Originally Posted by
Mobile 155
I think what we are saying is a straw man was built for a problem that doesn't exist. Old school bikes are still offered, made and bought by the people that are interested in old school bikes. What we have is a question of the chicken or the egg. I contend the demand came first and then the equipment was developed. The advertisement is simply to get us to buy the demanded equipment from manufacturer A rather than Manufacturer B. But no one has to buy light weight. 10 or 11 speed cassette, Compact cranked un-obtainium bikes if they didn’t want one. They can get a steel lugged 9 speed triple from any number of companies in Oregon alone. 2200 gram 34 spoke wheels fall from the sky at almost any bike shop or online wheel building site. And the 32-36 spoke wheels are dirt cheap compared to the ultra-light 20 spoke wheels. To get light weight bikes wheels, cranks and cassettes the buyer has to go out of their way and pay extra to do so. Like I said the consumer has openly decided to buy what they buy and the manufacturers simply feed that desire. And that is how it is supposed to work even if the consumer hit their head on low door way and suddenly decided a 40 pound three speed was the perfect bike. Give the customer what they want and they will read your advertisement. Try to get the customer to buy what you want them to want and more than likely you will fail. Think how many times they have designed a car for the youth market only to see it fail and become a senior favorite. Think the Scion xA.
From my experience far more people are driven by what looks and feels good to them than they are about what is the most practical bike to buy. Cyclists are not that different from any other consumer of any other product sold.
It’s a little too complex than to simply say that consumer demand drives progress and industry is always just chasing demands that already existed. You say that what it comes down to is consumers liking the way a product looks or feels. Humans are not born with instinctual ideas about how products should look or feel. Their ideas are influenced by something. Sometimes it’s a realization of a practical use for a product, but more often than not it comes from the culture or a combination of the two.
You mentioned cars marketed the youth demographic. The reason this is hard to do is because aside from being young drivers, it’s hard pinpoint what they have in common and exploit it to use marketing to affect the culture in a way that behooves the manufacturer. It isn’t like the market for road bicycles where all a manufacture has to do is run an ad alongside a glowing review in bicycling magazine and suddenly every roadie and his mother wants a Pinarello Dogma.