Re: [CR]victims of campy marketing

(Example: History:Norris Lockley)

Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 07:53:01 -0700
Subject: Re: [CR]victims of campy marketing
To: "Steve Neago" <questor@cinci.rr.com>
From: "Brandon Ives" <monkeylad@mac.com>
In-Reply-To: <000d01c32019$24e89780$cbb71b18@cinci.rr.com>
cc: classicrendezvous <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
cc: classicrendezvous

On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 09:18 PM, Steve Neago wrote:
> Just-In-Time inventory methods were not used at that time by OEM bike
> manufacturers, so the bikes that shipped from England sometimes came
> with
> components not listed in the catalogue.

It's still with us today and just-in-time doesn't help all that much if the manufacturer stops producing something or misses stock. . . etc. I spent 15 years making a "living" changing things on new bikes, the last two years as the Assembly Manager for Bike Friday. When I was working for the largest Raleigh dealership in the country in the early 90s I can tell you nothing much has changed in the mystery spec of their bikes since Steve worked there. Raleigh in fact would build a line of bike specifically to use up parts. I think the bikes were called Tangent. I've seen the same thing with many other makers. The only large company I can think of who's spec was close to the catalog was Cannondale.

At BF we used just-in-time and it almost made it worse. Chris King told us they were shutting down production for a couple weeks to move only a week before they closed down. Trying to get headsets had 4 of us scrambling and calling everyone trying to get something. We still ended up up-specing quite a few bikes, but how do you up-spec from Chris King? Many times in production you will have to change things and that's just what happens. You try to do right by the customer by giving them a an up-speced better quality part. I've got quite a few stories on customers who wanted exactly what they ordered and we've had to ship out the "correct" part ASAP no mater how much better quality the replacement was. I've also got as many tales of people who were blown away that someone would actually up-spec their bike to get it delivered in time.

CLASSIC CONTENT: The problems of yesterday are still with us today. Oh, and Bike Friday is all about steel bikes and would build lugged frames if they could. enjoy, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives off to his non-bike job in Santa Barbara, Ca.

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"Sine coffea nihil sum."
--Sarah Vowell--
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