Originally Posted by
ksryder
But the article got me to thinking -- what would it take for you to ride a Schwinn gravel bike, given the good will that Schwinn has squandered over the last 30 years? I realize that Pacific also owns Cannondale, so it's not like they can't make good bikes, but Schwinn has been such absolute crap for so long that even if they offer decent quality bikes they are still tainted by the stench of BSO crapidity. I'm not saying I wouldn't buy one but I'd be a lot more skeptical and critical than I would of some more traditional choices.
Honestly, the Schwinn name is either incredibly antiquated or sullied, depending on your age and experience with the bike market. The people old enough to remember the brand with any sort of historical fondness are probably only a very small sliver of potential customers. Or, it is neither and you don't know anything about "Schwinn" at all. As such, I'm not sure there really is much real benefit to using the "Schwinn" name at this point for higher than bottom-tier bikes.
Looking through all of the bikes listed on the Dick's website, the substantial majority of the bikes that they even list in their catalog (let alone actually stock in any store) that list for $1000+ are mountain bikes, most of them suspension mountain bikes. Of the seven road bikes over $1000, two are Schwinns, this new gravel bike being one of them (the other is a tarmac carbon road bike). The rest are GT, Diamondback or Mongoose, which I am old enough to remember were all BMX brands in the 80s (my BMX bike was a Redline, FWIW). Seems to me that since the Schwinn brand lacks any substantial cache, they would be better off just conjuring up an entirely new brand name at least for the higher-price models and couple that with some effective in-store marketing. They'd probably move more units that way.