What Happened to The French: Fin d'une époque?

Probably like a few here, the scare of Mavic "almost" going under a couple of years ago (due to a weird holding / management structure) felt like a blow to the stomach.

Don't really know how they are doing at the moment especially with the general crisis of the bike industry.

Nice to see they are still on the shelves of Decathlon - the Crossrides have always been competitively priced there.
https://www.decathlon.co.uk/brands/mavic
 
I thought Wolber were sucked up into Mavic(?). I think Mavic owned the rights to the name at one time, possibly the tech also.

Same thing happened to the French as everyone else. Crushed by the power of Taiwanese manufacturing and Shimano's relentless marketing machine and distribution network - which was strong in the 80s but rampant by the 90s. Time ATAC are the best off road clipless pedals ever made and SPD-SL is a patent dodging tweak of Look's innovation...but your average punter has Shimano in their head and thats what they get.
 
I was reading about Mavic ZAP the other day on Disraeli Gears – he has an interesting little piece about it here.

As he says: 'I do believe that the MAVIC Zap system was not a runaway commercial success, but, again, my memory of this was that it had to do with it being an almost unimaginably expensive road racing component launched at the peak of the Mountain Bike boom. It was a time when demand for any kind of road component was at an historic low. I do not remember customers expressing anything but awe for its technical performance - but then expressing even greater awe for its extraordinary price.'

I think the same goes for the other products mentioned in the OP. They may have all been innovative and well-made, but they were also expensive and by the 1990s couldn't compete with Shimano for the reasons @LondonClassic mentions - plus the general down turn in road cycling exactly when those products were coming to market. Just look at what happened to Campagnolo when they tried to belatedly get into the MTB market.
 
LondonClassic said:
I thought Wolber were sucked up into Mavic(?). I think Mavic owned the rights to the name at one time, possibly the tech also.
Click to expand...

Have heard this before, and just found at least this piece (found nothing else like a newspaper clipping, nothing on the Mavic site either): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavic

".....As for the AVA brand, it disappeared around 1981. Ironically, Rigida was in turn bought by another wheel manufacturer, Wolber, which was itself sold in 1994, for a symbolic franc, to Mavic."

I assume then Michelin sold it to Mavic in 1994, perhaps with a deal to take some staff, property rights, and/or rim manufacturing assets and then Mavic promptly killed off the brand to give more space in the market for themselves.

🤔 Rigida a whole other story ... bought in 1989 (sold from Wolber?)
https://www.ryde.nl/homepage/history/

According to Le Parisien newspaper clippings, the Rigida plant in Noyon, France had in the peak +500 employers and at the time of collapse around 2010 only 38 employers.

Really liked the Rigida rims; found the 26" Laser very strong, hardwearing with a very generous brake track.
 
I still can't believe that Sachs/Maillard turned the lights out on the their ergopower group just as they were getting started.

I always have this terrible feeling that the French just could not master ergo combined brake/shifter combos and this is what really did for them.

Sachs 'New success 7000' group had to borrow Campags ergo system levers, all but identical and rebranded. Was lever shift system so complex that they just couldn't manage it?

I find that hard to swallow
 
Woz said:
Really liked the Rigida rims; found the 26" Laser very strong, hardwearing with a very generous brake track.
Click to expand...
Ryde rims seem to retain generous brake tracks.

I equate Mavic with great wheels. I think thats probably hard on spoke and hub manufacturers but there you go. MA2, MA40, Open Pro, Monthlery, GP4....when some johnny come blows in from his Rapha pop up cafe and starts bleating on about HUNT or some other vapourware brand I have to resist the urge to tell him to FO.
 
Woz said:
Have heard this before, and just found at least this piece (found nothing else like a newspaper clipping, nothing on the Mavic site either): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavic

".....As for the AVA brand, it disappeared around 1981. Ironically, Rigida was in turn bought by another wheel manufacturer, Wolber, which was itself sold in 1994, for a symbolic franc, to Mavic."

I assume then Michelin sold it to Mavic in 1994, perhaps with a deal to take some staff, property rights, and/or rim manufacturing assets and then Mavic promptly killed off the brand to give more space in the market for themselves.

🤔 Rigida a whole other story ... bought in 1989 (sold from Wolber?)
https://www.ryde.nl/homepage/history/

According to Le Parisien newspaper clippings, the Rigida plant in Noyon, France had in the peak +500 employers and at the time of collapse around 2010 only 38 employers.

Really liked the Rigida rims; found the 26" Laser very strong, hardwearing with a very generous brake track.
Click to expand...
Yep, I rue the day I only had 99 centimes in change when I had the chance to buy Wolber... 😄
 
  • Haha
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