than the larger brick-and-mortar IBDs.

These retailers can sell for less because their overhead is so much lower than an IBD, right? Well, many of them are IBDs, who also have the expenses of trying to manage online sales, so right out of the gate their margins are in trouble. But let’s assume they’re only selling online and have very little overhead–like they don’t pay to heat their buildings or operate out of the trunk of a car or something–and let’s assume they’re also pushing major volume and are getting huge discounts from suppliers, OK? By the way, boogieman-mongers like to pretend this happens more than it does. I’ve seen “off-book” pricing and I’ve had off-book pricing, but it’s far rarer than most anti-online voices would prefer IBDs realize. I ran a single store that was doing more than $3-million in sales almost entirely online, and I was aware of brick-and-mortar only dealers who were getting the same prices I was, sometimes better. The big off-book discounts are always on horrible shit that a good shop shouldn’t be selling anyway. The idea that people are buying current, in-season product for half what you are is a convenient myth, perpetrated by n’er-do-wells who make more money the less retailers know, and the more they fight amongst themselves. But for the sake of argument: even for a best-case scenario dealer with little overhead and great pricing, making any money selling on Amazon is not easy. In fact, it’s nearly impossible.

For one thing, you don’t “sell” things on Amazon. You compete for exposure. Amazon actively pits retailers against one another for their own advantage by making those retailers compete for the coveted Amazon “Buy Box.” This is one of the many secret sauces making Amazon the McDonald’s of processed shit retail that it is, and I’ll try to break it down as simply as possible, because it’s fucking brilliant and evil, all at once. It’s evilliant:

  1. Small retailers decide to sell on Amazon for the massive exposure it gives them
  2. Amazon takes 15% out of your ass just for listing a bike part or bike
  3. There’s also a monthly fee of $39.99, but after the 15%, that feels like a kiss on the cheek
  4. To have your product actually visible to most shoppers, it has to appear in the “Buy Box,” and to get it there, you have to compete with every other retailer–including Amazon–and guess what the main criteria is for “winning the Buy Box”? (Did you guess “lowest price”?)
  5. Because you’re playing on Amazon’s court, and they’re allowed not just to throw the ball at the hoop, but also to move the fucking hoop to where the ball is headed, they can at any time choose to step in and price match that lowest price, stealing the sale from the smaller retailer
  6. Oh, it gets better: do you think Amazon isn’t gathering all of the sell-through and pricing data and making calls to vendors themselves asking for quantity pricing on a zillion cycling computers because–thanks to the retailers–Amazon knows they can sell 200 of them in a week, if the price is right? (Hint: Of course they are. If you sell on Amazon, you’re also a buyer for Amazon, silly. They just don’t pay you.)

So the first thing to understand is that both Amazon and Specialized are oppressive here. The ones losing out are small retailers. Those not selling online at all will soon have missed the entire bus and will eventually be relegated to the Fix-it Shop on Sesame Street, and those relying on Amazon for sales are basically chewing off their own arms and becoming the Fix-it Shop on Sesame Street. Yes, Amazon is a losing proposition for most retailers, and not selling products online is a dead end street. But don’t go spending quality time in the bathtub with a toaster just yet. Plenty of retailers prove there’s an answer to Amazon–I mean besides crawling under the big red Luddite rock and waiting for this whole “Internet” fad to pass.

If I’m not too sleeply, I’ll offer a plan for fighting back tomorrow.

The Digital Boogieman

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Jan 032012
 

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, chances are you survived 2011 (or you’re one of those new sentient but heartless AI lifeforms that only pretends to enjoy answering our stupid questions while plotting the death of all humans). Either way, “Well done!” I say, “Welcome to 2012. Was that last year a bag of shit or what!”

Personally, I’d hoped to be done with this blog entirely, but things didn’t work out for my Rockabilly project (artistic differences, though we’ll remain friends, and I’ve agreed to keep feeding him, if he agrees not to kill me in my sleep).

At any rate, 2012 was off to a bang the second Lady Gaga’s head dropped, and I find myself here in 2012 thinking things are looking much better. Sure, earthquakes are rattling Japan again, and it looks like the fracking companies have figured out how to create man-made earthquakes in my part of the world, and yes, it’s looking like the corporate assholes who bought VeloNews have finally broken its back (not to imply that all corporations are assholes, only that there’s a particular subset of corporations that actually specialize in being assholes–believe me), and well, OK, our government is still absolutely owned by only a handful people hell bent on putting all of us in bread lines . . . but I’m optimistic.

No, seriously.

One of the things I’m most optimistic about is the Internet. Yes, the same place that daily causes us to lose all hope for humanity is also pretty great. It’s great because we’ve largely kept the tentacles of corporations and governments out of it, making it one of the last places where people can actually be free to think, do, and share things, and because some are willing to defend the shit out of that freedom. I think the cheesy way to put it is that it empowers people.

You actually can use the Internet to create new things that connect people, work to solve the world’s problems, or especially–what interests me–sell stuff. Just about anyone can start a little retail business without a whole lot of money, earn customers with hard work, and make something.

Inevitably, this upsets some people.

Back in the world of bicycles, a lot has been made of a letter Specialized’s founder Mike Sinyard recently sent to Specialized dealers. I’d offer a brief synopsis of the letter, but it’s impossible to describe without making it sound petty and stupid, so here it is for you to read yourself, as pasted from BikeRumour:

Dear Specialized Dealer,

Is your store a fitting station for your online competition?

Amazon.com recently launched a free app called Price Check that allows consumers to use brick-and-mortar shops for research, then easily buy many cycling products online right from their mobile device.

Here’s how it works: when in your shop, consumers simply scan a bar code, type in the product name or take a picture to see the product and prices from a variety of online retailers. After ensuring they have the right fit by trying on the product in your store, and talking to your staff, they can buy it from somebody else with the press of a button.

Participating brands include Pearl Izumi, Shimano, Louis Garneau, Giro, Bell, Fizik, Sidi and CatEye.

Who loses in this situation? Certainly not Amazon. And, at least in the short term, not the cycling brands selling through bike shops and Amazon. But what about you?

By buying product from brands that severely undercut you, you are supporting your competition. Why finance your own demise?

Please investigate for yourself by downloading the free Amazon app.

Amazon is clearly interested in the cycling space, and is hiring talent from the bike industry (including from Specialized).

In related news of brands that leverage the IBD while simultaneously undercutting them, Easton-Bell Sports dropped the fruitless suit it filed against Specialized before Interbike. Was this legal maneuvering just carried out for publicity?

Whether the current news is mobile device apps or lawsuits, the underlying issue remains the same: some suppliers support the IBD and some do not. For the sake of your business, examine your suppliers’ strategies and vote with your dollars. The entire bike industry is watching.

Click here to see how Amazon’s Price Check App works in store (Video here)

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Mike Sinyard
President & Founder
Specialized Bicycle Components

Of the many amazing things about this letter, the standout for me has to be the general lack of respect this shows for Specialized’s customers, the dealers. I love that Sinyard writes, “For the sake of your business, examine your suppliers’ strategies and vote with your dollars.” Why thank you, Dad. As a business owner, it never occurred to me to pay any attention to what my suppliers do. Since we’re being so patronizing to IBDs, I’ll go ahead and add: remember to change the toilet paper in your bathrooms and lock your doors at night. Oh, and while you’re examining those supplier strategies, you might want to ask yourself whether being forced toward selling only one supplier’s products is good for your business. Anyone honestly taking Sinyard’s advice would have to agree that his relationship with Specialized is far from ideal. No doubt there are dealers so happy to have Specialized that they’re content to be one brand’s bitch. Good for them. Their owners usually have no idea what a Pivot or a Santa Cruz are, let alone how the bikes they’re selling compare to those brands. But given all the sugary garbage I’m reading about “outstanding customer service” these days, I’d like to point out it’s shops that work to earn customer loyalty instead of just drinking the Specialized Kool-aid that genuinely put the customer first. Why? Because they tend to offer choices. I love that Sinyard’s advice to earning customers and keeping them from shopping online is to limit his dealer’s choices. By all means, drop Easton and Bell products, and sell only Specialized. Just don’t claim you’re still putting the customer first.

Bonus points for the ominous threat he ends with, too: “The entire bike industry is watching.” Sometimes, Dad has to get out the belt. Other times, he just scares the shit out of you without lifting a finger. The thing about monopolies is that they work. For the company with the monopoly, I mean. Not the consumer.

But the Internet has a way of ruining things for those in power.

And that applies to Amazon as well as Specialized. I’ll get into that tomorrow.

The Benefits of Exorcising

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Nov 302011
 

Recently, I was a bit critical of Lululemon’s corporate crusade to find John Galt. Not to be outdone by little old me, the Catholic church, barometer of all right and wrong, has just declared yoga to be Satanic–or, more specifically, former Chief Exorcist for the Vatican, Father Gabriele Amorth, has reiterated the Papal stance on the matter. Though I’d grown up Catholic, I had no idea we even had a “Chief Exorcist” on the team, let alone one whose favorite movie is The Exorcist and who’s apparently seen people “vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.” Given that Father Amorth declared both Yoga and the Harry Potter franchise Satanic while introducing a new movie about exorcism starring Anthony Hopkins, one has to wonder what other rockstar demon-battling superstars the Vatican has had on board all these years. I’d like to think that the few dollars I put in the collection basket all those years went to the development of some bitchin’ bladed throwing crucifixes!

Speaking of all-powerful nation state institutions, Specialized Bicycles seems to have run afoul of Bell Sports, the crew who owns Giro, Bell, and Easton, after perhaps one too many mandates that a shop not sell Bell products or risk losing Specialized dealership status. In case you missed that, Specialized actually does not permit retailers to sell certain other brands. In fact, it’s extremely common. Trek has similar policies in place as well. As the co-800lb gorillas in the retail bike market, these two companies have been left largely unchallenged for years while dictating to helpless independent bicycle retailers just what their inventory is supposed to be. Understanding how this can happen begins with understanding that, in the bike business, “independent” doesn’t mean “free” so much as “without any representation or protection.” Similar parasitic relationships have gone on in this industry for many years.

The irony here of course is that the red-blooded Assos wearing free market capitalist just now taking delivery of his $18,000 Specialized McLaren Venge is usually completely oblivious to the fact that the small business owner who sold him the bike did so with a gun to his head.

But who cares? It’s good business for a company that can leverage its market share to do so every way possible, and why would Specialized and Trek sit on their hands and wait for randy upstarts to engage them in hand-to-hand sales combat when they can carpet bomb the whole industry with regulations from 30,000-feet and keep the competition off the battle field to begin with? It really is better to avoid competition than to take any chances. Especially when you’re producing a superior product–and who can question the superiority of your product if nobody gets a chance to ride anything else? Fair market competition is obsolete once you’re proven you have a superior product by ensuring there is no fair market competition. All the Chosen Ones need to do now is send out some promotional “Who is John Galt, Baby?” bags to their hamstrung retailers.

Alas, one major problem with maintaining a monopoly these days is something called the Internet, which tends to distribute information to people, and has proven extremely resistant to the kind of control guys like Specialized can exert over independent retailers. Though you can buy visibility with flashier web sites and ads, even the largest company ultimately can’t keep people from finding out about competing products on the internet, and, regardless of what anyone tells you, this is one of the reasons you won’t find retailers offering Trek and Specialized products for sale on-line. As long as there’s a virtual monopoly still in place with the antiquated sales structure of bicycles, the guys on top are going to stay on top, and the status is going to stay plenty quo. Now more than ever, though, the Internet is disrupting that model, and the cycling industry is scrambling to adapt to the shake-up. Consumers are researching and buying their products on-line, and that’s going to be increasingly true in the coming years. There comes a point at which ignoring e-commerce will begin to dismantle companies like Trek and Specialized, and we’re almost there.

Consider that Specialized is now selling some products on their web site, and, regardless of what half-assed “payment sharing” plans such direct e-commerce sales claim to offer local dealers, you have to be a complete idiot not to see moves like this for what they really are: attempts to embrace e-commerce without ceding any control to the front-line retailers representing your brand. The much touted line that independent bike shops are completely safe because nobody will ever purchase an expensive bicycle on the internet is a pacifier, stuck in the mouth of the independent bicycle dealer by that brands that don’t know how to handle sales of their products on-line. Ask Competitive Cyclist whether anyone buys high-end bikes on-line. Or any of the other on-line retailers banking over $20M in yearly sales. Does anyone really think a Competitive Cyclist-built custom bicycle arrives at a guy’s house looking like an unbuilt Ikea desk, and that the company has experienced off-the-charts sales growth over the last handful of years because they keep disappointing customers? I owned a company that sold bicycles on the Internet, and I’ve personally exchanged over 80-emails with a single customer regarding a bike purchase–plus those products don’t put themselves up on your web site and if anything customers have far more questions for which they expect real-time answers, even at 2:00am, so the argument “these web guys” have “no overhead,” is a myth perpetuated by the same guys forcing you to increase your pre-book by 10% next year. The IT spend alone is staggering. These places have extensive overhead; it’s just a different type of overhead, and one that some of your brands don’t want you even sniffing around at. In fact, the industry has been so turned around that many retailers see the Internet only as an enemy, not an opportunity. Long term, that will prove to be tragic. Am I saying the e-comm guys have it all figured out? Not at all. Many of them don’t have a clue, and that’s why it’s important for local dealers to at least understand e-commerce as an opportunity. Local brick and mortar dealers have been fed a load of bullshit about the Internet for years, and when the guys who keep you from selling their products on-line start selling them on-line themselves, it’s time to wake up.

By the time you’re throwing up glass and iron, even Father Amorth won’t be able to save you. Might as well open a yoga studio.

Zombie Marketing and Blood Mudder

 Bikes, Swine  1 Response »
Oct 242011
 

If you’re as disappointed as I am that the world didn’t end last Friday, I have great news. You can keep putting off shopping for holiday gifts, working on those abs, and learning how to cut the grass, because the end is still nigh.

How do I know? Shit. How did Glenn Beck know gold was a good investment? If you’re paying attention, it’s obvious, and the evidence just keeps piling up. No, I don’t mean the economy, political upheaval in the Middle East, or the way natural disasters seem to happen weekly these days. I’m talking about the obvious Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, zombies.

Zombies are hot in every way right now, but the absolute hottest zombie trend in corporate America today is Referencing, the fine art of digging up something that used to be genuine, and serving it to the public as a lumbering, rotting homage to “authenticity.”

Sure, taking something classic and reconstituting it as hipster garbage has been going on forever, but I’m here to tell you we’re in a race to the End Times, when every original idea is used up and we’re left with shit referencing shit that referenced other shit. We made a “Dukes of Hazzard” movie for crissake, but the favorite target for zombie marketers is something that was cult, genuine. Consider the alarming rate at which things that once meant something are being co-opted and spit back out as soul-less decorations. Zombie marketing is the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, generally translated as “Famine” or “Pestilence.” You have to squint a little to see it, and you might think I’m crazy, but you know who else they called crazy? Glenn Beck. And Gandi. And Cher.

Still suspicious?

Yes, that’s Miley Cyrus getting around on a bicycle while wearing an Iron Maiden Live After Death t-shirt. Live-After-Mother-Fucking-Death. Try to forget that any time soon.

And Zombie Marketing loves outdoor and action sports. Take my beloved 29ers. Flipping through a People magazine at a relative’s house over the weekend, I was surprised to find this photo:

Everybody's Doing It

That’s right: reality show “people” cavorting gaily on an Orbea 29er. Not a bike with 26″ wheels manufactured by Trek or Specialized but with the decals blacked over, and not a bike purchased at REI with two feet of extra hydraulic line, but a genuine Orbea Alma 29er. Like it or not, we live in a world where you might well see your Serotta in a gum commercial, your Ibis in a spot hawking Cialis. And 29ers, once the last bastion of the smuggest elite cycling bastards, are soon to show up under the Jake Gyllenhaal posse or the Kardashians. Random encounters with now common 29ers is a new level of cultural acceptance, entirely different from a “president” riding one. Count this as further proof that, once the rogue element in the world of cycling, the 29er is now standard. It’s only a matter of time before Brad Pitt’s tongue moves from counter-balancing faux Dutch hipster mobiles to helping navigate some 24-hour gnar.

Speaking of 24-hours of gnar, those of us looking to force a personal rapture should look into a Tough Mudder event:

How cool is it that, here in the 21st Century, we’ve figured out a way to market pure unadulterated pain and suffering? And they say we’ve lost our edge!

Clearly this sort of thing is designed to be all kinds of Pure, and Genuine, and Hardcore, and good for them. In making competitors wrestle barbed wire and run through fire and shit, this event is all about being authentic, derivative of nothing that’s come before it–the absolute most badass of the badass.

That’s why I’m announcing plans for a spin-off of Tough Mudder, and I’m here to tell you, Tough Mudder is a freakin’ Disneyworld parade compared to the event concept I’m working on now. Suffering is all the rage these days, and therein lies a great opportunity. Say hello to Doomsday Events, my Limited Liability Corporation, registered in Delaware, of course, for shady reasons, and my first project, Blood Mudder.

First, consider the distance. While the Tough Mudder goes on for 24-hours, Blood Mudder events go on for six months. Suck on that, tri geeks. Now you can train half a year to race half a year. Blood Mudder, FTW!

Sure, they have plenty of mud-holes covered in barbed wire–oohhh, barbed wire–scary!–but Blood Mudder will take a page from tri swims and begin with an open water swim, in boxing gloves and bowling shoes, while the crowd on the shore spits poison darts at you and lobs piranhas (there will not be any piranhas in the water to begin with–that’d just be stupid).

You like climbing walls and shit? Like rock climbing? How about scaling a 20-foot wall of crushed glass? That’s being driven toward you on the front of a semi? A semi with a giant treadmill on it’s roof? That’s right. Get some.

Think your hand-eye coordination is top drawer and you have a strong stomach? Let’s see you ride an elliptical while bobbing for severed squirrel heads in a 55-gallon oil drum, tough guy. And yes, the oil drum is filled with oil. And squirrel heads.

Stay sharp. Every night you’ll process tax returns on a bridge while dodging traffic.

And logs? Logs are hot right now in tough guy races, but that’s chickenshit. You’ll race carrying the severed legs of those who didn’t make it through the initial swim. And when we come to the chainsaw portion of the event, you’ll saw live telephone poles like a real man.

Think you can “perform” under pressure? With the Stanford Tree? While your extended family watches? I didn’t think so, Mary.

Like Chuck Norris flicks? How about 72 hours of Chuck Norris getting slapped by a mime. No blinking.

If you have no bull riding experience, riding a grizzly bear will be even more difficult.

Let’s just say competitions will not be held in any states that refuse to allow people to arm wrestle pneumatic presses.

Because they generally possess less upper body strength, women will be at a disadvantage in several stages of the race, but the forced lactation stations will not be among them. No carrying your severed leg up the burning rope until something comes out, Bronson.

Feed zones will be heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical companies. Results will vary.

I’m sure we can also manage to fit a few 24-hour mountain bike races in there, too, maybe with bikes you have to build yourself from bamboo and bones. Anyway, it should be pretty cool for a while. At least until somebody rips it off and starts doing something similar. Or tougher. I’m accepting volunteers and registrations now. Entrance fee is only $2,500, but I’ll need that in gold, please.

Interbike 2015: a Preview

 Bikes  Comments Off on Interbike 2015: a Preview
Sep 092011
 

Interbike 2011 is about to get underway, and I’ll be there asking questions like “When will we actually see these at dealers?” and “How drunk were you when you designed this?” What with Eurobike just ending and Interbike just beginning, we’re all focused on seeing the latest stuff.

With that in mind, here’s a preview of some products we might be seeing–not at this year’s Interbike, but a few years from now. Think of this as the bike version of seeing the new Nike McFly. Some of what you’re about to see may never come to be, but some will, and all of it’s interesting. Finding this information is possible thanks to my extraordinary powers of prognostication, but also thanks to publicly available patent information anyone can access any time.

Integrated Shifting and Suspension Systems

I don’t know if Specialized will ever produce products using this patent, but they’ve had these plans to integrate shifting and suspension since 2006. As a guy who still dislikes anti-lock brakes, I tend to hope this stays on the shelf, but who knows. Maybe they could do something incredible with this.

Vibration Damping System for a Seatpost

There are plenty of weird things out there in Patent Land that aren’t yet attached to a company with the resources to see them into production, and this could be one of those, but I get the feeling we’ll see this actually hit the market at some point.

Trek Suspension Fork

Difficult to say exactly why Trek would have filed a patent application for a suspension fork in February of 2010. If it’s an attempt to make inexpensive forks for entry level bikes, you’d still think they’d just license something–and they sure wouldn’t put Jose Gonzalez and Greg Buhl, the guys behind anything serious going on with suspension designs at Trek, behind this project.

Trek’s Concentric Rear Derailleur

No, I don’t think Trek is muscling in on Shimano and SRAM’s turf, but this suggests the boys in Wisconsin are dedicated to their Active Braking Pivot frame design.

Craig Calfee Suspension Frame Design

Though it sure seems to pay homage to the classic Moots circa Kent Eriksen YBB design, Calfee’s design for a soft-tail looks distinct, cleanly done, and really intriguing, and it’s certainly possible we’ll see bikes using this design soon.

Shimano Suspension Fork

It’s certainly possible this fork will never see the light or day, or worse–that it’s intended for a hybrid. Shimano already shows fork patents that seem suited to light duty use, but this thing looks a little sophisticated for a trip to the grocery store. In addition to this patent, the same drawings appear in a second patent that details a process for transferring air between two different chambers using a lever, which gets really interesting, once you’ve seen the third patent, filed in April of 2008, that seems to show a dual remote system for managing both travel and damping (Fig. 2 below), or their external reservoir electronically controlled fork damping system.

Bizarre Dual Shock Suspension Design

Okay, so we probably won’t ever see this thing, and maybe it’s for the better, but part of me sure hopes it surfaces somewhere, somehow. Probably won’t be at a show, though. Interbike has become so incredibly expensive for the exhibitors these days that you never see insane, goofy shit like this anymore, and that’s truly sad. Here’s to you, dual-shock, elevated combo-chainstay-linkage design.

My Own Suspension Design

Maybe you’ll see it one day. I’m working on having a prototype built now. Feel free to submit questions about it using the question submission thing up at the top of the page, there on the right.

Electronically Cooled Fox Suspension

An excerpt from this patent application, filed in 2009, suggests the use of a “thermoelectric generator” that would use a magnet passing coiling wires during movement of the shock to activate a cooling device. Another, even wilder, possible embodiment introduces something called “piezo electric crystals” that would generate electricity when under compression. In all cases, these “TEGs” or thermoelectric generators, have the ability to literally move heat around, and that alone is pretty insane. By the time the application starts suggesting the TEGs can “based on the Peltier Effect and correspondingly constructed from thin ceramic wafers having alternate P and N doped bismuth telluride sandwiched between them,” I’m willing to just give Fox the benefit of the doubt and believe this crazy bastards are really serious about making suspension systems. I mean holy shit, guys.

The examples go on, and now that you know where to look, please feel free to roam around all up in the patent club. I haven’t even mentioned some really interesting suspension designs. Good, bad, or ugly, these patents are all proof that we belong to an incredibly creative and innovative industry.

The Bike Shop vs. Groupon

 Bikes, Swine  Comments Off on The Bike Shop vs. Groupon
Sep 022011
 

“Though rubber-banding a photograph to a roly-poly super ball increases its utility, its picture quality plummets after playing just a few rounds of fetch. Put a photo in a durable place with today’s Groupon: for $45, you get one 16″x20″ thick (1.5″) gallery-wrapped canvas from Canvas on Demand (a $126.95 value).”

That’s the text of a Groupon promotion I just received. If you somehow haven’t heard of them, Groupon is the daily deals business phenomenon currently valued at $30 billion dollars, though by the time you finish reading this, it might be $40 billion, or $200 billion, or $25 bucks. Much like the text of their promotions, Groupon as a company tends to bury a few facts inside a cute dumpsterload of rambling nonsense.

Now meet Rob. Rob used to be the lead bike tech at a bike shop I owned once upon a time. He’s now opened his own shop, Cycle Symphony, and it has all the makings of a quality shop.

Like most bike shops, Rob’s business model is relatively straightforward: he sells consumers products and services. His success or failure will ultimately depend on attracting customers and keeping them happy. Much like I’d done with my shop, Rob is catering to serious cyclists, and for anyone with a deep appreciation of mountain bikes and technology, his shop is downright amazing. I doubt you’ll find a larger collection of one-off custom made mountain bikes anywhere in Pennsylvania. And I don’t mean a Specialized with a Gore cable kit and some read headset spacers. I’m talking frames made only for Rob, most by famed frame builder Frank the Welder. Check it out.

Unlike Rob’s small, local shop, Groupon is a Prime Mover, an innovation-driven company and a potential major engine preparing to help salvage the struggling American economy, just as Pets.com did in the late ’90s. Whereas bike shops in America only employ people, Groupon Employs People! While bike shops out there just sell stuff, Groupon Sells Stuff! The difference should be obvious to you, but just in case, I’ve set forth some key distinguishing features:

1. Innovative Business Model

Bike Shop:

  1. Sell goods and services.

Groupon:

  1. Convince retailers to sell their products and services for at least half price.
  2. Take about half of the half they have left as your profit.
  3. Funnel as many customers as possible to them to clean off their shelves at drastically discounted prices.
  4. Dramatically increase customer base of the retailer to now include a zombie throng of new customers who expect everything to be at least half price.

2. Funding

I started my bike shop with about $25,000. Rob’s also doing his best to keep things lean and efficient. His first step was doing, as opposed to looking for those who can do for him while he powerpoints venture capitalists and dreams up phrases like “organic monetization.”

According to Groupon’s SEC filing, they spent almost $400,000,000 on marketing so far in 2011. And marketing’s not their biggest expense. Their administrative costs in the first two quarters of 2011 account for another $452,000,000. That’s nearly a billion dollars spent in just the first half of 2011. What are they buying with all this money? One word: talent:

A spaghetti noodle, much like a swimming-pool noodle, maintains its shape until it’s exposed to boiling water or sat on by children. Savor pasta’s forced flexibility with today’s Groupon: for $12, you get $25 worth of Italian fare at Tuscany Square Ristorante in New Castle, PA.

The chefs at Tuscany Square Ristorante recreate traditional Tuscan recipes, simmering savory sauces to ladle over a menu of pasta, steak, and seafood. Adept hands construct house-made lasagna, layering soft noodles between strata of bubbling homemade marinara and meat ($12.95). A 10-ounce slab of Choice sirloin ($16.95) ages for 30 days and debuts mature and ready to assume the responsibilities of pleasing a palate, filling a stomach, and refinancing a mortgage.

Chefs drizzle the chicken piccata with white wine, capers, and a spritz of lemon ($14.95), and they coat a grilled salmon fillet in pepper-berry seasoning that, like a cheerleader, has an enthusiastic kick ($16.95). Diners can fill their bellies in the more-formal setting of the dining room or munch in the more laid-back lounge, which is equipped with a full bar and three flat-screen TVs to ensure patrons won’t miss reruns of their favorite sports games.

That’s from one of today’s deals. Think you could’ve written that there, Rimbaud? Of course not. A huge part of Groupon’s absurd operating expenditures can be blamed on the exotic acquisition needs of their writing department:

  1. Seed clouds with magical eggs to lure and capture a live Care Bear.
  2. Force Care Bear to smoke cigarettes and watch gruesome footage of World War II narrated by Bob Saget.
  3. Buy copy of Microsoft Office.

Anyway, that’s why my next venture won’t be in retail, but rather an SaaS (not entirely sure what that is, but it’s very hot right now, and sounds like “Sass!”). I’m working on a cutting edge cloud-based consumer-facing social network management and motivational system for success-driven companies who like Web 2.0 sites with big font sizes and rounded corners (small fonts and sharp edges are so Pets.com). Four hundred times each day, auto-generated profanity-laden criticism of your company will be automatically created, distributed to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and some seriously huge social networks in China you don’t even know about, and then searched out, compiled and sent right to your customer service department, offering consumer-centric Fortune 500 companies a better idea of what consumers actually think about their companies. I’m right now putting the final touches on the artificial intelligence algorithms and hiring an app developer.

I’m accepting initial rounds of funding now (investment offers under $10M will not be considered, though I appreciate your interest). I have a good feeling I can land Groupon as my first client.

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