I think part of what's hurting the market is the fact that nothing stays the same long enough for a new customer to learn about it. I think that's scaring new customers away. Brifters, disc brakes, carbon everything, through axles, electronic shifting--not all of these things are high-end and expensive, but we're seeing the manufacturers pushing them and supplanting simple and familiar technologies. Tire sizes, for the gods' sakes. And they keep on doing it, in what I consider a wrong-headed approach to marketing. They're selling speed and excitement, when, really, I think quite a few new customers are looking at buying a bike to get away from all the speed and excitement, or else they'd be buying a Suzuki motorcycle.

I don't blame the market for retreating; everything they knew about bikes a few years ago is obsolete and scorned and impossible to find repair parts for. And they can intuit that the same thing will happen to anything they buy today.