Their salaries provided the down payment on this bad boy.
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Big building, nobody to staff it?
Ugh.
Innovation? Litigation.
Turns out the Trekkers are perhaps more litigious.
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Cops
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So basically thin the company down to a core product inno, legal, and marketing strategy and outsource all the other stuff?
buying a lot of storefronts and going dtc seems to square poorly with cutting staff.
It seems kind of rickety to me, but what do I know, I run at least one fewer bike corporations than the heads of Trekalized.
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I think any for-profit company being run competently in this economic system and climate is gonna be cutting staff at this moment due to economic contraction. I don’t think it is a sign that business models are changing.
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It’s definitely odd how much scrambling around there is at the big S. I have heard nothing like this going on at any of the brands I deal with. I suspect that most of them never really scaled up staff, over bought (but so much), or sank tons of cash into buying up storefronts.
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I thought Trek was doing similar shenanigans with combo storefront buyout and dtc, but maybe not at the scale that S is into it.
I’m curious who at S is getting fired, the article just says 8% not what areas of the firm. Maybe it’s all their legal specialists and staff and they’ll be really chill about my new company, Epic Roubaix.
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Call me petty, but I’m hoping this means my old dipshit boss who tried to become a Spesh influencer is finally unemployed
Probably not a ton of people here who pay for Strava but I found this interesting:
I subscribed at an annual rate in December 2021 and got an email that my monthly subscription was about to end and that I needed to update my payment information. I used a credit card and assume they saved the card details. I’m guessing this is a dark pattern to get me to consent to paying the more expensive monthly rate.
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Good news guys, my romper and I survived the cut.
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oooh I was going to start paying, but if they’re pulling this kind of horse hockey then no thank you
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i mean, not the end of the world. its been $60 for like a decade and i value a lot of what it does for me as a means of organizing my rides, sharing rides, and keeping track of replacing wear items. it’s a lot of $$$ i could spend elsewhere but i’ve really come to value it.
(and nobody tell strava this but i would still pay $80 for a year)
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I bought the premium rwgps last year for rando plannery
Hopefully I can recoup costs with whatever
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Trek seemed more aggressive with retail expansion from where I sit. There seem to be more Trek stores in this city than Specialized. That doesn’t mean this is true, but just saying the scale might be even bigger?
I know someone who got surprise laid off at S years ago. I think they operate more like your run of the mill valueless corporation than other bike brands.
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I’m not really worried about the price increase personally. I just think the way they’re handling it is a shitshow and it’s fascinating to watch.
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Yeah, Strava seems worth the $5-8/mo fee. I think mine renews in July, hopefully by then they have clarified all of this stuff and not tried to hide the actual cost behind a bunch of text.
I think that they’ve been responding to shareholder pressure for longer, which would certainly correlate there.
Their takeovers also fly under the radar because the shops keep their original name. Based off what I saw here, they barely have an idea of what they’re doing (inventory, some staffing bits), and just hoping it all pans out. Also, as was pointed out, they did a lot of this during pandemic. One would hope they understood that the numbers presented to them for sales wouldn’t continue endlessly, but who knows.
I know they finally decided to sell the Giant and cannondale stock we had basically at cost to get rid of it a few months post-take over. A few good deals for normies just walking in if it was close to their size and spec.
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