Friday, September 7, 2012

Another Project


It's a cool feeling when you dream up a bike project. Then you pull together all the parts to build it. Riding it and wearing out the parts comes next with a huge smile on your face. Then you find something to upgrade because a bike is never really complete, right? You work on it some more and you repeat the process. Bike love!

I don't know how many bikes I've built, ridden and later sold over the years. Honestly, I almost love assembling bikes more than I like riding them. There's just something I love about mapping-out a bike build in my mind. The great thing about the cycling industry are all the options. What color scheme will I choose. What group will I run. Will it be a 1x9, a 2x10 or something more traditional like a 3x9. What fork will I use. How much am I willing to invest in this project. The list of things to think about goes on and on.

Having worked in the cycling industry my entire adult life I have a deep appreciation for the work Product Managers do. Building a cohesive product line for a bicycle brand is one part science and one part art. Product Managers must pay attention to the trends in the industry and within the larger cycling community. But, they must also be trend setters that use their personal style and preferences to put a unique stamp on their products. There are good product managers and there are not-so-good product managers out there. The good product managers are willing to take chances on something new or somehow different. Good product managers understand that part of their job is help advance the sport and related technology. And when they have an idea they find a way to make it happen. 


Here's a great example. Ben the Product Manager for Whisky Parts Co. (a brand I helped launch) had an idea to advance the proliferation of disc brakes on road and cyclocross bikes. Ben knew that most modern road and cross bikes use carbon forks and that they weren't designed with disc brake forces in mind. Rather than overbuilding the left fork blade to manage the forces of a disc brake he had another idea. Why not run a thru-axle system instead...Huh? It's a lighter system than a typical QR. It's safer than a typical QR. And it unifies the fork legs, which leads to a whole host of performance improvements. Bam! Differentiation is key and Ben found a way to achieve that while also producing a superior product. Bravo!

The cycling industry has always been one that thrives on innovation. Without innovation, new ideas and risks the sport of cycling would most certainly become stagnate and slide into decline. For those of us that work in the industry we need to continually produce fresh ideas that often drive to incompatibilities with older products. Yes, drive incompatibilities with aging products. 

If you think about it, we need to give the cycling consumer a reason to buy the latest, the greatest, the most cool products. And thank goodness for making things incompatible because it's a big part of why people need to buy something new. This is how we keep the economic engine of the cycling industry spinning round and round. 

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