Shimano Meet and Greet

Shimano held a mini expo at the Hudson Hotel to show off their wares to the media. Here’s an admittedly less than critical look at some of the new things coming from them this year:

34 Comments

Andy

Yeah, would be interesting to see if it gets adopted. Their hope is that eventually frame builders will build for it and allow for internal routing.

Anonymous

The Velonews buyer’s guide features a limited-edition Giant TCR with internal cable routing optimized for Di-2 — looks clean as a whistle. It also places the battery on the driveside seatstay.

Anonymous

I was reading a book on history of Shimano and it’s development/testing of Dura-ace. One of the quotes, “We don’t want to be the number one, We want to be the leader”.
I think they are, and may be even number one.

Anonymous

SIS when it was first introduced (downtube shifters) was quite the heresy….

…but they worked. Very innovative stuff.

A quick look at their ’07 annual report says the bike segment biz was about 168B yen (or ~$1.8B USD) revenue. ’08 projections are supposed to be around 225B Yen (~$2.5B USD).

That’s a lotta bike parts…

Anonymous

woops let me restate, ’07 bike segment sales ~158B yen, ’08 projections ~168B yen.

sorry ’bout that.

–hank paulson

Anonymous

“I was reading a book on history of Shimano and it’s development/testing of Dura-ace”

Wow, time to log onto match.com

Anonymous

If anyone read the New York times today there was an article about how Armstrong was giving up his efforts to test himself 24/7 for “financial” purposes. He is once again evading the needle.

Anonymous

Mektronic, was great with proper battery replacement. Great levers, poopy front derailleur shifter…

Shimano is clearly influenced by SRAM shifter…

The crankset is stupendous!!! but reminds me of tanks Mavic made for Lemond…

Shimano is very nice, but I am still getting my Campag tat…
11 baby!!! Ultra Torque!!! Bora Bora!!! G3!!! Ghibli!!!

Anonymous

pessimist that i am, think of the unfortunate signal jamming opportunities with wireless groups…

innocent looking spectator sitting at the side of alpe d’ huez, laptop & black box in his lap, susperstar climber takes off on an attack, but WOOPS! silly derailleur, shifts are for kids!

or a field sprint and WHOA NELLY didn’t mean to shift up….

Andy

Yes, shifter definitely influenced by sram, especially with the way the levers point out.

Wireless group means extra batteries, extra weight. And how annoying would it be when just one battery dies, but still knocks out the whole system?

I think with Bluetooth-style pairing interference ‘shouldn’t’ be a problem?

Anonymous

what price increase? you can pick up a 7900 group for ~$1200 nowadays. that’s what i spend on drinks on a slow night.

–the donald

Anonymous

why the fark does grant’s tomb have a 3/4 field instead of just a 3 field? why do all the 4s get to register twice and clog up the registration for the 3s? ponderous

Anonymous

One of my perennial favorites, Cat3s complaining about 4s. Can we call somebody a sandbagger quick or else this isn’t an NYVC list.

Andy, thanks for the pictures, though I’ve been converted by SRAM. I love my Force Gruppo.

Anonymous

Won the women’s p/1/2 road race, solo break on the last lap of the course. The next day at the Crit she broke away from the pack on the 2nd lap and gained about a half lap on the field, a couple laps later one girl managed to bridge. Evie pulled for most of the of the race, opening up gaps on her break mate at times, then got passed in the sprint by her break mate to get second. She won every prime in the Crit! It was an unbelievable effort. Velonews reported the road race result that was posted online, which was incorrect. Unfortunately she flatted in the first stage TT and was given the last place time +30 seconds.

Anonymous

She needs to get on a top team with her talent. Colavita, Vanderkitten, Tibco or maybe the big time – Columbia or Cervelo

Anonymous

Shimano Reports 11 Percent Sales Bump

OSAKA, Japan (BRAIN)—Shimano reported an 11-percent jump in sales in 2008, ending the year with $2.59 billion in net sales, according to Shimano’s 2008 earnings as reported to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Net income for 2008 was $277 million, or 25.15 billion yen, an increase of 26.4 percent over 2007.

As of Aug. 12, 2008, the company was projecting 10 percent sales growth and a 23.2 percent in net income for the full year.

Bicycle components racked up $2.04 billion (185.99 billion yen) in sales in 2008, up from $1.73 billion the year before. The majority of the remaining sales came from Shimano’s fishing segment.

Even with a profitable year on the books, Shimano is projecting that full-year sales will drop in 2009. The components giant is assuming a 12.8 percent decrease in net sales—from 235.14 billion yen in 2008 to 205 billion yen this year. Additionally, Shimano projects that net income will fall 20.5 percent.

All dollar amounts are based on the exchange rate as of Dec. 31, 2008: 90.78 yen to $1.

—Nicole Formosa

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