Originally Posted by
bulldog1935
Suntour under-priced themselves out of the market. The French first offered Suntour on near-top-line touring bikes in 1971-2, and you couldn't sell a bike without Suntour by the end of the 70s. If they had taken advantage of their superior patented design (which Everyone copied after the patent expired), priced and marketed themselves for the prestige instead of the frugal, they would have survived the 80s.
SunTour did survive the 80s.
Not being old enough to have experienced this firsthand, I rely on historical accounts of the industry back then, but from what I have read- SunTour failed for more reasons that just not charging enough money for their products.
- In addition to pricing themselves as a great value and not profiting from a higher margin, they had an incredibly small R&D team compared to Shimano. Something like 10-1.
- Also, at one of the bike shows many large retail shop owners were in a focus group and asked about Shimano's indexing. Almost all said it was a gimmick/wasnt necessary/wouldnt succeed. SIS was a massive success and SunTour was left playing catch up with that small R&D team which allowed Shimano to take significant shares of the market thru the last half of the 80s.
- Shimano's ability to create a groupset was more appealing compared to SunTour's use of its partner comonent companies like Sanshin and DiaCompe to create a group.
It seems those 3 issues contributed significantly to SunTour's decline thru the 80s and eventual sale in the 90s. Charging more for some derailleurs in '82 wouldnt have stopped any of the 3 issues mentioned.
Again, this is thru what I have learned from reading and talking with people from that period and wasnt experienced 1st hand by me, so any or all of those 3 issues could be inaccurate, but I dont think so.