The other day I wrote a piece on how I felt the leaked 2024 Specialized Epic geometry chart of the new Epic shared a lot of similar geo numbers to the Allied Cycle Works BC40, leading me to believe that Allied might have had their homework copied. I took that article and I did what any self proclaimed “greatest mtb journalist in the world” would do, and I went to both companies' websites, found an email and sent the article in for comment. Allied Cycles Works was a general customer support email and Specialized was a PR email.
Now before I get into both of their responses, I do want to make something clear. I don’t think it's crazy to think that companies lean on each other to make better bikes. Afterall, there aren't too many ways to make a bicycle and if something works, you can’t just completely alter your bike to avoid any similarities. Sure being the first to the punch is always nice, however you shouldn't start throwing kicks in a boxing match just because you weren’t the first punch. The best boxer always wins, and years of development and improving upon your product makes the better bike.
Similar to sports, studying your competition is very important. They are after all in the same game as you, making the best bike. If you as a company don’t have another competitor's product in for testing, that is insane. Why would you not want to learn how your competition thinks? Once again the goal is to make the best bike, and in a world where marginal differences can produce tremendous results, every edge helps.
So what did they both have to say? Well, within the hour of the emails I had a response back from the CEO of Allied Cycle Works as well as Specialized bikes PR email. Here are their responses:
So what do I think of the responses? Well in the case of Specialized, clearly we are not on whatever email list you need to be on for PR purposes. But for Allied Cycle Works, the fact that the CEO of the company took time out of their day to respond shows me they are hungry.
On a surface level, we didn’t learn many new things from the response from Drew besides what we know. Brands closely study their competition to help make sure they are creating the best possible product on the market. I am willing to bet that Specialized has every XC frame on the market in their HQ for some kind of testing. Study the competition and make a better product, that's the name of the game. One can say you should “Specialize” in it, see what I did there?
However on a broader level, I have stressed this for quite some time now to anyone that will listen. The soul of our sport is slowly being extracted through marketing bs and PR teams standing in the way of a brand being able to communicate to its customer base. Do I think the people creating bikes at Specialized are as soulless as that auto generated PR email? Absolutely not, I do not think you get to the top without having a hunger for success and a personality to match.
I mean just look at Mike Sinyard, the founder of Specialized and how much of a personality he has? Mike is a big advocate of promoting Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies through Project New Day (https://projectnewday.foundation/about-us/). This is the man that created the biggest, arguably most successful bike brand in the world. He didn’t do it through cookie cutter PR teams too scared to take a stance or speak an opinion. He did it by thinking outside of the box and making bold moves. Sure, there was a little blow back from time to time, but thats what happens when you are different!
If you want to be the best, you need to have the hunger and drive to take that top spot. Allied Cycles clearly has the drive, with a bike from 2022 clearly shaping the XC market currently, and it looks to be paying off. Does Specialized still have that hunger?
So my message to companies? Fire your PR team, speak to the people yourself, and tell them why they should buy your bike. We’re in the market of bicycles, none of us are Hollywood bound, and we don’t need to act that way either. Bring back the soul.
-Mo Awesome
