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You can say a lot of good and bad things about Moeller, but I admire his passion, grit, and smarts.
The guy is a lot smarter than some people will give him credit for.. I've been a fan of his for a long time.. He's never been afraid to poke the bear.. I believe there's a longer interview that the clip above is a part of that I need to watch when I have some time..
Jeff, this made me go down a rabbit hole for DAYS, particularly John Mearsheimer chats. Interesting stuff and world views, these guys don't hold their opinions back.
Right. Definitely not the average head of a bike co who uses carefully curated press speak.
Mueller’s interview on the Unclicked podcast shortly after Brad Simms went to Canyon was really good. Dude has stories upon stories.
Having listened to the whole interview those two are clearly highly intelligent guys who have spent too much time in circles where everyone tells each other how smart they are before going off on a different tangent. Jerking off on each others’s big ideas for the world while having seemingly little empathy for the people those topics are effecting. At the end of the day it doesn’t take a genius to argue nuclear war should be avoided or that it’s in a countries interest to expand its power. Or to argue that the government is bloated, slow, and resistant to change. But so is basically any organization that is more than a decade old and has more than a “tribe” of participants. But its absolutely a waste of time that they can sit next to each other for two hrs talking without anyone on stage leaving with a slightly different opinion or trying to think about a middle ground. Almost perfectly symbolizing why it is so damn difficult to accomplish good government as opposed to mediocrity.
Anyways enjoyed the share despite my opinion on it. Figured I’d respond here but to not derail the thread further if anyone wants to message me feel free.
I had to go on a pretty good gravel ride to listen to all of that one.. The one after that was good too.. I think that was after a listing came out regarding S&M being for sale..
There was a rumour at the last MotoGP race about Red Bull co-owner Mark Mateschitz investing to save KTM
Pirerer apparently gave 11000 bikes between 2500€ - 6500€ to his remaining 4500 employees free of charge except shipping. ~ Several Austrian newspapers.
https://www.emtb-news.de/news/pierer-new-mobility-gmbh-11000-e-bikes-ve…
So, I watched the full interview with Chris Moeller last night, and while most of it revolves around BMX, he brings up an interesting tidbit about both Trek and Giant owing Shimano huge amounts of money. While 100s of millions might be a bit of a stretch, I'm sure it's not a small number and I'd be willing to bet that there are alot of companies that owe money to both Shimano and Sram..
11000!!! Given away!!! That might make a little impact on the Euro used e-MTB market for a while, you think?
At sea otter, the owner of a big german distribution company said there was chatter about some of the bigger brands shopping around container loads of bikes and P&A for roughly the cost of just shipping those goods. The storage costs were piling up and at current sell rates, they were amounting to 10+ years of inventory on hand. It was getting to the point that destroying the goods was a more financially feasible option than continuing to store them and wait for them to slowly sell for the few years those parts would still be relevant. I wonder if this "gifting" of bikes was partially born from them having so many that they didnt know what to do with them.
This is actually one of crazier things I've ever read about bike industry stuff. This is like one of those stories from the 70s or 80s that we now chalk up to "it was a different time!". Like when Sadam ordered a ton of GM cars and then didn't pay for half of them when they all started breaking in Iraq and rather than leaving them sitting in Halifax all of the GM employees got dibs on them for bottom dollar before they went to dealerships, also for bottom dollar (as a GM employee family, my dad's first new car!). I didn't think this kind of stuff happened anymore, and as much as it sucks for KTM and employees facing job insecurity (even if they did get a couple ebikes), I am here for it.
There's now enough identical KTM ebikes floating around Austria that they could probably start a stock bike race series.
more pierer/ktm news
https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/pierer-mobility-shares…
I heard similar rumblings as well. Maybe these being e-bikes complicated the fuck it/crush it way out? Like the disposal costs for the e-waste made in unfeasible.
also would make some sense considering shipping costs for the batteries.
So in the past we're talked more about smaller to mid sized companies shutting down, the biggest being Kona and the CRC brands and rumors of a few others, but a lot of the small and midsize companies that had lower inventory and were quicker to move on getting that Inventory out, while maybe not all out of the water yet, seem to have stablized stock wise from what I've seen and are being careful moving forward. But now will we see the bigger guys, who had capital and sat on stuff longer thinking it would move, but have now spent that capital on storage, interest and new product going to be the ones we see start hitting the deck harder?
https://dirtbikelover.com/ktm-prepares-for-bankruptcy-with-judicial-res…
Interesting point, especially because in that Moeller podcast he said Trek and Giant owe Shimano a ton of $$$. It's wild out here.
I don't see how their ebike division will make it through that.
IIRC KTM MTB is a separate company with a licensing agreement? I'm not sure where the E-MTB portfolio lands though, as there are KTM e-bikes as well as Husqvarna and GasGas e-bikes, the latter 2 maybe being part of the powersports / Pierrer group.
Reddit (not an authoritative source of course) mentions this which lines up with my assumption:
KTM motorcycles and KTM bicycles are not the same. A different bike manufacturer bought the rights to the name KTM for bicycles. However the brands Husqvarna, GasGas and Felt do belong to KTM the motorcycle company. KTM bicycles is its own company that just uses the name KTM.
Ken it's wild that KTM thought it was better to own the brand Felt rather than start making bikes under their own name, which they licensed to somebody else.
The German article above specifically mentions that approximately half were Husqvarna branded e-bikes beginning in 2023, so it might still track.
KTM Bicycles seems to be pushing this fact they are a separate company pretty hard on their website right now to try and separate the two. Looking into it a bit deeper, Husqvarna moto/ebikes and KTM moto seem to be under the "Peirer Mobility AG" umbrella having the issues, who gave away the Husky e-bikes to their employee's and KTM Bicycles is separate as "KTM Fahrrad GmbH"
https://www.ktm-bikes.at/clarification
That would be very confusing for a consumer but interesting to see them push away from the clearly sinking cousin.
Lots of thoughts to share RE: Pierer Mobility AG (KTM), but I'm a bit pinched on time. I'll try and post something bigger later. If I got serious and had a podcast this would certainly be a whole episode.
Few things...
Where to get information: If you want to follow along from the "horse's mouth" always start with Pierer Mobility's IR page - https://www.pierermobility.com/en/newsroom - most everything outside of this is an opinion on this, a CGPT reread of this or some other basterdization of the real press release.
What this means: Its too early and I don't know European Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Proceedings (which is what this is) but in effect this looks like a way they can renegotiate with their creditors, write stuff off, lay off people and refocus. I'll try and spend some time understanding the differenes between chpt 11 and what this is, but from what I know its a bit faster method of getting the company "realigned toward a sustainable/durable future" than Chapter 11 proceedings here in the US.
Not that it matters, but this is unfortunately the result of everything we've been talking about in this thread plus the addition of crazy amounts of leverage and "all the hype of e-bikes". When you take these ingredients, add in a healthy dose of softening consumer sentiment - this is what you get.
E-Bikes: As I think I posted earlier (or maybe it was vitalmx) they farmed out the licensing of the KTM line of e-bikes a long time ago. The e-bikes they do "sell" includes GasGas and Husqvarna, and they suck. I do wonder if we could all try and get our hands on one of those bikes for pennies on the dollar. I'd happily pay $1K for one! Who wants to go on a scavenger hunt?!
I posted this awhile back and it still holds water. https://jeffbrines.com/2024/10/25/cfo-asleep-at-the-wheel-the-failings-… I've learned a little more from then to now, and would make some adjustments, but ultimately they need to make some huge changes. I know this is super cringe but I did send the CEO a connection request on the dumpster fire known as LinkedIn and offered my help. I'd be cheap and would kill to be a part of helping make KTM Great Again. LOL.
ffs, too hard to look it up on wikipedia?
KTM after 1991
In 1991, the company was split into four new entities: KTM Sportmotorcycle GmbH (motorcycles division), KTM Fahrrad GmbH (bicycles division), KTM Kühler GmbH (radiators division) and KTM Werkzeugbau GmbH (tooling division).
nobody licensed anything to nobody
Good point! However it’s also completely immaterial considering the context of what we are discussing. The big point here is KTM bicycles and e bikes have no connection to Pierer Mobility.
We are going to make lots of these kinds of mistakes in this thread. It’s a fun discussion with lots of painting with broad strokes and running a little loose. I don’t have time to triple check every source I use.
That said I’m always happy to have more eyeballs jump in to steer toward truth and am happy to say “whoops I was wrong” (which I am here!)
Cheers
HALF!!
Honestly 10% off models that following product cycles of 10 years ago shouldn't yet exist in the public eye is pretty big too.
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