What Happened to Campagnolo?
- Thread starter Canuk
- Start date
sjcprojects
Orange 🍊 Fan
From a graphic design point of view one thing I find strange is that for a brand that has two great visual identifiers – the script logo and the winged logo – they've totally dropped those from their actual parts for a while now, in favour of fairly generic 'futuristic' lettering. The logos appear prominently on their clothing ranges, but hardly at all on groupsets or even wheels. I know it's an overall trend to go minimal with these things, but it seems odd to me. Brands like Campagnolo love to talk about 'heritage', but none of that is present in their current parts, visually-speaking.
Is it just that everything designed now goes through (and I realise my terminology here is dated/hopeless) the same computer-modelled, stress-tested, wind tunnel-tuned analysis etc such that the shapes produced/materials used etc will tend towards producing objects that broadly look the same and that those of us with a retro eye find ugly?
I've always liked a less is more design ethos, with just the right amount of material to do a job - not bulky or overbuilt, but I'm guessing in super-litigious days everything becomes overbuilt to accommodate for the most hapless user. All that said, the only cranks I ever snapped were the lovely skinny alloy Syncros ones (two pairs) so maybe I am that hapless user.
I've always liked a less is more design ethos, with just the right amount of material to do a job - not bulky or overbuilt, but I'm guessing in super-litigious days everything becomes overbuilt to accommodate for the most hapless user. All that said, the only cranks I ever snapped were the lovely skinny alloy Syncros ones (two pairs) so maybe I am that hapless user.
gfk_velo
Dirt Disciple
There's a few posts that actually nicely encompass Campagnolo's dilemma here:
9s polished alloy, how many would they sell?
Good question. It's not just about opportunity, it's about opportunity cost.
How much of their current production would they have to cancel or put on hold or, how much would they have to invest in new space for tooling and the people to run it, to make that viable, even assuming they wanted to re-tool for alloy - all that very expensive, very large drop forging kit that was at Vicenza when I first started visiting the factory in the 1980s is long gone - as is the "crunchy-underfoot" feeling you used to get on the factory floor. All 3 of the main factories now, Vicenza, Mecrom1 and Mecrom2 are almost clinically clean spaces now, for a whole different kind of production.
And for whom would they be making that material? Would they be making it for tech savvy twenty-somethings who respect technological advance and are comfortable with modern aethetics, or guys of my age (I'm 60) who look back fondly on a youth of lusting after 1970s pattern Record cranksets? If it's the former, the difficulty of stepping into a time machine and rolling back the years is viable - if it's the latter, we're a rapidy-reaching-our-sell-by-date population.
Which leads us to an electronic gravel group - a number of posters here bemoan the shift from alloy jewelery (and don't get me wrong, I love it too) and denigrate the styling and size of the modern composite and electronic components, whose construction is as much a function of FEA meets Bauhaus as it is of a designer's vision (some design cues do carry over) ... so whaich do you want? Do you want beautiful jewellery on a bike which is heavy and inefficient by comparison, or do you want a light composite construction that can conveniently and simply carry an electric motor and the other electronic parts that are needed to make a wireless electronic groupset - because it's close-on impossible to have both.
There's also a question around who a wireless gravel group is for, too - in practical terms, a cabled RD works perfectly well (set up properly, Shimano GRX and Campagnolo Ekar have plenty of very happy adherents), many respect the repairability and serviceability of a mechanical system, on gravel - especially for expedition-type use. If final customers say they want Di2 for spares availability, how much better is it, still, to have derailleur cables which, even though the performance won't be as good as with the dedicated cables, is still workable, where if an electronic system dies - you are basically screwed (altough CA do at least have the Ride Back Home system) ...
And then - a call for a cable operated disc brake - even the best two calipers currently in the market (both of which I have used / experimented with), Juin Tech and TRP, offer hugely inferior performance when compared to a full hydraulic system and, in the case of TRP, at the expense of added weight. Why would a company that has already designed (alongside a well-known and respected partner) and already makes (now fully in-house) one of the most respected full hydraulic braking systems in the market, roll back to making something that doesn't work as well? It only makes sense in the context of retro for the sake of retro, because the frame to mount it on still has to have the same characteristics as that for a full hydro system. The only purpose I can see for it would be at the entry level with a group like Centaur - and the comparatively small numbers of OEMs who might then spec it, would probably not justify the R and D costs - better to make an allowance for those like Sonder, in the UK, who pair the Centaur levers to the TRP caliper and so buy groups less the brake calipers.
I don't necessarily think that Campagnolo have made all of the right decisions in the last 3 or 4 years but nor do I think they are too far astray. I know what's over the horizon and am excited by it - I think the company have gone through one of those bumpy periods that lots of big, long standing companies go through and the next sets of releases will be interesting and as innovative as they can be, bearing in mind that a derailleur system is just a derailleur system, regardless of whether the derailleur is moved by a wire conducting force, or via wire conducting electrical impulses to a motor, or a motor being commanded to move by radio waves ...
9s polished alloy, how many would they sell?
Good question. It's not just about opportunity, it's about opportunity cost.
How much of their current production would they have to cancel or put on hold or, how much would they have to invest in new space for tooling and the people to run it, to make that viable, even assuming they wanted to re-tool for alloy - all that very expensive, very large drop forging kit that was at Vicenza when I first started visiting the factory in the 1980s is long gone - as is the "crunchy-underfoot" feeling you used to get on the factory floor. All 3 of the main factories now, Vicenza, Mecrom1 and Mecrom2 are almost clinically clean spaces now, for a whole different kind of production.
And for whom would they be making that material? Would they be making it for tech savvy twenty-somethings who respect technological advance and are comfortable with modern aethetics, or guys of my age (I'm 60) who look back fondly on a youth of lusting after 1970s pattern Record cranksets? If it's the former, the difficulty of stepping into a time machine and rolling back the years is viable - if it's the latter, we're a rapidy-reaching-our-sell-by-date population.
Which leads us to an electronic gravel group - a number of posters here bemoan the shift from alloy jewelery (and don't get me wrong, I love it too) and denigrate the styling and size of the modern composite and electronic components, whose construction is as much a function of FEA meets Bauhaus as it is of a designer's vision (some design cues do carry over) ... so whaich do you want? Do you want beautiful jewellery on a bike which is heavy and inefficient by comparison, or do you want a light composite construction that can conveniently and simply carry an electric motor and the other electronic parts that are needed to make a wireless electronic groupset - because it's close-on impossible to have both.
There's also a question around who a wireless gravel group is for, too - in practical terms, a cabled RD works perfectly well (set up properly, Shimano GRX and Campagnolo Ekar have plenty of very happy adherents), many respect the repairability and serviceability of a mechanical system, on gravel - especially for expedition-type use. If final customers say they want Di2 for spares availability, how much better is it, still, to have derailleur cables which, even though the performance won't be as good as with the dedicated cables, is still workable, where if an electronic system dies - you are basically screwed (altough CA do at least have the Ride Back Home system) ...
And then - a call for a cable operated disc brake - even the best two calipers currently in the market (both of which I have used / experimented with), Juin Tech and TRP, offer hugely inferior performance when compared to a full hydraulic system and, in the case of TRP, at the expense of added weight. Why would a company that has already designed (alongside a well-known and respected partner) and already makes (now fully in-house) one of the most respected full hydraulic braking systems in the market, roll back to making something that doesn't work as well? It only makes sense in the context of retro for the sake of retro, because the frame to mount it on still has to have the same characteristics as that for a full hydro system. The only purpose I can see for it would be at the entry level with a group like Centaur - and the comparatively small numbers of OEMs who might then spec it, would probably not justify the R and D costs - better to make an allowance for those like Sonder, in the UK, who pair the Centaur levers to the TRP caliper and so buy groups less the brake calipers.
I don't necessarily think that Campagnolo have made all of the right decisions in the last 3 or 4 years but nor do I think they are too far astray. I know what's over the horizon and am excited by it - I think the company have gone through one of those bumpy periods that lots of big, long standing companies go through and the next sets of releases will be interesting and as innovative as they can be, bearing in mind that a derailleur system is just a derailleur system, regardless of whether the derailleur is moved by a wire conducting force, or via wire conducting electrical impulses to a motor, or a motor being commanded to move by radio waves ...
fguki
Senior Retro Guru
Sais UKs technical lead of Campagnolo! Thank you. Finally someone with substantials, reality and insights!
Meanwhile my own girl and partner has been "design lead" of now 3 major major european sports-brands in Germany and Denmark over the past 15 years. Oh boy - lets not even start to get into the insights and reality & requirements of the work as a lead designer nowadays. ...And the soap bubbles that consumers blow in forums and comment sections that come with it!
This whole post already startet with so much horse shaite and so little actual "idea". It was doomed from the very beginning
Meanwhile my own girl and partner has been "design lead" of now 3 major major european sports-brands in Germany and Denmark over the past 15 years. Oh boy - lets not even start to get into the insights and reality & requirements of the work as a lead designer nowadays. ...And the soap bubbles that consumers blow in forums and comment sections that come with it!
This whole post already startet with so much horse shaite and so little actual "idea". It was doomed from the very beginning
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