What Happened to Campagnolo?

[Canuk]

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

I know you like statistics (even though you can't provide any tangible ones yourself), but here are the stats from a 35 year user of Campagnolo (me):

In the late eighties, 100% of my purchases were Campagnolo on 100% of my bikes. In my season abroad as a pro, 100% of the bikes kitted with Campagnolo Record. In the 90's I discovered Dura Ace 7700, a truly wonderful group set, so my Campagnolo buying dropped to about 50%.

In 2006/7 SRAM brought out Force and Red. Crucially they used carbon and titanium materials, it looked great, the shifting blew Campagnolo out of the water, and not inconveniently, it was 380gr lighter than Super Record.

That's nearly a pound. I was hooked. 100% of the four bikes I use on a regular basis are SRAM, either mechanical or etap.

I haven't bought a single piece of new Campagnolo since 2012. That's 0%. Will I buy any Campagnolo in 2025? I wouldn't even buy a brake cable from them. It's FUGLY and the competition clearly has it rattled. I don't know how Campagnolo are every going to catch up. Maybe they will, maybe it's just too late. Dropping the world famous Campagnolo script and winged wheel logos from their products and packaging is beyond stupid.

I too know a lead designer for Adidas (shoes). An Austrian girl based in Paris, they have the benefit of releasing across hundreds of lines of products instead of three or four of Campagnolo. However, every new design is rigorously market tested before release and bad designs and bad designers are regularly let go.

Seeing as you love statistics, how about a poll on contemporary Campagnolo?

 

[CTK]

Mention to your friend that it might be a good idea for adidas to release some retro style trainers? I'm sure there is a market

Retro styled cars? Mini and Fiat 500 doing ok.

Its not a stupid idea to have a retro looking (and simple and practical) groupset.

 

[Canuk]

Mention to your friend that it might be a good idea for adidas to release some retro style trainers? I'm sure there is a market.

Retro styled cars? Mini and Fiat 500 doing ok.

Its not a stupid idea to have a retro looking (and simple and practical) groupset.

I totally agree with a reissue of a classic Campagnolo group, but all the tooling and assembly paraphernalia is probably long gone, sold, repurposed or recycled. At Airbus, once a product line is finished, and replaced they only keep the tooling and process assembly for max 3 years and then it all gets flogged off, on the cheap.

Re Adidas, they're re-releasing the Chile 62 line this summer.

Of course if they still have the tooling.. Record Carbon 10, yes please!?

 

[CTK]

Carbon! Yuck The start of the decline

 

[CTK]

My kids play fortnite. Its a game that is 6 or 7 years old (?). They are already re-releasing early versions of the game for that retro authentic experience.

 

[CTK]

I think we all want Campag to be successful. I have no idea if they are doing well financially. I know that they are not as represented on team bikes as in the past.

The retro groupset appeals to me but I'm sure if it was a profitable idea China would have done it. Sun XCD- I loved the look of that, didnt buy it though!

 

[paton]

Campagnolo has found its way back to World Tour racing
https://www.campagnolo.com/gb-en/jo...on-the-world-tour-with-team-cofidis/0230.html

 

[gfk_velo]

Well, Campagnolo posted record profitability in 2020, 21 and 22 - 23 and 24 have been tougher, admittedly - that's a global issue and in the face of simply ridiculous pricing by competitors who have a massive over-production to cope with ... but what many don't really "get" is that as a family owned business, Campagnolo have many fingers in many pies. I work very closely with them and they are the *only* company I work with, out of about 40 really active accounts, to whom I extend credit terms - and I am not planning to change that - theyre doing OK, having re-invested very heavily in those "boom years" of COVID.

World Tour has less than nothing to do with the health or otherwise of a company - Zipp are unrepresented, for instance - and yet they are wholly owned by SRAM, so if presence / absence in the WT was any metric, they'd be cklased as "dead in the water" too. The same is true of a good many other brands - OK, it's true that as a component makers (of whom there are few) as opposed to a wheel maker (of whom there are many) presence / absence is noticed ... but it's not indicative, or rather, because of the way that sponsorship of components is now heavily influenced by bicycle manufacturer, the picture is a lot wider than it was even 10 years ago - if other component makers are making very attractive offers to OEM based on over-production, it should be no surprise that those bicycle brands will want to push those brands on their high end bikes & therefore, expose them through the teams. I haven't checked yet this year - but in 2023/24, of the 18WT teams, only 8 listed their component suppliers as sponsors or partners ...

Tooling, in terms of the dies etc, for everything Campagnolo have ever made, is still in the factory - but it's not the dies that are the problem. It's the heavier metalworking capacity and the fact that there's a massive opportunity cost in rolling back to a retrogressive product that shares little in materials technology or manufacturing with the current offering.

Maybe (and it's a radical idea that I know some business people have trouble with), but maybe, Campagnolo are happy the size they are ... maybe they don't want to go down the retro line (very un-Italian anyway) and cost themselves a stack of cash to do that, to "grow", only to have to retrench in 10 years time or less - they are currently selling not only everything that they make but - crucially - everything that they *can* make, at the moment. That's where the opportunity cost would lay were they to "go retro" ... what would they have to "not make" or develop, or publicise, in order to make that viable?

The retro bubble based on "wasn't it lovely in the old days" will only last as long as there are people who remember the old days and are in a position to pay for the nostalgia. For one thing, they still have to be active cyclists, or, not to put too fine a point on it - alive. It's a limited timespan thing.

As a practical (and less morbid) example, I bought a Triumph Spitfire 1600 a few years ago - always wanted one in my 20s, couldn't afford it then - bought it and sold it within 3 months - why? Rose tints - I'd forgotten how much better modern cars perform compared to retrograde offerings.

There's a massive risk that Campagnolo would have the same issue - new customers would fit their repro 9s kit and want to know where their 32 x 34 bottom gear had gone and, there would be exactly the same harping on about quality - because we all have those rose tints about how good it was in the old days - you can guarantee, just as when Colnago launched the Arabesque, there were hordes of people comparing it back to their 1980s built Master (which they no longer have to *really* compare it), Campag would suffer the same comparison back to something that never really was.

Half the people here are complaining that the product isn't innovative enough, the other half want to roll the clock back to the latter part of the last century ... so, working 6 years ahead, as component makers do (approx 6y from concept on a new range to commercialisation, same for Shimano, I would guess the same for SRAM looking at their refresh rate) , how to square that circle?

 

[gfk_velo]

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.

Winged wheel is both on the hubs and the shield logo, incorporating the winged wheel at the valve on the current ranges ...
And, of course, the winged wheel is on Ghibi, where it's pretty obvious ...

Some ranges the customer reaction has been polled via sales and we've seen the strongest sellers are actually the "dark" decal versions with the most restrained logos. I wonder to what extent today's customer (rather than yesterdays customer) wants "shouty" product ... given the number of dark "black-on-black" frames out there.

The shield logo hasn't been on cranks apart from the Pista crank, itself a 1990s product, for at least 18 years ...
The last time I remember it being present on components was 2018, on the disc brake calipers.

The script logo is on every single box usually in at least 4 places ...

Sorry, not the best images, I'm not in the office today, these are quick snatches off the interweb - but these are current product.

 

[gfk_velo]

Cofidis - Men's and Womens teams, too - 4 year deal.