At the Taipei Cycle trade show, Trek president John Burke gave an inspiring talk about why the bicycle industry should divert cash from marketing and R&D to help advocates and politicians create a 'bicycle friendly world'.
Mar 28, 2007
Spend more on advocacy, urges Trek boss
John Burke, president of Trek USA, has created a PowerPoint presentation about why bike companies should increase their financial support of bicycle advocates and political lobbying groups.
He first aired the talk at the National Bike Summit in Washington DC two weeks ago. On Sunday it was also given to Taiwans A-Team of industry leaders and in a conference room at the the Taipei trade show.
Heres my 23-minute video of Burkes 40-minute talk. I created the slide graphics in Macs Keynote as John Burkes slides didnt come out very well on the video (I was using a small stills camera, not my normal video camera).
Jonathan Maus of the Bike Portland blog was present at the first airing of the talk and he headlined his coverage Is John Burke the Al Gore of the bike trade? This was a reference to Al Gores slide show about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth. The slide show, seen all over the world, was made into a movie, winning this years Oscar for best documentary.
Burkes presentation also focussed on the environment but majored on what Burke knows best: the bike trade. His presentation was aimed at encouraging bike companies to spend more money on cycle advocacy.
He called the bicycle the perfect product at the perfect time. And bike companies would sell more of them if there were more places for folks to ride them.
The number one way to grow the business and to have an impact on society, health, environment and congestion is to create a bicycle-friendly world, said Burke.
He revealed that for every $100 of sales, bike companies typically spend $3.90 on marketing, $1.60 on R&D but just 10 cents on advocacy.
That doesnt make sense. As an industry we need to look at how we spend money. Why do we spend the amount of money on marketing and product and little on advocacy?
He wants to spur a debate in the industry about where were spending our money.
Mar 28, 2007
Spend more on advocacy, urges Trek boss
John Burke, president of Trek USA, has created a PowerPoint presentation about why bike companies should increase their financial support of bicycle advocates and political lobbying groups.
He first aired the talk at the National Bike Summit in Washington DC two weeks ago. On Sunday it was also given to Taiwans A-Team of industry leaders and in a conference room at the the Taipei trade show.
Heres my 23-minute video of Burkes 40-minute talk. I created the slide graphics in Macs Keynote as John Burkes slides didnt come out very well on the video (I was using a small stills camera, not my normal video camera).
Jonathan Maus of the Bike Portland blog was present at the first airing of the talk and he headlined his coverage Is John Burke the Al Gore of the bike trade? This was a reference to Al Gores slide show about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth. The slide show, seen all over the world, was made into a movie, winning this years Oscar for best documentary.
Burkes presentation also focussed on the environment but majored on what Burke knows best: the bike trade. His presentation was aimed at encouraging bike companies to spend more money on cycle advocacy.
He called the bicycle the perfect product at the perfect time. And bike companies would sell more of them if there were more places for folks to ride them.
The number one way to grow the business and to have an impact on society, health, environment and congestion is to create a bicycle-friendly world, said Burke.
He revealed that for every $100 of sales, bike companies typically spend $3.90 on marketing, $1.60 on R&D but just 10 cents on advocacy.
That doesnt make sense. As an industry we need to look at how we spend money. Why do we spend the amount of money on marketing and product and little on advocacy?
He wants to spur a debate in the industry about where were spending our money.
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I know that the Madone (OCLV) carbon fiber is still made in Waterloo, wisconsin; which I respect for anything being still made in the USofA.
Although the rest of the frames and most parts are made in taiwan etc. Not sure what the deal about marketing is, if Lance had a phat deal with them, also sold a hybrid commuter with some part of the sales went to the LIVEstrong foundation. and so did Lemond and Gary Fisher. All 3 big riders. Wait Lemond is no longer with Trek? not sure what went down, anyhow.
- btw bikeportland.org has great postings. Im a fan of it and havent yet been to OR yet (soon!...)
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