Fullylugged wrote: "They usually kill off their best sellers in order to produce something more obscure that only the true faithful will find desirable."
This is where I find myself scratching my head. I don't work in the bike industry, but I do work in product and have marketing experience. I have long struggled to see how RBW segments their product lineup. To make sense of it, this is how I segment their lineup in my own mind: [image: RBW segmentation.jpg] This only accounts for what they currently have on their frames page. It excludes recent bikes like the Appaloosa, Hunqapillar & GBW (all are burly, wide-tired, offroad touring frame and would be with the Atlantis on this chart). In the way I do the segmentation, a gap exists in lower priced mixed terrain box. This used to be held by the Sam Hillborne before the AHH and Atlantis went MIT, but now the Sam is at the same price point as the AHH. So maybe the Gallop will fill this need? We'll see. Grant's no dummy and I have to think they have a segmentation strategy--I just am not seeing it. And with so many products that have a lifespan of just a couple years, it seems (as Fullylugged suggests) that they have bikes which are "more obscure that only the true faithful will find desirable." I don't have any familiarity with product development costs in the bike industry, but have to think there are significant expenses w/r/t prototyping and setting up production. It seems they do it way more often than is necessary. I'd really like to see RBW hang on another 25 years--but given their recent financial struggles, maybe they should focus on the core products for awhile and move away from the niche ones. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/9b032d2c-a30e-4f2f-b439-35aad606d00a%40googlegroups.com.
