Not sure your graph is quite right. The list above only includes the top 25 of bike brands. This makes up something like 1,600+. Not the 1,800+ that actually started the race. So your % for each is a little high.
Big Drops:
Kuota
Orbea
Look
Guru
Litespeed (~60% drop in 4 years! Ouch)
Big Jumps:
Trek
Felt
Specialized
In percentages, some of the very small companies made big pickups, especially Ceepo. They’re still not big players, but 38 bikes isn’t a bad showing. Gotta wonder if they hoped for more with being a major sponsor of the race…
steady decline of Kuota bikes aswell. Down by more than 50%…
Indeed, the numbers are what the numbers are. No question that Kuota received a big shot in the arm with Normann Stadler - but it’s rarely if ever that one dimensional in this business. Recent controversy aside, if you used this same analysis, Orbea, should be seeing a big jump in sales based on( until two months ago) the amazing run of great races at IMH that Craig Alexander had, while riding an Orbea. On the contrary, Orbea has been in decline.
Many can’t see or don’t understand the back-end of this - the stuff that you don’t see that goes on behind the scenes. What you see is the flashy product and the top athletes riding that flashy product - that’s the sexy part of it all. But there is all kinds of very un-sexy stuff going on behind the scenes that dives the success of a brand or a product in this market.
Heres’ an example: When I started working at Sugoi in the mid 90’s we surveyed all our existing accounts and a number of our top prospects. The number one complaint that was leveled at all apparel suppliers was - delivery: They were late. They were missing items. Stuff was back-ordered and then never shipped and so on. So what Sugoi decided to do was to start shipping all orders 100% in full and on time, even if it meant over-night shipping at great expense. Some shops were skeptical about this and balked at our slightly higher prices, but we would say, “You can’t sell and make money on what you don’t have in the store”!! Eventually they came around! And Sugoi started on a run then of more then doubling it’s business over the next 4 years! We had great product, but where we got the edge was in something behind the scenes that is really not that sexy, delivery!
I’m expecting the new trend to be customers walking into bike shops saying “I want to ride what TJ Tollakson is riding”. To that end, I’m stocking more athletic supporters in my fit studio.
