The bike for the other 161 million?

Yesterday I got my first, hands-on look at the fruits of Shimano’s new Coasting product initiative.

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.
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Shannon Bryant of
Shimano Marketing

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.
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[Photo by Kris Schamp/Bike Gallery.]

Astute reader Allan Folz noticed an in-depth article on Shimano’s new Coasting component group in the current issue of Hemispheres Magazine (the in-flight publication of United Airlines).

Back in May, Portland was chosen of 15 “bike-friendly” cities to be part of a special pre-launch marketing campaign for Coasting. Since that announcement, I published the first-ever photos and have worked with Shimano to share exclusive details of the innovative grouppo.
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The bike industry has been buzzing about Shimano’s new Coasting component group since spy photos from Trek’s dealer-only show made it to the web back in August. But so far, official details from Shimano have been scarce.

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).
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[Click photo to enlarge.]

[*Update: Kris Schamp from the Bike Gallery has posted some up-close and detailed photos of the Trek Lime.]

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.
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[Shimano’s new “Coasting” group.
Photo: BRAIN]

[Via Bicycle Retailer and Industry News]

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.”
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