Fast Company magazine has a feature that I like called Next Sketchpad where they highlight how a company uses design to solve product or service issues. I was looking back through some past issues and the November 2007 issue covered Trek Bicycles and their challenge to expand beyond enthusiast road and mountain bikes into making bicycles for non-bikers. They were accustomed to collecting feedback from biking professionals, but when they solicited requirements from people who weren’t bikers, they ended up designing a bike which appealed to a completely different rider.
Trek has a long history of creating bicycles for riding enthusiasts, including 7-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, and even though they already had a line of comfort-bikes, they admitted that they knew very little about the needs and desires of casual riders.
So, to better understand that market, they started asking some questions. They evaluated the overall look of the bike, wanting it to appear familiar, but still have a look that exuded comfort and cool. They also wanted the bike to be easy to use so that the barrier to adoption would be lower. To that end they included a gear system that automatically shifted based on the speed of the bike and added storage in the seat so that the bike didn’t require a cumbersome saddlebag system.
With a casual rider, the technology-side of the bike is less important to the rider, but still necessary for the ride. To that end, Trek made efforts in the design to hide many of the technical features from the user so that they would not be overwhelmed by the technology-side of the bike.
The whole exercise of Trek evaluating the needs of non-bikers is an interesting one for Product Managers (specifically software PMs). So frequently we focus on only a single market or verticals where we can “re-jigger” our products to suit the needs of a slightly different, but ultimately similar user.
Trek embarked on this product because they felt that sales for their traditional bikes was plateauing and they needed another revenue stream to maintain their growth. An interesting question for Trek and for Product Managers in general is, “Where is the point when you shift focus from an existing (or single) product to a new one?” Is it at the end of the growth curve or the middle? I would argue that it’s the latter, but recognizing that and executing on it or two very different things.
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Very interesting article.
I recently read an article on how canon started making photocopiers, a tangent from their camera business. This seems a similar case where Trek will use their knowledge of bicycles and bicycle marketing to gain another niche of consumers.
~Priyanka
http://www.mahindrauniverse.com
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