Back in my heavy MTB days in the early/mid 90's, I would've done anything for a Zaskar frame (anodized purple, of course - if you didn't ride back then, you'd never understand...). They had spectacular mountain bikes, but their earlier road bikes with that triple-triangle design always looked plain silly to me. Still do, too.
Today, I think companies like GT, Diamond Back and others are always going to be stuck in the shadow of the big companies like Trek and Specialized. They'll always be trying HARD just to get some name recognition. It's not going to be from a lack of having quality bikes either. Quite the opposite, actually. Thanks to their lack of name recognition, their bikes are a fantastic value. If they can pony up the marketing $$ to sponsor a big name team, they might break out of their current niche and start capturing some of the high $$ market for a change such as what FUJI did in the pre-Toyota United years. I don't think Fuji suddenly started offering drastically "better" bikes at all. They just got a much-needed credibility boost thanks to that sponsorship deal. GT and Diamond Back would benefit a lot from the same situation.