"Can I wear tight jeans while racing?"

Feelin' Minnesota

Four wheels not two, but this is a great video about getting outside and doing what you love here in Minnesota.

Click the links to check out the winter, spring, and summer videos.

The Bike Biz 2.0

The following are excerpts from an excellent blog post by Rick Vosper.

The bike business is not “changing”. It has already changed, and we just haven’t figured it out yet. As an industry, we (well, the North American portion of us, anyway) still think it’s 2003; business is going nowhere but up (at least for the “A” suppliers and retailers), and those small-fry upstart brands and retailers just don’t matter. In reality none of those things are true. The nascent reality of the bike biz sector requires not just new products, but a fundamental shift in how the industry conducts its business. And itself. I call this new reality Bike 2.0.

Even though the market is shrinking, even after we subtract out the mass market sales, there’s still almost three million units— and more than Half a Billion Wholesale Dollars— worth of business that the Big Guns can’t touch. And that’s just for bikes. Aftermarket equipment adds at least 50% to this figure. Know anyone who might like a slice of that action?

The next wave of successful brands—both supplier and retailer—will tend to be (and in some cases, already are) smaller/quicker/faster/smarter/more focused. With business models to match.

The Balance of Power has already shifted from suppliers to retailers (so get used to it). The reason for this is simple: consolidation at retail is almost ten years farther along than at wholesale. Which means there are more technically advanced high-quality products than there are retailers to sell then (or, come to think of it, consumers to buy them). And that means—sparing you a bunch of Keynesian economic theory about how this happened in the first place—that retailers, being the point of scarcity in the supply chain, are going to be calling the shots for the next few years.

Click here to read the full post.

Questions:

What of this is true? What isn't?
What about this is good for the market, your company, and your customers? What's bad?
What new opportunities is this creating for your business? What new risks?

HT: Competitive Cyclist

More Google Maps

Related to another recent post about Google adding a By Bike feature to Google Maps, the big G has recently opened a poll to collect suggestions about where to send their Street View Trike. Click here to suggest your local bike trails.

Urban Downhill

Powered by Red Bull, Gee and Dan Atherton decend 800 meters through the Dona Marta slum in Brazil. The course was designed and built for the unprecedented Red Bull Desafio no Morro race.


HT: BTIWhat?!