Pretty huge news….
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PON is a huge cycling company but has always struggled to gain decent foothold in the US. Outside of Cervelo, their brands have almost no presence.
This move gives them a huge presence in the US market…and in both segments, both IBD and Mass Merchants. How upper management deals with the challenges of Mass will be interesting to watch….it operates very differently than the rest of the industry. If they keep the Mass management teams in place and learn from them, they can continue to be very successful.
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This is becoming quite a large concentration of brands, not sure whether this is a good or bad thing.
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Weird that Mike Bikes added giant to their lineup while they were working on this deal.
Not necessarily….Giant still plugs a huge hole that the new brands from PON can’t fill - the entry-to-mid level bikes…i.e. the “meat & potatoes” of the market. Even Cannondale doesn’t really play in that segment (really only in mid-tier and up).
Now, if I’m Giant, I’m maybe felling less good about signing on Mike’s if they were hoping to use Mike’s to boost their upper end sales in NorCal. That business will almost certainly be focused on Cervelo and Cannondale now.
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They will live 
After taking over Dorel, PON Bicycles has become a little bit bigger than Giant. Looking at how many brands they have in their portfolio to make this revenue, I think Giant will be ok, even if Mike’s will not push their products.
Agreed.
At what point do you see consolidation of the brands themselves within the umbrella corp.
I would not expect that anytime soon. All their other brands have held their own places for years with no real consolidation. For the US market, each brand has a unique identity and the Euro brands have little to no value.
You’ll undoubtedly see some back room / operational consolidation in an effort to reduce costs, and perhaps some sharing of R&D resources, but I would expect each brand to hold their own identity for quite some time.
Oh sure….and, as noted, they will still likely be their dominant brand for what moves the most bikes and be pretty happy about that. But I’m also pretty sure they were hoping to use Mike’s to push their higher-end stuff, too.
We have our own Mikes Bikes in Poland:
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I hope they have taken over the correct company because this does not look very impressive 
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A sneak preview of next year’s cycling kits on display outside!!
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Initial reaction from within some at Dorel Cycling is positive (3rd hand accounts, and only a few people so may not be fully representative of mood). Also some indication that Dorel has wanted to dump the IBD side of the business for some time.
Don’t they own Santa Cruz too? They’re pretty big based on bikes I see on the trails.
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Yes, they own Santa Cruz but in the scope of the overall market, SC is still pretty much an uber-niche brand. The high-end MTB market is not what it once was and the big brands now dominate it.
They might be bigger from a head count standpoint, but I was under the impression that Giant made an ungodly number of every other brands frames in their factories.
Yes, they are. But in terms of revenue, at the moment they are just behind of PON (with Dorell companies included). On the other hand it shows how big the giant as a brand is. The same is the case with Merida (but they are way smaller), despite owning majority of Specialized.
Well you need to make sure you are comparing similar things…if you are just referring to brands, then yes, the combined might of all the PON holdings could exceed the labeled business from Giant.
But from an overall company perspective (i.e. including factory business), Giant should be magnitudes bigger.
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Oh of course. Maybe term “size” was was too much mental shortcut on my side. To be precise, by size I have meant revenue, as it is only parameter I can compare.
It’s been a couple years since I saw the data, but at the time Santa Cruz had moved all the way up to be the #4 brand in US overall sales, and by far the bestselling FS MTB brand (>20% over Specialized).
Not to take away from your larger point, just an interesting Santa Cruz fact that I found quite surprising.
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If you can find it, I’d love to see that data.
It was an analysis by a marketing firm that I don’t think I can share.