Originally posted by buddylee
well its kind of funny to hear all of you people bashing shimano. they have contributed so much to the industry. without them we would not have the quality components we do today.
don't get me wrong, i have all of the respect in the world for so many things that shimano does right. their factory in osaka is like the 23rd century. they make some of the best components in the world. they're so good that they've driven all of their competitors in the high performance mountain bike market out of business.
the percentege that they kick into the industry is miniscule as a percentege of sales.
they've invested in racing and creating a racing circut that they can win every time.
imho, without shimano, we'd have 6-10 component unique component companies that were competing with each other and constantly raising the bar. they'd be small enough so they had to get together and all argee on new standards. they'd be more rider based rather than than sales and marketing based.
monopolies that try to manipulate the market always leave a bad taste in my mouth.
pip