Only three manufacturers (Raleigh, Trek and Giant) are licensed to make bikes with Coasting and I gave Trek’s offering, the “Lime Light” a closer look. [Read more…]
At the closing ceremony of the National Bike Summit, the Shimano marketing duo of Shannon Bryant and David Lawrence hit the stage to tell the story of Coasting.
Shimano embarked on this initiative five years ago when they teamed up with premier product design group IDEO. That was the start of on an unprecedented journey to research and then design a product — and marketing campaign — aimed to get America’s 161 million non-cyclists riding again. [Read more…]
“Not a lifestyle, not for fitness: it’s an experience. People like the idea of riding a bike just as they like the idea of going to the park, farmer’s market, lake, picnic, outdoor music/arts, festivals or chatting with neighbors. Unfortunately most people don’t do it as often as they would like.” -from Shimano Coasting marketing materials
There isn’t much official on the web (the Coasting website is password protected and won’t be publicly viewable till January), and the only photos and reviews have come from pre-production examples from the Interbike trade show back in September.
Coasting-equipped bikes will be available nationally in March 2007, with a marketing focus on select “bike-friendly” cities*. Portland is one of them, and bikes will be available in dealers here by February. Portland’s official marketing push is planned for June (in hopes of sunny weather). [Read more…]
A while back I posted about how Shimano had chosen Portland as a pilot city to unveil their latest and greatest component group called Coasting.
This new group is supposed to revolutionize city bikes and appeal to a whole new group of people. Shimano is working with select companies to build bikes around it and one of them is Trek, who just wrapped up their big, secret, dealer-only get together in Wisconsin. [Read more…]
Shimano is investing millions of dollars into a new component group called “Coasting” that will target new cyclists. They plan to roll out the new group to only 15 cities the first year starting in March of 2007. According to a story in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Shimano will focus the initial marketing of the new group in “bike-friendly cities with safe places to ride.” [Read more…]