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Synchronized Launches = More Than a Coincidence

And the message it sends in the industry.

I don’t often spend much thought reflecting on things that appear like freaky coincidences. I'm not superstitious, and tend to think about things from a logical perspective; this almost always dismisses conspiracy theories. As humans, we desire to assign reasoning to things we experience. This characteristic in the way humans think can often lead to us incorrectly assigning correlation between things that are, in fact, only coincidences.

In the cycling industry, we have been watching SRAM release new groupsets in both the mountain and road segments, with no response from their two biggest competitors: Shimano and Campagnolo. Then, on a conspicuous Wednesday in June, after years of waiting, both Shimano and Campagnolo released their new flagship component groups. Shimano announced a new wireless XTR group for MTB, and Campagnolo with their new Super Record road group. To me, it seems like Shimano and Campagnolo scheduled their release dates to correspond in order to make a statement to SRAM (and the rest of the industry) that the era of SRAM being the go-to, oblivious choice for components may be coming to an end.

Over the last decade, SRAM has been operating in a textbook manner. They have been able to move fast and compound the things they are good at. Then, after building their capability for years—all during the COVID bike shortage era—all of the years growing their capabilities came together for them in a masterful way. They had good offerings of electronic groupsets across lots of price points for both road and mountain bikes at a time when Shimano and Campagnolo’s were still too expensive for most riders. Furthermore, the groupsets could be mixed and matched for gravel use. Likewise, they have suspension, seatposts, and sensors that are part of the same system and can be controlled by the same controllers. The result of all this innovation was that SRAM was running away with the market.

From the viewpoint of Shimano and Campagnolo, it must be scary watching this unfold. SRAM is continuing to compound on their innovations at an exponential pace, whereas Shimano and Campagnolo were revising their offerings at a much more linear pace. In other words, their groupsets were getting better and more refined, but not fundamentally creating new value in areas that had not existed before like SRAM.

These two product releases from Shimano and Campagnolo have marked a major step forward in the competitiveness of these two brands' product offerings. Despite still being behind SRAM in some regards (direct-mount derailleurs, integrations beyond drivetrain, available price points, and more), releasing them on the same day does send a message to the industry that goes beyond just what each individual groupset says; together, they remind everyone that there are other choices available in the market than only SRAM.