Yes, Trek is huge right now, but one must wonder, how long till they start ending up at a major chainstore and all get made in China?
Three companies some to mind that have already done this:
Schwinn,
GT,
And Mongoose.
They were all big companies that peaked in popularity in the past, what causes them to turn broke, and quit making real bikes? Is it something the market does? Do they finally figure out they can make more money selling crappy bikes for dirt cheap, than they can making good bikes for a fair price? What’s the deal? Enlighten me please.
I’m not any kind of industry insider, but I would bet that changes in management led those companies to focus on the huge market for family bikes. We tend to focus on high end or at least really decent bikes to train and race on, but the vast majority of people buying bikes are buying them for their 6 year olds or for themselves to cruise around on with their 6 year olds or to ride to work on, etc… and they don’t need Ultegra or Dura Ace or carbon fiber to do that. Those other companies probably just didn’t see the profit potential in really nice bikes. I would guess that as long as Lance is riding Trek, they will probably not go to WalMart.
Not likely too soon. Trek sends some of their low end bikes to Taiwan but with the Lance/US Postal success they’ve really moved up into the high end zone, thus their high end stuff is still made in the USA.