styrrell wrote:
Everything you say is true, thats precisely what people buy Serottas for. It has a long history of custom roadbikes.
Dimond wont survive based on nostalgia for Zipp. Zipp couldn't survive on people wanting that frame. When you say
Personally, I buy bikes based on data and have a limited budget, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate and enjoy this project and would love to see one in the flesh. That goes for most of Dimonds customer base. No data, higher price and wanting to see one, isn't a business plan.Here is the deal. There used to be a market for beam bikes. Softride squandered it away with bad business strategy when having to overcome the UCI 'only double diamond frames" ruling.
For some reason they could not overcome this, even though 99.5% of their customers were not even doing UCI racing. I can only think of one road rider of any note (first North America Yellow Jersey guy, Alex Steida) who used a softride. The rest triathletes. Welchie won Kona on softride, Zack won many Ironmans on softride, Pauli Kiuru won several Ironmans on Zipp 2001.
I just got an ancient softride last week for a commuter (will help with the jarring given my neck/head injuries from last year) and I was shocked that it actually weighs less than my Kestrel Talon and Airfoil Pro!!!
Hopefully the Dimond can overcome any past mechanical issues and weight issues. The biggest triathlon market is M40-54. These guys need/want comfort even though they don't know it. TJ needs to publish the windtunnel data, but he needs to really market the comfort benefits, especially to older athletes for whom this will be a differentiator. This demographic is the fat part of the market, and these are the guys with the deepest pockets. Chasing the "aero game" is not where most of the money is at.....have a look at the "End of Lifing" of the Cervelo P4. Meanwhile the P2 provides the gravy train....
Heck, I have been trying to convince Steve Harad at Kestrel to make a beam bike for years. He said there is just not a market big enough. I tend to disagree. It is about making a market. Tell that to any startup in the technology world. We don't sit around and wait for markets to form, we create markets by innovation and complimentary marketing. Or as is the case with Mr. Jobs, take a good idea, make it better, tell consumers what they want, to the point that they believed they wanted it in the first place.
TJ's price point is way too high. He'll get a few M40-54 with deep pockets forking out cash for this, but not many. That price point has to come down and there has to be aggresive marketing around the associated benefits of beam technology on riding comfort. There are many of us who still know it, it is a matter of educating the larger market. Also, in the 90's there were limits on frame materials/manufacturing technology. That has also changed.
For me, at $5500, I won't buy one out of principle, even though I can give him that money right now. I don't really care what the cost structure is, the frame needs to be priced at perceived value in the market. Right now, it is way out of whack. I appreciate that he has to make money too and I also get that you can't ship units with dollar bills attached by shipping below your cost structure and hoping to make it up on "volume". Looks like they will need to work on their cost structure if that is the current limiter in terms of competitive pricing.
This bike should be reasonably competitive on aero, and blow any rigid frame away on comfort.
Dev
