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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...

I wonder what's causing that chaotic variable pricing? 🤔 Perhaps a certain yam-tittied, geriatic orange ghoul at head of a certain government?

The entire company structure was available in the Rocky Mountain bankruptcy filings. We're nerds here, I know. I'll refrain from saying more because we already have the "will more companies be shutting down in the next 12-24 months thread" which is actually "Bike business discussion thread" or "lessons in bike company finance and valuation with Jeff", and I'm afraid someone will link that thread to tell me to stop discussing such things in the tech rumour thread.

will YT mob riders get paid from here on out w/ the YT news that dropped today?

Didn’t Dan booker whose gap it was spend every bit as much time helping people out as Bernard? didn’t Jackson see the gap done live and chose to do it? I guess that’s a benefit of a good qualifier. Watching Bernard over the years he seems to think to be be on the “victim” side of things more often than not. I don’t really see any equation between helping people thru dangerous features and everyone agreeing to ride a feature instead of the bline come race day and essentially giving away all of your racing lines from top to bottom...

I think the main problem with the argument is separating getting over a life-threatening feature vs line choice. (And not conflating the two.) As well as, to play devil's advocate, BK weaponizing the fact that he is willing to be the tow in for so many riders. It's nice... Until you start implying that backs NEED to be scratched now and all race lines must be shared because I towed multiple people over the 90. I think he is still right on the Hardline practice has to be about working together part. But I think he missed the forest for...