Specialized Heads North for Launch

Specialized dealers recently escaped the winter for a few days and headed to sunny Cairns in far north Queensland for their 2013 launch. Our editor, Simon Hayes, also attended as a guest of Specialized and brought back the following photos and information. Simon will be running a more detailed review of their 2013 product range in our November/December edition of Bicycling Australia magazine.

You can also see a wide ranging interview with Specialized Australasia Managing Director, Sam Monardo in the Interview section of this edition of Bicycling Trade.

These were some of Simon’s key impressions:

• Heavy investment in Body Geometry product development, particularly shoes, saddles and gloves. Specialized did an interesting saddle pressure test demonstration which showed variations in saddle pressure while pedalling, real time.
• A big focus on women’s specific products, with two of their Women’s Team attending from the USA.
• Significant and ongoing development work on aerodynamics, which is part of their partnership with the McLaren Group, the famous F1 car company.
• Disk brakes for road bikes not far away, which will allow wheels to have new rim designs that do not require a braking surface.

Amy Shreve, Women’s Product Marketing Specialist, was one of several key Specialized personnel who came over to Australia for the launch from their head office in California. Amy is part of a team of six women who work at the Specialized Women’s Team, designing, testing and marketing a full range of women’s specific bikes and products.

Mark Cote, Road Product Manager from the USA took Australian dealers through the 2013 Specialized road range.

These are dedicated dealers! After a long day of presentations, they still packed out an optional evening session entitled ‘How to Improve Your Business’.

It’s a long way to the top… Someone must have had a long, slow drive up from Melbourne to Cairns to bring the bikes. That’s about a 6,000 km round trip.