In article <
[email protected]>,
[email protected] says...
> In article <
[email protected]>, Jon Isaacs <
[email protected]> wrote:
> >>Another victim of Walmart's success. Even Schwinn has given up the ghost and put their bikes in
> >>Walmart stores.
> >
> >Cannondale's Bankruptcy has nothing to do with Walmart or even with their bicycle division. It is
> >the result of an silly venture into the motorcycle market. They lost big time there.
>
> Going into the motorcycle market in itself wasn't silly, doing it incompetently was.
>
> Cannondale shouldn't have started by making their own engines (suzuki is quite happy to sell good
> engines to anyone, and a number of other makers could have been persuaded). They compounded that
> error by making their engine wierd just to be wierd, which added a lot of development and debug
> time. Their pre-production bikes got great press but there was a long delay before production got
> going, and sales went elsewhere. Then their QC sucked. Bikes broke left and right, causing a
> number of recalls. While they were busy trying to make a bike that would run right, KTM and Yamaha
> caught up and passed them with reliable lighter and faster four-strokes.
>
> Cannondale didn't stop at shooting themselves in the foot, they kept blasting away until there was
> only a stump remaining.
>
>
> Eric
>
>
Don't forget that when they did compete in racing they chose series that no one has ever heard of
like Mototard and open class motos. If you ever see either of those things on ESPN you know hell has
frozen over. If they could have make something for the 125 or 250 class riders they might have had
some press, then again I don't know if the bike blowing up in ever moto on live TV would be that
great for business anyway. I really think that whoever ownes/operates the company was looking for a
tax writeoff or was dying of something and had no one to leave the business to.
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Chris Phillipo - Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
http://www.ramsays-online.com