Brandweek magazine reported that all kinds of brands are currently available at bargain basement prices, and that would bring up the question which triathlon brands or bike industry brands will be available for cheap sometime soon?
This is not about getting a closeout wetsuit or a closeout mountain bike from an outlet store, this is about getting the whole brand itself.
Here is the story:
http://www.brandfreak.com/2009/01/broken-brand-names-now-available-at-bargainbasement-prices.html
Gee… how many people did ABG just lay off?
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Many companies have laid of employees recently and thus that is not really the indicator.
Well, Porsche sales are down 25%, so there should be some good bike bargains soon if not already. Perhaps the question should be which bike manufacturers will still be around in another year or two.
Sure…
But how many of those have laid off 25% of their employees, fired the marketing director, and terminated the contracts with (most?) of their sales reps? If that doesn’t qualify as an “indicator” what does?
Your thread man, so your rules…
(…funny, though; my first thought when I posted the comment was "Herbert jumps to ex-employers defense in 1… 2… 3… ") :0 )
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I really want to get a new mountain bike, but after reading that story I thought I could possibly get a whole brand with all their inventory. 
I’m going to wait things out a while, for when the real bargains come along. In the last economic downturn here in B.C. you could have bought a whole town for a lot less than a million! They are usually a little off the beaten path but…if the price is right.
Ah, buying a town is a completely different idea. Thanks.
You better hurry if you want a piece of the action. I don’t know what it is, but I think by now half of the interior of B.C. must be owned by Germans, Austrians and Swiss!
At the height of the tech sector in early 2001 I worked out that Bill gates could have sold all his shares in microsoft and put every farm and house in New Zealand. That was when $2.50 NZd was needed to buy $1USd. It is heading back to that level fast.
It would have been a good investment also as all the dairy farm land in NZ has gone up 10fold in that period(evry million invested is now worth 10million). The last few years have been a mega boom so any company worth their ‘grain of salt’ will have the bank balance overflowing with cash. Even if they are cash rich, it still makes sense to lay off workers if the demand for products is dropping.
So buying a whole city is not rediculous. Mind you as soon as a big investor comes to town, all the councils and salespeople put there mark-ups up. This happened in my local area when Shania Twain bought a big Station. The local council introduced a whole bunch of rules and charged alot forcing the price of everything beyond the average persons means.
Any bike company that has been around for more than 10 years should ride the ‘financial downturn’ out well and come back stronger. It seems like big ticket items such as new cars are going to be harder hit.
It was pointed out to me at the local iron-distance tri the number of people who had bikes worth alot more thanthere cars. Am wanting to get some photos of this as it is funny. A little beat up car worth nothing with a $6000 bike on the roof is not an uncommon site.
G.