RE: [CR]miele and gardin reputation

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From: "Grant McLean" <Grant.McLean@SportingLife.ca>
Subject: RE: [CR]miele and gardin reputation
To: 'Brandon Ives' <monkeylad@mac.com>, "Classic Rendezvous Mail List (E-mail)" <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:59:04 -0500

Sorry Brandon,

I wasn't clear in what I wrote. I wasn't saying they didn't make mtn bikes, (I owned one) what I meant by "totally ignored" should have been made more clear. To those who experienced the shift in retail sales from road bikes to mtn bikes remember how difficult it was for brand names associated with the tradition of road bikes to transition their image into mtn.

As Joe Gardin and Jim Miele where both in the "old school" of the business, I believe they felt mtn bikes were a passing fad (maybe they still are, it just isn't completely over yet) a "necessary evil" as it where. It seemed their lines had emphasis on non-mountain bikes, long after shops where selling virtually no road bikes in Canada. This lack of attention to the moving marketplace is what I meant by "ignored".

Grant Toronto.ca

Grant McLean <Grant.McLean@SportingLife.ca> wrote:
>Both companies totally ignored the mtn bike, which must have made financial
>survival virtually impossible by the late '80s early 90's.

MonkeyB wrote: Not true. One of my oldest friends still has a great pink full XT Miele MTB from '84-'85. It was his first and only MTB since he was a cat.2 road guy. He still beats on that sucker and rides it everyday. The shop that sold the road bikes also sold a lot of their MTBs but this was in Northern Idaho so MTBs were big in the early days.