Shimano Is a Japanese Company

Shimano is a Japanese company that manufactures bicycle parts. In the United States, its primary headquarters is in Southern California; it exceeded a billion dollars in sales in 2005.

Stated at a very high-level, the principle strengths of this company are a dedicated following of cycling enthusiasts, while its principle weakness was the fact that it only built bicycle parts, and not actually bikes themselves. The primary threat was the fact that business throughout the industry for recreational cyclers had substantially declined. The most central opportunity for growth was that all of the millions of Americans not riding bikes were an untapped, lucrative market.

The bulk of the research that Shimano conducted in order to see how most effectively to capitalize on the untapped cycling industry was actually performed by Palo Alto consultant company Rideo. The methodology this company used to figure out how to get more cyclists was to determine what sorts of things Americans were doing for fun, and figure out how to relate that to cycling. It headquartered Shimano representatives in Palo Alto during the duration of the research, and interviewed people to glean insight into this quandary. The most pervasive and profound information gained was that people enjoyed cycling as children, and that the contemporary market had become too specialized and stratified.

4. The outcome of this research was that there was a wholesale change in the nature of the cycling industry. Shimano built a simplified bicycle that stylistically and aesthetically recaptured the simplicity of cycling for children. Moreover, it made a point to systematically restructure the way that the sales component of this industry is conducted. Once bikes were made by OEM that fit the specifications of Shimano, a number of retail organizations retrained sales representatives to be less intimidating and technical when attempting to sell bikes. The most effective of these strategies were those related to sales. In general, all things go from being attainable to a select few, to mainstream, to a degree of specialization in which fragmentation naturally occurs. Training sales people to recognize and account for this fact and simplify their sales rap was definitely needed.

The primary strength of Shimano was its 2005 sales. This was bolstered by the popularity of Lance Armstrong and by the dedication of specialized, cycling enthusiasts. Its strength was also in recognizing change before it comes. This prescience included knowledge of the impending cycling decline and a knack for creating trends.

The primary weakness of Shimano was that it was too deeply entrenched in th specialized world of cycling. It had virtually forgotten about the casual cycler. Its weakness was also that as a cycling parts manufacturer, it had limited input as far as setting industry-wide trends.