The March 1 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (BRAIN) includes a story on the Specialized/Stumptown saga, which first broke on this site back on January 31st. BRAIN is a well-known bike industry trade magazine that goes out to every bike shop and manufacturer in the U.S. The article is not available on-line, but I’ve scanned a copy that you can download:
This story has already made its way around the world via the Web, and the opinion of nearly everyone on the Internet is that Specialized is doing the wrong thing. However my feeling is that Specialized cares much more about how their peers in the bike industry think about them, than just lowly Internet users.
Now the story will get in front of many people in the bike industry that may have missed it and there will be renewed pressure on Specialized to either walk away from their demands (not likely) or to make a settlement with Mountain Cycle that doesn’t hurt their perception in the industry as an overly litigious company.
Your numerous and thoughful responses (139 so far) left on the original posts made it into the BRAIN article, prompting the reporter to add:
“Not suprisingly, Portlanders have weighed in with their opinion. The story has provoked the most comments from site visitors out of any other Maus has posted.”
And they used this quote of mine:
“The Portland bike community is full of smart, active people that take time to make their voice heard when an important issue affects them. This was the worst community Specialized could have chosen to do something like this to.”
There are developments in this story but I can’t make them public yet. Stay tuned for the final chapter.
Background on this story: