Allegory - but incredibly important to me at the moment... please humor me. Joe Blow Racing is an extremely successful racing team. Their primary revenue is from advertising... $100 M/year. They race Gamma Motorcycles exclusively. The actual cost of the bikes for their racing program is starting to add up because they have 80 riders all over the world in all sorts of different events. So the CEO (Blob Frisco) of Joe Blow Racing buys Gamma Motorcycles which has annual sales of $1M/year. There are over 100,000 die hard fans that are using Gamma Motorcycles - and they are concerned what may be in store for their favorite brand... Joe Blow Racing tells everyone they will build the best motorcycle in the universe for everyone to buy soon, and more importantly, they introduce a new program where anyone that buys a 2010 bike can return their motorcycles at any time in 2010 and get a newer 2010 model. Many times the new management hinted that the people owning 2009 bikes would be treated well - so many bought the 2009 bikes for $7,500 each. But.......... in the fall of 2009 they announced a pre-sale of the 2010 bikes - but they did not exist yet. No one could review or even see a picture of them. The 2010 bikes would cost $15,000, but anyone owning a 2009 bike could buy them during the presale for $10,000 and anyone owning an older Gamma bike could buy one for $13,000. Many people were extremely upset with the company but 20,000 of them took part in the presale on faith. ================================ Some of the Joe Blow professional riders wanted a much more powerful engine so a design team changed the engine - it was magnificent. And a bike using the engine was the new model introduced as the January 2010 model - but... design changes make aftermarket parts, which 50,000 owners find critical, are completely incompatible the frames arrive to the customers broken from the factory the rims are bent the tubes leak and there are missing knobs on the tires But the die hard fans rejoice because the engine is awesome, roll up their sleeves and make it work, and spend a *huge* amount of time testing the engine for the company, which gets valuable feedback. But without those critical aftermarket accessories the bikes only a few can use the bikes. Meanwhile another team of engineers want to make the frame geometry better so they re-design the frame and introduce the February 2010 model which has these issues: again more design changes make aftermarket parts, which 50,000 owners find critical, are completely incompatible Engine much less powerful that what it was last year, and the piston cracks after 10 hours. the rims are bent the tubes leak and there are missing knobs on the tires the gas tanks leak from the factory The die hard fans still rejoice, roll up their sleeves and make it work, again spends a huge amount of time testing the bike for the company, which again gets valuable feedback... but with out the aftermarket parts - the bikes are only useful to a few people. And the plan is to continue that monthly cycle all through 2010... But no matter what the paying customers do - they cannot make a usable 2010 bike. The design teams keep making monthly changes so certain things are improved, but overall the bikes are not usable to the general public - each model has *huge* issues. After noticing the trend of monthly changes making their aftermarket parts useless, those companies that make them simply give up. The die hard fan base of Gamma motorcycles notice the same trend, so they stop trying out the new monthly models. A few of the die hard fans keep saying "all you gotta do is" type statements, but most of the others are getting wise.... and it is getting EXTREMELY apparent that the bikes will not be right until November of 2010 (if ever) - and the company has stated parts for those bikes will not be available after April 2011. Sadly their 2009 and older bikes need parts, but as of fall 2010 parts will no longer be available. Also because of patent issues the aftermarket people cannot legally make aftermarket OEM type parts... so the only option for the owners of the older bikes is to adapt parts from other brands and/or in a machine shop. ================================ Meanwhile... their race team uses special 'works' components for the things that need it, so they are not affected, and more importantly they keep making $100M/Y in advertising. But from a business perspective, Gamma Motorcycles only adds 1% to the revenue of Joe Blow Racing, and the CEO (Blob Frisco) could not care less what happens to the people actually buying the Gamma bikes... and really does not care if anyone ever buys another Gamma bike again. He bought the company so he did not have to keep buying bikes for his 80 riders. While many Gamma bike owners complain and threaten lawsuits and other things, most are simply giving up and buy another brand of bike from a company that actually makes their $ from the sales of motorcycles, and not 99% of their $ from selling advertising. Those people find a new brand, which in many ways is different and foreign to them. But once they find out all the cool stuff those bikes can do - they LOVE that other brand. The end. PS - this post will probably not make any sense to most people - at this time. But everyone may understand it in the future... it is an Allegory after all.
Sounds like Joe Blow Racing is the same type of person that was running Wall Street a few years ago. I think most can still remember that outcome.
Joe Blow Racing is indeed traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol 'blow'. I do wonder how well the companies that pay Joe Blow Racing for advertising understand that much of the time their advertising is only seen in places that may not be suitable or worthwhile e.g. Dram Oil filter stickers wind up on bicycles in a local park and not on the team bikes...
I get the jist. I'm a little lost...ok, a lot lost. But I don't like that this is coming from the owner of the cafe.
This allegory, like all other allegories, has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm trying to convey... on purpose. Specifically - it has absolutely nothing at all to do with bikesl. I simply wanted to put things into terms people understand, which is 'bikes'. The framework of the story is quite real however, there are thousands of people that paid for a product that is completely useless for the average user - I am one of those people. And the previous product (2009 and older) that I own will not have parts available, ergo custom parts will need to be made to keep that older product functioning... and those parts will be expensive.
Coffee, I'm a busy man but I'm sure I can squeeze you in for lunch sometime. Between collecting my millions in advert dollars and all this pre-paid bike and parts cash flow I can even pay for it. Have your people call my people.
I think we need this Blob Frisco character to register and clear things up. Better notify the moderators that he might come in here with guns 'a' blazen so they can bann him if he's outta line.
My Gama has ran perfect from day one, no issues. It's the best bike I have ever owned. - that one is for David because every bike I have is the best bike i have owned.
Latest: Golfer Bernhard Langer takes motorcycle manufacturer Gamma to court over a problem with a broken frame on his 2010 (Jan 22nd 10:33am edition) Joe Blow replica. Langer's motorcycle affairs spokesman said "Not only was the frame broken on delivery, but Bernhard soon realised he was missing a knob too. He's had enough of trying to get a reply from Gamma's after sales (so-called) service and is now resigned to taking legal action". So it looks like there's going to be a Gamma-Langer ding dong.
I'm sure there's a bar out there that is serving those as shooters. You won't catch me doing Gamma-Langer Ding Dong belly shoots tho. Not unless it's off a Victoria Secret model or comparable. I've sure made a mess outta this thread eh!
No. Well I am going to have to test and develop parts for the new TXC 450 with the BMW motor in it so... My 125 has wrestled it's way into top spot for tight single track. My TXC250 feels like a 400 in power and 200 in weight so it gets to do everything else. All the rest of the bikes other than my DS bike and street bike collect dust or are lent to friends when needed.
I'm generally pretty good at picking up the point of of a moral story or fable but I'm quite lost here. So are you saying that this thread actually has nothing to do with the Bulgarian motorcycle company? If there is supposed to be some sort of parallel can you at least point me in the direction that I can view it from angle that I might relate to. Or maybe it's some sort of computer code, I'm used to thinking of allegories as similar sets of numbers with a binary relationship.
