From the article:

>>>Not everything worked as planned. Research showed that the ideal price for the target market was $300 to $400. "It turns out that was too aggressive," Webster says. The cost of the auto-shifting mechanism pushed the price for even the lowest-cost bikes to $450.<<<

If the Trek Lime was to make ANY impact in the market, the bike would have to sell for $89.00 dollars. The fact they considered $300 - $400 dollars, "Aggressive" is insane! I have yet to see any Trek Lime's on the streets because it's overpriced.

I don't know why Trek gets interviews in major magazine when it's the department store bikes that have a much greater impact when it comes to introducing bikes to the low end consumer. There will be 1000 more Next department store bike sold for each Trek Lime.

What I would like is an article asking Pacific bikes why they are building such a crapy bike. Maybe if we put the spotlight on them, they might change their ways and sell reliable 3 speeds hub bikes or light single speed coasters for $99.00 dollars. This would be far more productive then spending time interviewing Trek on how they are going to impact the market with an overpriced $500.00 dollar beach crusier.