Ceased to Exist

[brocklanders023]

As an Industry insider I can tell you they are totally screwed right now and trying to re-arrange the deck chais on the Titanic

GT or the bigger owner (Pon isn't it?). If it's the big boys then I imagine Santa Cruz and plenty of others are sweating!

 

[Nothin-fancy]

Funny seeing GT brought up. I just picked up a Mt. Shasta "Pachanga" from the VeloSwap last Saturday. Apparently Mt. Shasta was a GT brand that GT would sell to a bike shop when there was already a local shop that stocked GT's so that they would still have a decent market share. At what point does it become a bunch of vertically integrated brands all fighting against one another for market share and eventually putting the corporate owners out of business???

Kinda sounds like the beginning's of the mindset that is eating the corporate bike industry currently, doesn't it?

 

[Cloverleaf]

GT or the bigger owner (Pon isn't it?). If it's the big boys then I imagine Santa Cruz and plenty of others are sweating!

I think many, many companies over-reached themselves post Covid. The world is currently a scary place, people can't afford to heat their homes and eat, and the vast majority of their target audience, despite appearances, are those who don't actually have a huge amount of spare cash. Yes, there are some who do, but many of the people you see turning up to trails with a brand new Yeti on a brand new Mercedes are not rolling in cash but rather rolling in finance. Suddenly they're not feeling so rich when they've got monthlies to make and the weekly shop has tripled in price in five years. Add to that nothing is particularly game changing at the moment, prices are ridiculous, products last longer than they did, and you have the perfect storm of people opting to stick rather than twist. I think some manufacturers are reasonably well equipped to ride out the storm but I suspect several of the bigger manufacturers are going to be making some more dramatic cuts to both their staff and volume of offerings in the coming 12 months in order to survive. I'm not on the highest pay packet by a long shot, but I do earn reasonably well, and even though I have zero dependents or major overheads I'm still cutting back on a lot of stuff. I certainly wouldn't be going out right now to buy a new main big (enduro) bike unless it was an absolute unbeatable deal, it definitely wouldn't be a retail price purchase. I pity anyone currently trying to sell new boutique parts at retail.