The Art of Product Management

Where was everybody last week? Where was Gerard Vroomen? Yes, our Forum was busting its britches as usual, but there were notable absences, especially those at the manufacturer level. Where were they? At Taipei, for the annual bicycle show that country stages.

Product managers go there. These are the people who decide what your Trek, Giant, Cervelo, Specialized, and so forth, bikes are going to look like in 2005. Mostly they've already decided. The Taipei show, though staged nine months in advance of when the bikes their working on will show up in stores, is where product managers go to put their finishing touches on their masterpieces. And, to get schmoozed by the Taiwanese factories, run by world class schmoozers. Nobody knows how to take their customers out like the Taiwanese. You can show up in Taichung with a toothbrush in your hand and nothing else—money included—and you'll do just fine.

Bad idea trying to actually do real Taiwan business there. Like visit factories. The factories are all empty of management. They're all at the show, manning their booths.

Yes, your favorite companies' product managers were all over in Taipei working on next year's bikes. They're working hard, no-doubt, but are they designing and spec'ing good bikes? They certainly know their jobs, if that includes berating and belittling the factories' managers that build these bikes (okay, maybe that's harsh). But if it means knowing what sort of bikes to build, performance is spotty. Product management is largely a lost art.

I wrote about product management in an article a couple of years ago, as part of an overview of how the bike business works. Yes, there are some good product managers. Gerard from Cervelo, for example, largely because the brains behind the business—Gerard and his partner Phil White—double as Cervelo's product managers. I also wrote about Jeff Menown, who used to work for me, then went to American Bicycle Group, and grew lonely for the West Coast and so now is the road and tri product manager for Giant.

But I must tell you, it's not like it used to be. I'll use my own company, Quintana Roo, as an example (it's not my company now, but it was when I was a product manager).

We had problems we needed to solve. There were no bar-end shifters, no proper pursuit bars, no ergonomic brake levers. We had to find items that didn't exist. But here's the thing. Unless you actually ride the bikes you build, and discover what it is you need that you don't have, you won't know what you don't know. Therefore, most product managers don't know how to properly address problems with the bikes they're tasked to develop.

Consider the bike pictured. Where are the shifters? At the ends of the clip-ons. Don't see them? They're twist shifters. We realized the need back in the 1980s to place shifters where the rider's hands are. The perfect solution was a twist shifter being marketed to road cyclists (they went on the ends of road bars). It was a product nobody, frankly, wanted very much. "What if we took these road shifters," we wondered, "and placed them on the ends of the aero bars?" Yes, Gripshift (now known mostly by its company name SRAM) became big with mountain bikers, but before mountain biking became big, SRAM paid the rent selling (quite serendipitously) to triathletes.

How early was this? After the development of the first Scott aero bar, before the development of the first clip-on, circa 1988.

Think Shimano went way out of its way to develop bar-end shifters for triathletes? Have you ever noticed the curve in Shimano's Dura Ace bar-end shifters? Wonder what it's for? These shifters were developed for the ends of road bars, and were a common shifter used by cyclocross racers, tandems and touring bikes going back at least to the '70s (as far back as I can attest). So, Gripshift and Shimano were battling it out for the cyclocross shifter market when, lo and behold, enterprising tri bike product managers gave these products new life.

We also realized the need for pursuit bars that had no drop in elevation, because the new triathlon aero bars were the aero position, and the pursuit position, which was the aero position prior to the invention of triathlon bars, was now the climbing (corning, descending, and so forth) position. What did we use? The bars on the bike pictured were 3T Moscow pursuit bars. They had the smallest elevation drop of any bar we could find. The closest thing to a flat pursuit bar was Profile Design's Stoker Bar. If you look in Profile's catalog now, its flat pursuit bar is still called that. Do you know what a Stoker Bar is? A stoker is the person who rides on the back of a tandem (the front rider is the "captain."). We adapted tandem bars for use on tri bikes. Now Profile Design's sales of its Stoker Bar to triathletes far, far outstrip sales for use on tandems.

The bike pictured is vintage 1990 or so, about a year prior to our discovery of Dia Compe #188 brake levers. I first saw these levers in Germany, on what was called a "city bike." These were the commuting bikes with upright handlebars and 3-speed internally-geared hubs. These brake levers were mounted on the ends of commuting handlebars, and pointed inward. When I returned to the States I asked Brian Gentes of Dia Compe (brother of Jim Gentes, founder of Giro helmets) for a set of these levers. "I know what sort of bikes you build, Dan, and trust me, you've got the wrong model number."

"No," I insisted, "These are exactly what I want." Within three months we were buying these by the thousands and spec'ing them as original equipment on our bikes. Of course, since they were designed for bikes that cost $300, not $3000, the price for these levers was cheap, like $2 per pair. Now, they cost a bit more than that. But it's ironic to know that the time trial bikes of many, if not most, of the Tour riders over the last half-dozen years were outfitted by brake levers designed for commuter bikes (Lance won at least three of his Tours de France using these levers).

Why do I recount these anecdotes? Because this sort of innovation and problem solving is gone. The attention to detail is gone. I remember when we first starting spec'ing Kestrel's EMS fork as an option on our bikes. We noticed that the measure between the brake hole and the crown race seat was 8mm greater than on the steel forks we were making. This would change the angles on our frames about half a degree. So, we made every model and every size frame in two geometries, one to accept the EMS and one for our standard forks. This, so that whatever frame you bought from us rode precisely the way we wanted it to.

Nowadays, product managers have scant knowledge of how a bike ought to handle, especially a tri bike. If you ask them their philosophies on tri bike handling, they probably don't have any. And if they do, they're likely to defend it weakly. And the brake hole placement on the forks they spec? I'm shocked if that question comes up one time in ten when Taiwanese fork salesmen are asked about their forks.

Here's what is important to product managers these days. How much carbon is in it? How much does it weigh? How much does it cost? Can you deliver on time?

Certainly these are all important questions. But I'm stricken with the emphasis product managers place on simply not being out-featured. Rather than consider what it is that makes a good bike better, the measure of a successful product is delivering a carbon rear triangle in a $1500 complete bike.

Successful product management means winning on two fronts, concept and execution. Today's product managers have the latter down pat. Where they fall down is in the former. How do you know when a product is properly thought out? When the manager strikes the right balance between leading you, the customer, and following you. Certainly one has to follow market trends. Personally, I love steel bikes. I feel that many of the all-around best bikes I've ever built (like the one pictured) were made of steel. But you can't give steel away these days. Therefore, reluctantly I wouldn't suggest a product manager choose steel, even though he might be convinced of its utility.

At the same time, a product manager better know more than you, the consumer. Bike companies have gotten themselves into real trouble by relying entirely on what they think the customer wants. Just like I wouldn't want to go to any party to which I was invited, a lot of you wouldn't want to buy the bike that you designed. You want the manufacturer to have gotten the idea for what works before you did. You want a manufacturer to be there, waiting, product in hand, by the time you arrive at the notion that this (whatever it is) is what you want.

That's what's missing these days. How do you know when the rare, gifted product manager's product is what you're looking at? Several things give it away. First, is there a passionate idea behind the design? Something that the company is spending a lot of time ardently defending? Does the company have a track record of innovation, usually with success? Is it unique, or is it a me-too product? Is the story coherent? Is it a story they obviously developed on their own? Is this company often copied? Are their product managers and ownership practitioners of sport themselves?

And perhaps most of all: Do they know their craft? Are they well-schooled in the basics? Yes, it's nice to have interesting, tweaky geometry offered to you, but if the builder doesn't really understand the basics of bike geometry, he's not got a platform from which to launch. Likewise with materials science, frame building, biomechanics, aerodynamics. Has this designer paid his dues, and does he have a resume?

Perhaps that's why some bikes cost more, and should. Maybe, upon reflection, that's why my garage is filled with bikes made by craftsmen, one at a time.