Cracks in the hegemony of high performance?
Posted on 15. Jan, 2010 in Bike Racing, Bike industry, ROAD Magazine
PROLOGUE
Although this piece isn’t really about major bike industry brands like Scott, this shift in their messaging from the 2009 (left) to 2010 VeloNews Buyer’s Guides is perhaps related.
At the time that the 2009 ad would have been due, Scott was just starting their sponsorship and might not have had a chance to do a photo shoot with the team now known as HTC-Columbia. Scott still chose a racing & performance theme for the ad. A year later, they kept an element of performance (lightweight) but went with comfort and a non-racer (i.e. a VeloNews reader), even after Columbia’s 86-win season.
COLUMN
This piece appears in the current issue of ROAD Magazine that’s been out for a couple of weeks. It was written in October 2009.
A business theorist named Peter Drucker once wrote that an enterprise has two essential functions: marketing and innovation. Until quite recently, this philosophy dominated the segment of the bike industry that focuses on road cyclists who could be described as “moderate-to-heavy users”. However, there now seems to be a backlash against the innovation part of Drucker’s dictum as newly influential players emphasize nostalgia rather than performance. But how far will this new aesthetic carry them?
The notion that serious cyclists want increasingly high-performance equipment underpins how high-end cycling products are developed and promoted. It’s an arms race to create the lightest, fastest, most aerodynamic merchandise and sign the most successful athletes to endorse it. We’ll call this the modernist approach. As a result of it, we see things like the massive reshuffling of teams and bike sponsors that took place last year (2008) and the deluge of slick time trial bikes that inundated us this year (2009).
Not surprisingly, the messages from these companies pretty much boil down to, “buy this and win.” There’s probably such an ad on the page opposite this column. Of course, the industry knows that the majority of serious cyclists don’t race, at least not formally. Nonetheless, the common assumption has been that these consumers desire the same qualities in their bikes, components, and accessories as professional racers do. But this assumption is eroding.
Welcome to postmodern road cycling.
This new aesthetic – shaped by Rapha, Embrocation Magazine, the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, and others – is not a merely rejection of the ubiquitous modernist aesthetic. No one is advocating a return to toe clips and down tube shifters. Instead, the postmodern view of the sport filters the most evocative, iconic elements of cycling’s past through an artistic lens.
So, while cycling’s modernism lives in the present with the stars of today and looks to the features and technologies of tomorrow, postmodernism aims to be timeless. And it’s striking a chord.
I see two significant factors enabling this trend. First is the recognition that the modernist approach is disconnected from the ways in which most people actually ride. The values that it embodies – competition and technology – are still relevant. But perhaps more so are the things that modernism eschews – camaraderie and simplicity. It’s this emphasis that allows postmodernism to deemphasize Drucker-esque innovation.
At the same time, legitimate innovation in the road cycling market is harder and harder to achieve. After a flurry of advancements a few years ago, it’s now possible to buy an inexpensive, unbranded carbon frame from Asia that’s lighter and stiffer than pretty much every frame that was ever produced prior to around 2006. Consumers know this.
These factors open the door for postmodernism, which in turn opens doors for new definitions of what it means to be a serious cyclist, which in turn open doors for more people to become serious cyclists. Additionally, postmodernism has low barriers to entry. It takes a lot less money to shoot beautiful pictures of epic riding than it does to sponsor a ProTour team.
The sum of all these elements is a sense of nostalgia like the one that was famously described on Mad Men as, “a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone… It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” If it can maintain that feeling, cycling’s postmodern aesthetic has the potential to cause a significant shift in how the bike industry approaches both marketing and innovation.
I agree on a lot of points you make.
Where I differ is that fact that most US “serious” cyclists, roadies anyway, still emulate pros – even if they don’t race – and face it, just a tiny percent of roadies actually race.
It seems to me, full on bike geeks, especially slightly older ones (which I’m one), think the push towards marketing as you mentioned is super cool – and makes sense. It’s closer to how we really ride.
However, it’s just a slice out of the big bike picture. To the average Joe buying a bike at the local shop, even a high end one, most have no clue about Rapha or Embrocation.
They also don’t realize (yet) that frames (especially carbon) are becoming a commodity. In a sense, you’re paying for paint and stickers. A gross exaggeration, but in a sense, heading that way – and maybe why the interest in NAHBS and hand made steel frames (once again).
Anyway, cool article in ROAD mag – great blog too…
Josh, I couldn’t agree more. A few key things are coming together to make this happen culturally and some in a broader market sense.
First off, Mad Men scene you mention; some of the best writing on television in the last decade. But I digress.
Culturally the shift you are speaking about is being driven by two major forces. Readily available media (some would call this social media) is the first. The fact that Rapha, Cervelo test, me, you, the derelict hanging in front of the Little 5 Points coffee shop riding the Vanilla SS w/ color matching EVERYTHING can all easily create, edit, publish our own cycling videos, blogs, photos online. The non-traditional voices entering into the conversation once dominated by only the gigantic bike companies and suppliers is increasing daily. Ritte Racing (i have no affiliation w/ them) is a good example. Bike Team sponsored by a micro sized bike company, using the Beyond the Peloton formula from Cervelo Test to parody our sport. Its good stuff. The point is, there has never been a more diverse number of voices in the cycling marketing mix.
The second cultural element is, dare I say it, hipsters. Cultural pebbles were dropped nearly simultaneously in the relatively still waters of cycling in London, NY and SF about five years ago. The single speed movement embraced by hipster culture has brought cycling, no matter how impractical or how silly riding a full on track bike in a city w/ hills is, into the top of many 20-30 something’s minds. Combine that with outrageous gasoline prices in N America a few years ago followed shortly by the recession and you have a nice storm steering the masses away from autos (albeit momentarily) and towards the safe harbor of bike culture.
The broader market forces you have already mentioned. A near perfect market is being developed both in a production and supply chain sense as well as in a distribution channel sense.
Thanks to the development of carbon manufacturing techniques by the REALLY big bike companies, and then the offshoring of those factory techniques to Asia; the trickle down of that technology is apparent. Neuvation, Williams Wheels…to name only two, direct market from the internet. They spend very little to nothing on R&D and engineering, because its already been done.
With frames and wheelsets becoming stratospherically expensive in the last seven years or so, there had to be a middle space sooner or later.
Purchase channels are another key development. eBay and Craigslist have always been an option; and the number of sites reviewing gear, consumer reviews and the like; hit critical mass some time ago. Now that information can finally be posed against what is being offered by multiple players in a few short mouse clicks.
One last point, and I’ll use Rapha as an example here. Never underestimate the power of cultural trickledown. In marketing the best way to succeed if you don’t have the money to buy media, is to copy the hell out of someone else’s campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the classic style attributes tinged w/ hipster aesthetic begin to trickle down into the US and Aus cycling market here soon. Of course anything would be better than most of the stuff Primal Wear passes off as relating to cycling culture.
Anyway, good stuff man. Keep it coming.
-j
squadraprofessore.com
Thanks for daring to say “hipsters.” You’re absolutely right. Our mustachioed friends have definitely made their contributions.