Re: [CR] British Derailleurs

(Example: Bike Shops)

From: <gpvb1@comcast.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR] British Derailleurs
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 13:47:21 +0000


Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:58:34 -0400 From: "P.C. Kohler" <kohl57@starpower.net> To: <Carb7008@cs.com>, <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Subject: Re: [CR]British Derailleurs

I have always wondered why Sturmey-Archer didn't develop a derailleur when the writing was on the wall. Or at least buy out Cyclo-Benelux and adopt their own designs.

Afterall, Sturmey-Archer was not independent. They were owned by Raleigh Industries and both fed off each other. Why the biggest bicycle maker on the planet chose instead to be Campagnolo's biggest customer (which they must have been in the 1970s) or indeed Huret's for that matter while they owned one of the premier names in cycle gearing is astonishing to me.

And remember it's not like Raleigh itself gave up on the hub gear for club and racing bikes by 1958. The last machine they made with close or medium ratio hub gears as an option was the 1957-58 RRA Moderne. SA stopped production of the AC/FC, AM/FM and ASC by 1963 precisely when the modern derailleur was an accomplished fact. So it's not like Raleigh and SA were pretending racing and club lads were still using hub gears.

So a puzzlement.

Peter Kohler Washington DC USA

Corporations do what they think is necessary to compete effectively in the marketplace as they see it. It's really a simple matter of economics. Since their infrastructure and labor costs are very high, a large Corporation will almost always determine that it would be more expensive to go into production of their outsourced parts than to continue to beat the crap out of their current suppliers on pricing, and buy the parts at rock-bottom prices. If there is a perceived significant cost savings in producing the widgets, they *may* go ahead and tool up to produce them. I say "may" because there are always hidden risks in doing so, and large Corporations are *very* risk-averse. There are, of course, exceptions to this cardinal rule, but the larger the Corporation, the less exceptions there are! History is also littered with mega-financial-Corporate-losses-and-writeoffs due to buyouts of smaller companies that were undertaken to "make a killing," but then the mega Corporation couldn't run the purchased Company at a profit, since its cost structure now became just like its parent's.... Such companies are then sometimes sold back to their original owners at pennies on the dollar!! The founder then goes back to doing what he or she did so well with the company, but still has 90% of the after-tax portion of the $693 million purchase price in Swiss bank accounts as a "nest egg." Greg "worked for Fortune 1, been there, done that" Parker Dexter, Michigan