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https://shop-eat-surf-outdoor.com/news/liberated-begins-liquidating-billabong-quiksilver-volcom-honolua-stores/603483/ Not mountain bike specific but a bunch of companies liquidating their inventories and closing stores. Hopefully nothing like this in the near future for the mtb market
Well the tariffs are coming.
Good luck to DaVinci, Norco, Transition etc, brands that do a lot of cross border sales.
I wonder since a lot of the frames are made in Taiwan and shipped from Taiwan they won't be tariffed.
Unfortunately products like Vorsprungs new shock will now be 25% more expensive for Americans.
I spent a bit of time idly looking into this today and some tax lawyers are going to be very busy...
I think the biggest initial headache is including these in whatever accounting system brands are using... It's not a small task on either side of the border. And when does the tariff get collected? Presumably as the product crosses the border?
Canada already has import tariffs on bikes which are lower for frames / components than complete so Taiwan direct or via the USA probably didn't make much difference until today. (Don't know what USA tariffs on bikes from Taiwan might be)
Normal bikes don't appear to be included in the first Canadian tranche but ebikes might be depending on exactly how you interpret electric motorcycle including assistance. (Tariff 8711.60.00 in the schedule).
I don't know which companies have them but those with warehouses on both sides of the border are clearly advantaged. Those with only Canada are clearly now disadvantaged for selling to the USA and tbd for those selling North.
Kona is the only one that comes to mind with offices and warehouses in both countries unless they closed the North Van office down
Usually complete bikes are under 8712 HS codes and bikes parts are under 8714 HS codes.
Low end bikes were already mostly made in south east countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand) or their production were moved there under Trump first term tariffs on China. If the Chinese parts of the Trumps Tariff are looking to be long term, that might push more brand to move production and final assembly from China to mostly Vietnam.
For bikes price in Canada, it should mostly affect a limited amount of brand that actually do their final assembly in the USA like Ibis & Santa Cruz. For Santa Cruz, they could use their German assembly line to supply Canadian dealers but that would mean higher shipping cost and lead time.
Most other brands either have warehouse or distributor in Canada so not much will change for Canadian dealers.
And I don't think that Canadian made Devinci, Chromag have that much market share in the USA.
And since Alberta oils export to the USA will be still be hit by a 10% tariff that means that gas price will most likely rise in the USA so shipping cost will rise and consequently cost of goods across the board for USA, regardless of where it is produced, will go up.
Specialized just closed their Canadian offices and I'm not sure if they'll be shipping from the US or if they kept the warehouse open. Trek ships from 3 US warehouses to Canada.
If this is ongoing I wonder if Trek will start warehousing in Canada or partner with a company that's warehousing in Canada. Their stuff isn't "Made in USA" anymore, at best they're painted there (P1), Trek's shown strong supply chain management over COVID so I'm sure they could figure something out. Whether or not they bother is another question - a Trek suit once told me in ~2018 they sell more bikes dollar for dollar on the Trek credit card than all of the Canadian market.
The office/warehouse in MTL shuttered? Is there a known cause?
interesting pull from the bomb hole podcast (snowboarding) about patagonia's zero profit model. in the full episode they discuss some of the same things we've been talking about here (brands being bought, sold, licensed etc).
Trek is telling the Canadian dealers to stock pile before the tariffs hit. Probably not a good idea considering the general public will be boycotting US brands and the pandemic inventory mess is still pretty fresh.
Do Trek still run a dealer model in Canada?
Trek in Aus is run by Trek Australia now, they went on a buying spree and bought a whole bunch of established stores and converted them to Trek stores, a few independent Trek sellers are still around still.
From someone I know who deals with Specialized in Montreal quite regularly, they are still open. They may have downsized a little but it’s still business as usual
We have a mix of both. In Ontario there are a handful of "Trek Bicycle Stores". Outside that there are shops that have to allocate a certain amount of space for Trek bikes/accessories and some shops that exclusively carry Trek.
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/01/30/parent-company…
I know this isnt a mountain bike company per se but this speaks directly to the topics of this thread.
This quote stood out quite a bit to me: "An Illinois Tool Works (ITW) spokesperson confirmed the decision to BRAIN. A JBI spokesperson told BRAIN ITW will concentrate instead on automotive products. Slime and Fix A Flat are included under ITW's Tire Repair group."
Genuine Innovations going away while Slime stays in business is a cruel joke. Genuine Innovations made things that worked (inflators, tire plugs, etc). Slime tubes just make a mess.
That sounds like a stitch up waiting to happen - the whole model of making dealers load up on stock one way or another never seemed to work in my opinion. So when the new models come out, if customers actually want to buy them (at new pricing) the shops will be stuck with dead stock or not able to buy the new models, or worse the tarriffs get walked back! I hope the dealers don't take that advice
It's all about inventory management. The shop I was at did significant "in-house" warehousing (in quotes because about half was at a separate facility) and managed COVID extremely well while everybody else was floundering. We were getting calls from all over North America for stuff we had in stock, at one point we had something like 10 of a particular full suspension model while they were weaponized unobtanium everywhere else. It's not like this was a COVID only decision either, the model at this shop was that if people got to touch the bike, they'd be more likely to buy the bike.
It's ultimately a business management decision. Obviously different models work well for other places. This shop was supposed to be the friendly, approachable barn-like bike shop instead of the stained wood, leather aproned and well-kept moustache "bespoke" shop you also see nowawdays. But when you have 180 day terms to sell bikes, you can inventory quite a bit before running into problems. Do that over ups and downs for nearly 4 decades, and you can make it work. Further, lots of shops don't have capital to make such a model work too, so that's going to be a hurdle in many cases.
It's interesting to note though that when I asked the manager about the Trek thing they said "yeah we think we've done all our buying for the year for Trek already, not sure what else we want this year", so it does sound like they're taking less stock from Trek generally than other years.
They also quietly closed all of their US direct to consumer “fulfiment centers” as of 9am this morning. Source: I was one of the employees who woke up to not having a job.
That super duper sucks. Sorry man. Do you get two weeks or a severance package, or just "bye" in email form?
Oh man. That's grim.
Good pull. In this thread, we seemingly stumbled on an idea that should be obvious; certain founders want to optimize for profit (I'd say most), while certain founders want to optimize for mission. If you are in the latter category, by default private equity or some kind of strategic financial buyer is often a mismatch and will perhaps push your business the wrong direction. Every now and then maximizing for profit also maximizes for mission, but we obviously can't bet on that.
While I could poke a lot of holes in Patagonia's execution of mission, I can't poke holes in Yvon's willingness to put his money where is mouth is. He is punk AF in this way, and I really look up to him.
It is fun to look around and try and figure out who is maximizing for what. Its a very fun lens to apply to business as a whole.
I got a 9am text message from our regional manger saying to give him a call, he said we were shut down, and to refer to one of our HR people with any questions. We’ve got three days to get our personal stuff out of the building, and they’re thankfully paying us through the month of February so all of us have a fighting chance to possibly find work.
There was no warning, no communication from anyone high up enough in the company that could make a decision like this, and little to no remorse for booting six people out on a random Tuesday. Not to mention the employees of the seven other locations they closed.
what did these centers do? pickup location?
I'm so sorry, what a crappy thing to go through ☹️
We did a variety of things. Direct to rider test rides and sales, service, online order fulfillment, and event support. Basically a hybrid of a regular bike shop and a shipping warehouse.
Hey !
First: Tayrob that's some nasty news to get on a Tuesday morning
Hope you'll get through it ! (makes you realise how lucky one can be to get a decent and stable job but also that nothing's granted. Seems quite brutal on the other side of the pond too...)
Second: What's the current health of FOX Racing Shox ? They seemed to have vastly reduce their involvement on the DH scene lately (Gwin racing, IFR, Commencal Muc-Off, now Mondraker also (Or I have not understood well this one ?))... Some heavy hitters have switched to the competition in the past 2 years, don't you think ?
first off, condolences. shitty way to be let go. glad to hear you at least got some severance.
second - trying to read the tea leaves of what it means the spesh is pulling back / giving up on d2c after only a couple years.
@TayRob bummer to hear. that sucks.
This data here might have some insights, they are a publicly traded company - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FOXF/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMCywAivwipfhybXTlDUBdBWPQIalBGWz6Z2ZSESBEq9eM6_QrXV6dratch_BwatygY3Y5xRf3eSLGLIsOcsPx7ksbrS-bSTKGRdX2BurTqKc22o1X8OK1rknw-JcMlYmrwJ-XDJtj39oHQRDOCt4AITUvISnmIZyusH9paTQuRV
I won't pretend to know what any of it means, I know everyone will be way down compared to a couple of years ago so I'm not sure how you would interpret it, especially when SRAM isn't public in the same way.
Or read through their investors page - https://investor.ridefox.com/press-releases/news-details/2024/Fox-Factory-Holding-Corp.-Reports-Third-Quarter-Fiscal-2024-Financial-Results/default.aspx
I'm not super surprised they are supporting less teams - in reality I'm not sure how much return on investment you would get since there is really only 2 brands that dominate the market. There's not a whole lot of risk that Giant will spec something like Ohlins on their entry level Trance bikes just because they are present on more WC teams.
@TayRob sorry about the bad news. Been (am) there! Maybe we should start a bike industry job thread where we post up positions and people like TayRob can throw up their resume. Probably too low of a volume, and I know other sites exist for this? I like to think the color one can garner via forums like this adds a little special something, but maybe I'm wrong.
As to this question, Fox seems completely healthy. I did a pretty thorough analysis a few quarters back, but nothing stood out as being problematic. They seem to have really good management and have steered the company well since IPO. I know, I know "but the Float X2 warranty problem". Meh. That's part of running a business, and they did fix the problem.
If anyone cares I can do a full breakdown of the company, where they are at, and any interesting tidbits, but I think its pretty boilerplate/boring/well run company fodder. EG, the opposite of Pierer Mobility.
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