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I'm pretty sure it was a big deal with the Pivot/BK thing because: A) the initial catastrophic failure of the prototype at Crankworx, WITH a subsequent video and bunch of articles going through the failure and how they were fixing things. And then no acknowledgement that the new frame actually broke. After the transparancy from the first failure, this one felt more cover-up-ish. b) it was the brand new (non-lugged) bike with a major claim to being one of (if not) THE lightest DH bike out there and had literally just been released for Hardline. Does having the lightest bike...

Just to clarify. They Streisand'd the whole scenario. It's not like BK has the best reputation regardless (gestures vaguely at recent events) but he asked for the clip to be removed from MoiMoi's youtube video and generally tried to hide the event within the media and sweep it under the rug. Plus it came after his devastating live crash at Crankworx. Plus it had the added context of people going 'well its just a proto with an unfortunate proto flaw' for the first one, and then that happened. He got perfect storm'd... By some factors outside of his control and...

Very much this; I've learned a tremendous amount from this thread alone, and have been delighted and surprised at how civil and thoughtful the conversation has been. Jeff, I hope you reconsider and feel welcome to return but either way, thank you for sharing your time and expertise so freely, it's a been a real pleasure to be a beneficiary!

This might be the only mtb forum where people actually get along 84 pages in, talk about REAL books in both finance and philosophy, and say sorry. Long live vital

Sure hope Jeff comes back. Completely agree a forum is a tough place to debate this type of stuff (especially when we're all just speculating with very little info), but I thought we were doing a pretty good job! If any of you guys are going to be in Whistler for Crankworx, I'm down to debate over some beers!

I don't have a horse in this race other than being very sad if Jeff stops posting his type of posts, and interacting with all of us in reply to help us along. It seems to me Jeff's posts were (are) nearly universally loved here, there's a reason I started jokingly referring to this thread as "bike industry talk and lessons in finance with Jeff". It would be a different landscape without Jeff and I hope he reconsiders.

Jeff, thank you for your insightful contributions on here, they are much appreciated. As someone who was out of work for a while due to the bike industry implosion it has been great to get a deeper understanding of the global and organisational factors that resulted in me and many of my colleagues finding ourselves out of work. It's been useful to rationalise the personal lived experience against some objective analysis from yourself and others. While I'm now working in a different industry I can see a lot of similar factors at play here and have my eyes open to...

Hey Jeff, I'm so sorry that my forum post bummed you out so much. It sounds like you want to stop posting on Vital entirely based on what I wrote. I'm so sorry it was so disrespectful. I have really appreciated your insights and analysis, and I think everyone has, and this bike industry forum in particular has been like a mini "intro to finance course" over the last 3 years based on everything you and other people (who know way more about this stuff than me) have contributed. Rereading what I wrote, I can see how my words may...

Wrote a reply and deleted it. While I'm sure i've beat my drum a bit too loudly, I really don't agree with a lot of what Robot has written and feel its a bit mischaracterizing. That's fine, its a forum after all and disagreeing is a great way to evolve thought, I just don't see how I can counter or rebuttal this without it turning into a dissertation (that nobody is going to read). Conversation would be a higher bandwidth way to go through these ideas in a more enjoyable back and forth, but that isn't going to happen. Y'all...

What would you propose? Like 250 - 200 - so on? I think it's worth noting Loic made up some extra points in qualifying and Jackson arguably lost a bit in qualifying on the season, considering his dominance. Jackson kinda flubbed the first 3 events in terms of qualifying. Loic has only flubbed one qualifying round, in Leogang. A Q1 win can earn 50 points. Loic has a 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, and a 16 in qualifying. (Jackson has a 27/8, 12, 14, 1, 1, 5.) So that may be making the 'missing points' you are sensing in the...

Oh, I don't disagree that Markus has always wanted to grow the company. I feel this is pretty clear in their model, marketing and image alone (dating back at least a decade). What I'm arguing is the nuance required to maybe make the right decisions through this COVID meltdown comes down to your ability to understand the financial levers to pull on against a lot of in-industry "touch". These aren't iPhone cases from china that are all more or less the same, these are products made for a discerning group of nerds who bang away at keyboards in internet forums...

Not sure I’ll ever finish the long blog post, so dropping a few thoughts here instead: YT did sell a majority stake to a PE firm. -Details are scarce. We don’t know the exact stake sold (just that it was over 51%), how many equity owners there really were (beyond the two founders), the deal structure, valuation, any earn-outs, if Markus retained a stake etc etc. -Without that info, blaming Markus might not be fair . Sure, flaunting wealth on Instagram is a bad look, especially during a downturn, but that’s social media for you. I’ve posted cringe stuff too...

The press release makes it pretty clear the deal was done with the founders. Ardian Expansion will invest in YT together with the company founders Markus Flossmann and Jacob Fatih - alongside the management team. The management team, led by former Amazon manager Sam Nicols who joined the company in 2020, and the founder and CVO Markus Flossmann, supported by Jacob Fatih’s business incubator Crealize, will focus on building out the company’s product portfolio, whilst simultaneously bringing YT’s brand and customer experience to the next level. https://www.ardian.com/press-releases/leading-mountain-bike-brand-yt-in… I have zero knowledge about any of this, but my guess is the...

All that money he spaffed on luxury helicopter rides, sports cars and yachts could have been invested into the company. Would you do the same thing if your company was making losses? The reason this happened is because he knew he would be bailed out by the government or private equity, when in a just world, there would be prison time for jeopardising the lives and jobs of his employees by living a life of luxury at the expense of the struggling company.

"A lways observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a speck of semen tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end your journey in contentment, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced I and thanking the tree in which it grew." “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you." "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break...

I would kill to have you come to a dinner party with me.

This is so lame. The CEO equivalent of athletes posting #freeshitbro posts on IG. COOL DUDE

I don’t mean to make light of a bad situation, but this felt inevitable. Anyone with any level of inside knowledge of the bike industry could look at YT from 30,000 feet and perhaps wonder if they have long had a money tree or maybe the operation was a money laundering front for the cartel.\ Some head scratchers, in no particular order: -Aggressively low prices (like...how is this possible low pricing) -Bloated SKU count (for them, its mostly the number of builds they have per model of bike) -Complex global supplier web (true for everyone, but their vendor count is...