Apr
23
Sea Otter Video - Guitar Ted on the Latest from 29′er-land
Filed Under Exhibitor News, Industry News, Video | Leave a Comment
Ran into Guitar Ted of twentynineinches.com fame at a press event at Sea Otter and thought I’d tap his passion for 29′ers for IBTimes. Here he is with a brief roundup of the latest and greatest in big wheels.
Ge t more of Ted at:
www.twentynineinches.com
www.g-tedproductions.blogspot.com
Apr
18
Sea Otter Video - Pedro’s Chris Zigmont
Filed Under Deep Thoughts, Exhibitor News, Green Efforts, Industry News, Video | 4 Comments
Man, doing the video thing is alot more work than just posting. Finally after some quality time in the Sea Otter Media Center, I’ve got something to show. I interviewed Pedro’s current GM and soon to be CEO, Chris Zigmont, about their efforts to be green and a socially responsible company. Good stuff from a passionate member of our industry. Also includes news about the management buyout of Pedro’s back from Swix. (Please excuse my noobi-ness as an on-camera interviewer…) More videos to come.
Mar
5
The Bike Summit is On!
Filed Under Advocacy, Industry News | Leave a Comment
The National Bike Summit is in full swing today. Just want to wish all of our advocates there a productive day full of meetings with influential people.
A site to visit for coverage of the event is Jonathan Maus’ (or is that Maus’s?) BikePortland.org site. If you know of any others, let me know.
Lance, Robert and Andria from Interbike are there. Don’t be shy about going up to them and saying hi.
Update:
I found a nice list of bloggers that will be attending the Summit at the Commute by Bike site. Didn’t see any coverage there yet - just the “We’re heading off to the Summit this week” posts. Hopefully the posting will kick in soon.
Mar
4
SRAM: “We Are Porsche” in Business Week
Filed Under Exhibitor News, Gear, Industry News, Interbike | 5 Comments
In another of my non-original posts here, I’m going to reference and plug another’s work again here in scooping this story. This article is right up our alley here at Interbike since it’s a great bike industry B2B story that is playing in the national non-endemic media. If there’s any way we can help promote or facilitate more of that for our industry members, we’re all over it. This is a little late - I was hoping to get this out last Friday when I first heard about it, but well, sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging. Still worth mentioning, though, in case our little site reaches some corner of the world that Bike Biz UK’s does not…
The article that appears on Business Week’s website is titled: “SRAM - A Bike Parts Tour de Force.” Stan Day, the co-founder of SRAM along with his brother and a friend, is the focus of the piece. Obviously written from a non-endemic point of view, there is still plenty of interesting background information about the company (I finally know where the name SRAM came from).
Not to call anyone out here, but there is an intriguing quote from a product manager at one of the major bike manufacturers about SRAM’s place in the OEM market:
“They are not really credible yet.”
While I understand that, from a sales standpoint, Shimano still dwarfs them, I don’t see how SRAM could not be considered a credible player at this point. Now I’m just a marketing guy and have no experience wearing a product manager’s shoes, but I’ve seen plenty of great brands spec’d by people I know and have great respect for with SRAM OEM componentry. [Shimano: I still love my Dura Ace pedals and shoes 
] Plus, they’ve got a beer vending machine in the office! Instant cred right there.
By the way, we’re big fans of BikeBiz UK here. Carlton Reid - a great friend of the industry, and burgeoning internet cycling media mogul - got wind of this Business Week article about SRAM’s emergence as a player in the bicycle components game. Definitely worth the read. Check it out here.
Feb
29
Article: Year of the Bike in 2008?
Filed Under Advocacy, Cycling, Industry News, Interbike | 1 Comment
I hate to re-hash something that another site has already covered (very nicely, btw), but in this case I think the topic merits another mention in case anyone missed it - especially with the National Bike Summit taking over the Capitol next week.
The article that Jonathan Maus of the awesome bikeportland.org blog discovered recently was written with the Summit in mind by columnist James Peirce of the Washington Post Writer’s Group. Mr. Peirce goes through a list of issues that have been in the headlines recently that all point to a very favorable atmosphere for the growth of the use and acceptability of the bicycle as a legitimate form of transportation and dynamic solution to many of these problems. (That last point also eloquently brought up by Interbike show director, Lance Camisasca, back in 2006, btw.)
Jonathan does a great job of describing the article and has some nice pull-quotes, so I’ll avoid echoing here. Of course, you should read the whole article itself, but one snippet at the end where he describes the significance of Portland’s Bike Boulevards seems an important point, so I’ll excerpt it again here:
“But perhaps most importantly, they’ve marked a major shift from meeting needs of expert and intermediate cyclists. The focus, instead, is on making cycling welcoming for everyone — kids, families and novices included.”
We “expert and intermediate” cyclists in the industry can tend to forget the needs of the masses of non-riders (the 161 million, as I’ve often heard quoted as their number) that we are trying to encourage to leave their cars in the garage. It may be tough to paceline in a bike way or path, but that’s not really the point, is it?
Have fun at the Summit - and go do some good!
Feb
27
OutDoor Demo East Blast From the Past
Filed Under Industry News, Interbike, OutDoor Demo East | Leave a Comment
So here’s something interesting: Poking around the Bike Europe (the Euro bike trade magazine) website, we found this news piece from back in 2000 announcing the postponement of the Interbike Open Air Trade Fair following its first year. As you are probably aware, we’ve announced the first OutDoor Demo East event for this coming October in Providence, RI. The way Lance is quoted in the article, it’s almost as if ODDE is the “refined and re-tooled” OATF he’s talking about.
Lance describes the OATF as a great event that was a bit before its time. From the strong response we’ve gotten from the industry and East Coast retailers so far, the inaugural ODD East should be a great event.
Interbike Postpones East Coast Open Air Trade Fair for 2000
LAGUNA BEACH, CA/USA (9 March 2000)–Interbike officials have postponed the Open Air Trade Fair, citing timing and market conditions as key factors in the decision. Unveiled last September, the Fair provided, according to Interbike, a business oriented hands-on riding experience in an outdoor festival setting. The event drew more than 1,300 retailers representing nearly 600 retail stores to the two-day event in Vernon, New Jersey. “The Open Air Trade Fair was a great event, but its value wasn’t realized by all the attendees,” said Lance Camisasca, Interbike
Show Director. “The postponement gives us an opportunity to discuss future possibilities on a more intimate basis with Eastern retailers as well as with show exhibitors.” Despite the postponement, the Interbike staff will reach out to Eastern retailers by sponsoring a retailer-only
day at the start of the 6th Annual Pedro’s Mountain Bike Festival, held in Lanesboro, Mass., from 17 to 20 August. The retailer-only day is slated for Thursday, Aug. 17, 2000. “We’re very excited to initiate some conversations with East Coast retailers at the Pedro’s Fest, but we’re also eager to refine and retool the Open Air Trade Fair for the future, if the industry feels it is needed,” said Camisasca. (JW)
Published @ 09-03-2000
We’ll be back…
Feb
20
Duke’s Cycle of Toronto Fire
Filed Under Attendee News, Industry News | Leave a Comment
Just heard the unfortunate news from someone on the rec.bicycles.tech newsgroup that Duke’s Cycle of Toronto was one of several businesses whose buildings were left gutted by a large fire that broke out early this morning. This is truly a great loss for the Toronto cyclists as Duke’s was a fixture in the community since 1914 under the same family ownership. I believe they were recently listed in Bicycle Retailer as one of the oldest bike shops in North America.
Duke’s was - and hopefully will return as - a premier bicycle shop. They are good people and I fondly remember dealing with them when I worked for a previous employer of mine. I missed an opportunity to visit the shop the last time I was in Toronto for business a few years ago.
Duke’s bike lines include Cannondale, Cervelo, Trek, Specialized and Kona.
I’m sure there will be some difficult times ahead for the owners and employees of Duke’s and we wish them nothing but the best at this challenging moment for this member of the industry family.
Feb
11
Sheldon Obituary in the Boston Globe
Filed Under Attendee News, Industry News | 1 Comment
Ross Kerber, a journalist for the Boston Globe and fellow cyclist, wrote a nice obituary for Sheldon Brown that ran on Friday the 8th. I provides a good brief biography of the man and has a some fun tid-bits from Sheldon such as the one where he claimed that “Maoists” had purged him from the The Bicycle Repair Collective in Cambridge that he co-founded back in the 70’s.
It’s definitely worth the read and it is very satisfying that a big city paper like the Globe would dedicate the space to this “spine of the industry,” as Richard Fries is quoted as calling him in the piece. A lot of credit goes to Ross for this. I had the pleasure of riding the Tour of Lake Mead with him and a few others at the ‘07 Interbike and he truly is a friend of the industry and just as much of a bike nut as we are.
The article is titled “Homespun Wisdom.”
Feb
4
Sheldon Brown
Filed Under Attendee News, Industry News, Interbike | 9 Comments
Just heard the sad news that bike community treasure Sheldon Brown passed away last night. He will be missed by scores of bikers, but he leaves quite a legacy behind online that will continue to inform and entertain cyclists everywhere.
Sheldon and me at Interbike 2007 after his interview.
I had the pleasure of meeting Sheldon at the 2007 Interbike for the first time. I had spoken to him before on the phone a few times over the years when I had a technical bike question and he was always very nice. Opinionated, to be sure, but nice. We both had a connection to Harris Cyclery: he famously worked there and they were my local bike shop and sponsored the team that I began bike racing with back in the early 90’s.
Leading up to Interbike 2007, one of my many responsibilities was lining up guests for our “Good Morning Interbike” show filmed in the Media Center and broadcast live over at the main Interbike website. GMI was fashioned after your typical morning news/talk show and had some recaps/previews of Interbike events and happenings and interviews with interesting industry folks.
I came up with the idea to have Sheldon on when I was doing some shop visits in the Boston area last Summer after Pedro’s Fest. Since I hadn’t been back to Harris since the mid-90’s, I made a point of stopping by. Sheldon would make the perfect guest, I thought to myself. He’s interesting, opinionated, loved by thousands of cyclists, and not too many people had had a chance to meet the man or hear him talk. An interview would be a great opportunity for people to get to know what the man himself - the man behind Sheldonbrown.com - was like.
The interview was great. Richard Fries, the host of GMI, knew Sheldon well, being a fellow New Englander, and had some fun with him. Richard had come up with the idea of playing a game with the last guest each morning called “Dead or Alive” where he would throw out ten bike-related topics and ask them to rate them dead or alive. Stuff like fixed-gear bikes, 29″ mountain bikes, road bikes, pro road racing, etc. As you can imagine, Sheldon was quick to opine on each. The photo below was his reaction to one such topic that he felt especially passionate about.
“3-speed internal hubs? Alive!!”
So where’s the video of this great segment, you ask? Well, I’m embarrassed to say that we had some challenges with some of the footage we shot at IB including, unfortunately, the GMI segment with Sheldon. Other priorities came up in the meantime, and getting it finished got pushed down the to-do list. Of course, now I will try to get that piece finished and get it posted as soon as possible. Stay tuned.. I’ll post when it’s ready. (To see the Day 2 episode of GMI which includes a Dead or Alive segment with with Sky Yeager and Tim Parr of Swobo, click here.)
Our thoughts here at Interbike go out to Sheldon and his family today. Thanks for sharing him with the rest of us!
Feb
1
National Bike Summit - Be There!
Filed Under Advocacy, Cycling, Industry News, Interbike | Leave a Comment
Mark your calendars, this is the big one: the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC, March 4-6, 2008.
The League of American Bicyclists organizes this amazing bicycle advocacy event that seeks to “present a comprehensive, actionable, national bicycling agenda to Congress.” On a personal level, it’s also an awesome civics lesson as you roam the halls of Congress and meet with your elected officials and their staffers and learn the finer points of lobbying and the legislative process through workshops and speaker sessions.
According to the NBS website:
The National Bike Summit provides us with a unique opportunity to inform our members of Congress of the importance of bicycling, and to educate them on specific bicycling issues.
They need delegates from each and every congressional district in the United States at the National Bike Summit this year.
Interbike strongly believes in this event and we are sponsoring it again this year. We also encourage all members of the bike industry on both the manufacturer and retailer side of the business to attend this important gathering in Washington.