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I see scenario 2 a lot in the tech industry, but they include the wider company org. Basically during the D/E/F rounds employees are allowed to sell a certain percentage of their equity into the round. I have also seen companies offer employees liquidity in between rounds as well through private placement. At my last company both founders sold over $100M in equity pre IPO which was a minor portion of their total equity. As employees we were offered something like $8/share during the same timeframe. The company later IPO'd at over $80/share so in theory anyone who sold in...

To quote a VC I know, "We expect the money to be spent immediately. If we wanted money in a bank, we would keep it in our bank." Basically when these businesses become over capitalized they are pushed to spend the money as quickly as possible. You could see this in the auction for TPC where they were selling multiple 25' square photo booth setups that had to cost thousands, if not 10's of thousands, of dollars each. No way they needed this many booths this size, but they had a dumb amount of money and were being pushed to...

The component companies who have a notable OEM portion of business were in many cases being dragged into the mess by these overzealous OEM forecasts and then were left holding the bag when many of the bike companies canceled orders. Seems like a tough position to be in as a component company - do you increase capacity and take the orders or turn down orders and say "no thank you" and maybe loose the other business too. https://www.bicycleretailer.com/international/2021/03/07/specialized-an… A friend of mine who has been a long timer in the TW bike industry basically blamed some of the big OEMs...

This is really the big question mark, yet it remains a ubiquitous problem. To start, I feel it's really easy for someone like me to say, "Of course I wouldn't take it," but that's hindsight being 20/20. Something I haven't mentioned in this thread is how uneducated most founders are when it comes to finance. Most founders don't study financing for an extended period of time before jumping in. To the contrary, they are usually a bit delusional (you have to be), see their idea being bigger than it probably is and have no "checks and balances" in place against...

Ya that warehouse they showed... Just the cost alone would seem astronomical, then top it off with filling it to the brim with stock nobody actually wants. It's no surprise the former owners failed, I just legit don't see quite where the new owners succeed here. Even if they intelligently manage refurnishing, restaffing, and restocking the business. It seems like it's just an outright gamble on the market normalizing and being able to do the exact same thing at a smaller scale. "Bold strategy Cotton, let's see how it pays off for em."

Meh, I don't want to be reductive of their statements nor my lackluster reading comprehension but it seemed like a top to bottom nothing burger and where it gets some points in the 'we arent siphoning money from PE sources with no ability to pay them back and massively generating debt'... It still ultimately loses points in the 'this is one of the worst business models to attempt to operate in a massive industry down turn' part. So, call it a moot point at net zero now. I still don't understand what they are legitimately doing differently. From what I...

Alright boys don't wanna derail the thread too much (more than it already does) but in regards to the TPC thing... Surely there is no way they actually are being bought to do the same exact thing. How willfully ignorant can you be to try to take that model in the current economy/industry and figure out a better way to work it? So the question is, if they were smart enough to pivot to an adjacent model what do you think they could even pull off? An obvious one would be another Jenson clone as a standard store using that...

How long before Sea Otter and Eurobike move to Bentonville?

Don't under estimate the stupidity of the industry. I sat through 8 hours of presentations from a very large manufacturer (that rhymes with Drek) where they explained to us that the huge growth in sales (mid lockdown) was down to their hard work and foresight and how we should be grateful to them and not let them down by listening to medical advice.

I think it's very unlikely that the discounting will stop any time soon. There's going to be a hangover to this as well with people delaying purchasing a new bike at full pop because of years of deep discounts. Unless you're buying an e-bike with a significantly better motor or battery, the differences between each successive generation of a mountain bike is narrower and narrower. Take the newest Hightower or Sentinel as examples: they're both great bikes, but if you own the previous generation and it's not entirely clapped out, what's the incentive to upgrade at MSRP? It's going to...

That's actually super interesting, I hadn't seen that yet. On the surface it does feel like Kona, but really they could be creating a new customer in a parallel market segment. Tradition motorsport customers could be E-curious but need a nudge to try it out. Kona was all about burning inventory, but Gas Gas could be part blowing out inventory and part investment in future market share.

Hey biz thread subscribers, I met with Jeff about a month ago for an Inside Line to discuss the current state of things. It was a rad discussion. The podcast and its copy are below. Enjoy! I know I did. Thanks to Maxxis Tires | FOX | Jenson USA for supporting The Inside Line Today we're joined by Jeff Brines, a long-time mountain biker, Litter Mag and Vital MTB fan. He's also educated and versed in finance. He kicked off a forum thread on Vital MTB that asked " Will more companies be shutting down in the next 12-24 months?"...

MTB forumites: WC DH is the pinnacle of our sport with riders leaving no stone unturned to eke another few hundredths of a second out of their runs; tuned mass dampers, electronic suspension, O-chain, custom chain-stays, it's so cool! Science: Skinsuits are worth 1 second per minute of race time Also MTB forumites: Ewww

It was either on the Gravity CoOp podcast or Vital podcast but one of the coaches who runs a Devo team (gravity academy maybe?) threw out that some parents are completely down with dishing out 30k for their kids to get to do a World Cup season. So yeah. This is pretty common practice. Every XC devo team (including Bear which is probably the most successful in America) have club dues that are pretty high. I also suspect that a lot of the teams are set up (not to use a loaded example) like pyramid schemes. The younger, less talented...

One of the best and worst things about mountain biking is the people. I completely agree with you @owl-x. It’s amazing you have more dislikes than likes on this comment and all your saying is the truth. Some factions of cycling are so far up their own ass the can’t see their own hypocrisy.

" but it seems like we're going to see a massive shake up in XC" always the case the year after Olympics in XC isn't it? Although last time the covid delayed games in '21 screwed with plans... so I guess I mean, is this any worse than the 2016-2017 off season? Additionally you've got rumours that Hatherley will go to the road, Pidcock won't MTB next year and Schurter likely to announce '25 as his retirement year with champs being in Switzerland.

😅 We stubbornly wanted to make the sliding bushing work so bad, probably delayed the whole project by a year. At the end of the day in blind A/B testing, riders couldn't tell a difference so it was ease of service and manufacturing consistency that pushed us to fixed bushings. Mountain bikes are similar to motos in many ways but also different, so not every moto concept is a good fit for us. Sure, putting sliding bushings as a feature on our spec sheet would look cool, but if it isn't actually better we're not interested. And yes, it is...

The biggest problem with hexloc was consumers complete inability to understand how to remove their axle despite being demonstrated live and in front of their face several times. I can't see a company like Fox adopting it because even though it provides superior stiffness at the same weight, customers are too stupid to make it work. Source: the utter misery of selling bikes that came stock with hexloc axles.

Hey all, just got this shiny new thing in the mail to test. Rimpact's press release is linked here, along with some of my first impressions before bolting it on the old bike. Obviously it looks a lot like an Ochain, but Rimpact says their device is designed to address a different mechanism of suspension interference. Innovation! Let me know what you think: https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/rimpact-chain-damper

i will put my Saint stickers on a crab.