Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 17:00:37 -0800
From: Brandon Ives <brandon@ivycycles.com>
To: Donald Gillies <gillies@cs.ubc.ca>
Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]What was the first year..?
On Friday, Mar 4, 2005, at 16:21 US/Pacific, Donald Gillies wrote:
> e.g. oiler covers,
These existed on bikes built in the 1890s. A spring clip over an oil
port was nothing new when Tullio and lads started using it.
> wingnuts on shifters, micro adjust seatposts (i think),
Didn't Simplex beat Campy to both of these?
> I believe some innovations to the gransport derailleurs
I must agree here though as they were the first with a widely used
reliable drop-parallelogram derailieur. Too bad they never thought of
slanting it as SunTour did 20-odd years later.
> Campy's problem in the 70's and 80's might have been that they did not
> have a culture of innovation. It was "Tullio or the Highway" perhaps.
Tullio was an amazing promoter and I believe put too much faith into 'tried and true' and started to believe his own hype. When he died they just kept going as Tullio would have wished. Even into the late 80s, maybe even early 90s, Campy said that index shifting wasn't going to go anywhere. I think maybe it could also have been the leadership in Vicenza being too proud to look at others designs in a complementary fashion.
<snip> enjoy, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives off to master a fish taco in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
BMI: I wouldn't really agree that Campagnolo "just kept going as Tullio would have wished" after his death, at least not for very long. I would agree with Don's comment about "Tullio or the Highway," though My read of the situation is that there likely was a power struggle / transition between Founder, Living Legend, Icon, and Generation 1 (Tullio) and Generation 2 (Valentino) that started even before Tullio passed away. Witness the schizophrenia of Campy component levels and complexity relatively soon after Tullio's death - I think Valentino was struggling to find a way to "put his stamp on the Company" and to decide how to come out from behind his father's shadow and compete in what he saw as the "modern, real world of the bike component business" circa 1983, while still respecting Tullio's memory and legacy. It's kind of fascinating in some ways. Very common situation in the business world (of businesses like Campagnolo...). Tullio was clearly very opposed to change in his later years, for multiple reasons, I'd wager. For one, his long-term success was based (in no small part) on part interchangeability and maintainability (e.g. you could re-build a Nuovo Record rear derailleur if you ever used it long enough to wear it out, and the small parts needed to do that were stocked by many, many bike shops around the World, precisely because they weren't obsoleted regularly by the "latest and greatest version" (like D-A was/is). The problem with that philosophy is that, in the extreme, over decades, it can become a huge barrier to change, and time (and the rest of the world) marches on regardless of what one Company might do...... Fortunately, we get to celebrate the rather long "cool" period, before the Icon became the Impediment! Valentino eventually found his way, and the Second Chapter got into full swing. Gen 2 to Gen 3 should be interesting; that's when many small-to-medium-sized businesses can get into really serious trouble (or not...). Greg Parker Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA