My Mountain Trail

Pacific Bicycle in San Francisco

What a mess. I have been wanting to blog about this, but have been trying to hold off. I can’t hold off anymore…

Lori has been a member of the Pacific Bicycle bike shop triathlon team for the last couple of years. She’s enjoyed it a lot, and even served as “co-captain” of the team. This last week she was cut loose from the team because I bought her birthday present, the new custom Guru Bike shown in the pic, at a competing bike shop. Interestingly, the bike is in TPB colors…

Well, the really strange part about the whole thing is that Dave Bekowich, the owner of Pacific Bicycle severed his co-sponsor relationship with Duane and Dorette at Trifiniti, citing Trifiniti athletes buying bikes that compete with PB’s brands as the reason. Duane announced this event tonight, so I decided to write a little note to Dave. If you’re not interested in all the dirty details, don’t read the message. Here we go…

Dave,

…snip…

I have to say, I feel a bit sorry for you at the moment. I just got an email from one of your former co-sponsors about your, uhm, new direction. Bummer for you and PB’s reputation. Of course Lori shared your email with me regarding her “termination” the other evening. My response was something like

“Dude, be careful with that flamethrower! You might burn bridges you may need in the future!”

I guess my second thought was something like “He might want to cut back on those hormones”, but that was a bit disparaging and maybe just a reaction to the inappropriate tone of the email and treatment of my wife.

Not being in the retail business, I probably don’t get it.

… In my business though, making past, current, and future customers mad at me is only bad business. Lost sales. Period.

…

Your TBP concept seemed to be working for you from the perspective that you had a lot of enthusiastic people on your team. How it benefits them is a bit more of a mixed bag. Clearly, they like to be associated with each other, and the fact that that association was under your umbrella was all to your benefit. Other benefits were always hard for me to figure out. But let me try to list them from what I saw for Lori:

…

1. Some free kit. Good for her if she doesn’t mind mid-low-range kit. Good for you because she wore it everywhere, which must have been one of your marketing hopes.

2. A bit of other free gear from your suppliers. Cool. Good for them, and good for Lori.

3. Bay Club Membership. A great benefit form your co-sponsor. Obviously, these were in short supply, and it has certainly benefited Lori’s training.

4. Discounted gear from your bike shop. Really? The discounts I saw could be had at Sports Basement or Performance Bicycle just about any day of the week. More on this later.

…

5. A team to help succeed. This was actually a big draw for Lori because she likes to work with winning organizations. She invested many hours into your success and the payoff in product or other benefits was of much less value than her time. But she liked it, and that made it worthwhile to her I suppose.

…

Regarding your email and reasons for, er, “terminating” her from your team. I bought her a custom bike, which you don’t sell. When I approached you last year at your “team event” (in the shop) about an end-of-year Scott bike for her, you didn’t show very much interest in making a deal with me. Truly, I couldn’t understand your flippant attitude, but at that moment you lost me. When the time came to buy a bike, I really wanted a bike that fit, and that probably meant a custom frame. Given your apparent lack of interest in working with me, and your lack of custom tri-bikes available, Pacific Bicycle never even registered on my radar screen. Studio Velo in Mill Valley and the Guru bikes they sell did.

And so, on Lori’s birthday we drove to Studio Velo and ordered her a Guru.

Once that was done, we checked in with Jared at Pacific Bicycle because Lori and I wanted to buy components from you. Dave, we weren’t looking at Tiagra components. We wanted Dura Ace components and Zipp wheels. The cost at the elite team member discount was still just under 50% of the cost of total bike. Jared said, “Cool, let me run this by Dave and I’ll order the parts.” You apparently said “she’s not an elite team member!” or words to that effect. Though, interestingly, when you needed help from her, she WAS and “elite” member. Anyway, you offered some discount that would have left you above the Studio Velo deal, and way below them in the service department. Dave, I don’t think you are stupid, and I’m sure that you would have done the same as I did. We bought the package from Studio Velo. Her bike was built by a mechanic familiar w/ the frame, and she was properly fit using their retul system.

And you got mad. And you “terminated” Lori from her volunteer position because I bought a bike from your competitor. I didn’t know I was on your team. You never gave me anything. You didn’t treat me with the respect you owe to a potential customer, so don’t expect me to be one. Treat my wife and friends as you have, and you can be sure I won’t ever be your customer. No great loss I suppose.

Your loss was in losing your co-sponsor. Bummer for you.

…. [And an addition:] The new Guru is awesome…

Dan Capshaw