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I know KTM's troubles might go beyond the boundary of this thread but considering the number of similarities and the fact it was e-bikes that sank the company some of you may find my latest post worthwhile ( substack // blog) One thing I find very interesting is how much control KTM has over inventory control (dirt bikes, not e bikes) and re-stablizing the market. Turns out, when there are only a handful of players in a market, and one player has a particular niche cornered (KTM/Husky/GasGas owns the off road market), they can more easily fix a problem by...

New post up on the whole YT situation. Thanks to a sleuth-y VitalMTB member, financials were found (up until 2022). Huge shoutout...but I want to make sure he wants the shoutout first! Substack My Blog My Super Ugly Windows 98 Themed Blog (reader beware)

The fact that they're in self-administration indicates to me that there isn't that kind of money in the bike industry, if you're looking at a 5+ year time frame.

Flossman tried the vogue/vanity fair method. Razor thin margins because everything is spent on marketing and perpetuating the myth of great financial success when in reality you are just barely making a profit even when sales are good. Whether any of that portrayal was paid for with debt I have no idea. But clearly a large portion of yts “profits” were used for advertising and flossman’s personal gain. Then they required loans to get in inventory. And the house of cards came crashing down once they couldn’t flash sale their way out of trouble. Cause most bike buyers aren’t fashion...

Hey I'm back (with Rocky). I might post a bit less here as I navigate current state of the bike industry; I've got a mountain of work to get through after being away from it all for 5 months. Thanks for the well wishes.

I think the layoffs from the German office were due to Fox moving the German distribution and support to the distributor Cosmic Sports which was announced recently. It's an interesting move considering that about a decade ago Fox actually bought out their German distributor so they could take over the distribution themselves: https://www.bike-eu.com/2819/fox-inc-acquires-german-distributor-toxoho… This type of move seems to be counter to what most brands are doing these days - taking distribution in-house. The German market is HUGE (about the size of the US market) so it's a bit of a curious move that fox is shifting back to a...

This isn’t company guidance. It’s sell-side research. All the big banks have research teams that cover a sizable group of publicly traded equities. These reports are primarily intended for top institutional and mid-tier clients, so you can’t just search for them online. I used to have access in a previous role, and these notes can definitely move a stock. They typically include a rating (buy, hold, or sell) and a price target, usually for a 12-month horizon. In this case, the banks clearly don’t like the future for Fox from a stock performance standpoint, which lines up with everything discussed...