Here in NZ Covid isn't impacting our daily lives much and there has been a consumption boom (people can't travel so spending money locally) which has led to shortages of a lot of products. Houses can't be finished because of no insulation, no copper pipes for A/C. Can't get cars, bikes will be available in 2022. Don't know about electronics. Shortages are fairly normal here, no one is surprised that they can't get the bike they want.
Why is it inexcusable to not be able to double or triple production? There is competition for labour in the main manufacturing regions of China and Taiwan and you can't onboard immediately even if you can grab extra staff. Most factories run with pretty minimal underutilised capacity. Giant did have some but they ramped production back up over a year ago and still can't match demand. There isn't much slack in the system to deal with a doubling of demand.
Further to that- the production ramp up is focussed on the categories that are moving - family friendly low-mid level MTBs and ebikes. Even top end MTB not a big priority for brands that are strong in ebikes. Tri sales have been terrible for most brands so no one is going to be investing in building up stocking levels of tri bikes when they can move a container of $800 mtbs more easily than a single tri machine...
Why is it inexcusable to not be able to double or triple production? There is competition for labour in the main manufacturing regions of China and Taiwan and you can't onboard immediately even if you can grab extra staff. Most factories run with pretty minimal underutilised capacity. Giant did have some but they ramped production back up over a year ago and still can't match demand. There isn't much slack in the system to deal with a doubling of demand.
Further to that- the production ramp up is focussed on the categories that are moving - family friendly low-mid level MTBs and ebikes. Even top end MTB not a big priority for brands that are strong in ebikes. Tri sales have been terrible for most brands so no one is going to be investing in building up stocking levels of tri bikes when they can move a container of $800 mtbs more easily than a single tri machine...