Recently I find myself in the unlikely position of quoting Donald Rumsfeld a lot. But in the development of the ONE, the new full suspension, the pathfinder and one more model, I come across these known unknowns, unknown knowns and even unknown unknowns.

That in itself is great, it’s exciting to try and do things that haven’t been done before. The frustrating bit is where those unknowns intersect with the real world, by which I mean the world Andy and our customers live in. As interested as most people seem to be in the way we’re pushing the envelope, in the end they inevitably ask that most dreaded of questions: “when will it be ready?”

The most honest answer and the one we usually give is: “when it is ready.” This doesn’t mean we don’t plan or schedule things in the development phase, but rather that we realize not everything can be planned. Especially those known and unknown unknowns! But sometimes we are a bit less disciplined and we communicate our planned date. Which means we risk ending up looking like a “normal” bike company, promising a release date that is not achieved!

This has happend with the ONE. The frame was almost ready in April, and could have gone into production soon after. But we wanted to make some changes to make it even better, and at OPEN, the pressure to do better is always bigger than the pressure to launch. That is a mindset we can never lose, it’s what makes us us. Our schedule was for those changes to be completed by the end of July, but they weren’t.

The improvements we made created some unknown unknowns in the form of layup complications, and they have taken eight iterations of new layup design, prototype build and testing to solve. That is to say, as of yesterday we think they may be solved, but most likely it will be another 2-3 iterations to get all the test values exactly where we want them. But again, no launch until then.

So there we are, the situation on the ONE. It frustrates Andy and myself, especially since the response from our customers has been so positive about the ONE. But we want to make sure we exceed those already high expectations.

What does this mean for the introduction date of the ONE? “When it’s ready!” We *hope* to be able to announce that all the tests are passed in the next few weeks, and then we can also announce the full production schedule soon after. But we don’t know. What we do know is that you will be the first to know, right here on our blog.

Any good news to finish off this blog? Of course, here’s a photo of what the first full suspension front triangle looked like right out of the mold. Very good quality for a first attempt. Cheers!

We all laugh about it, the rider who threatens legal action just to try to convince us they really didn’t do what some magazine, newspaper or website alleges. And of course, nothing ever happens. But I thought it would be nice to have a list, because of course the reverse is also true. If no legal action is ever taken, maybe the story was correct.

I can’t find such a list anywhere, so I thought I’d make a modest start. Please help me by adding some in the comments section!

Which ones do you remember?

Until now, you could receive my blog automatically by email two ways:

1. Via Feedblitz email service
2. Via WordPress’ built-in email service

I am stopping with Feedblitz at the end of November, so if you get it that way and want to continue to get it automatically, just enter your email at the top left box on my blog page and you’ll get it through the Worldpress service.

If you are not sure how you are receiving my blog, simply put your email in that top left box and it is smart enough to make sure you won’t get it double.

Thanks for reading,

Gerard.

Sports Illustrated ran an article about anti-doping testing in Jamaica. Five conclusions:

1. It highlights the problem of how poorer countries should allocate resources to anti-doping. One cannot possibly claim that funding that is more important than funding basic needs.
2. At the same time, this is of no concern to the athletes competing against the Jamaicans. And the fact is that JADCO is responsible for out-of-competition testing of its athletes even when they are abroad.
3. If they wanted to, Jamaica could fund the world’s best anti-doping program with just 10% of the proceeds of their millionaire sprinters. So install a testing tax on the athletes, and the problem is solved. Note that if this is a fixed tax that applies to all their athletes indiscriminately, it is not comparable with the Armstrong donation to the UCI. Simply the costs of being a pro athlete.
4. One would think that for the athletes, this would be a great opportunity to lend credibility to the claim that they’re clean. As it stands, with 1 OOC test in the two most important months of 2012 (when it comes to doping to prepare for the Olympics), suspicion is cast upon all Jamaican athletes. They simply were not tested in a way that any credible statement about them being clean could be made.
5. Fans of Jamaican sprinters react the same way as Lance Armstrong fans did in the BO-era (Before Oprah)

Very excited to announce that a project I’ve been working on for a long time has finally launched: 2r.

It’s a multi-media magazine about cycling, combining in-depth written articles with photo galleries and video. Available for the iPad right now (iOS6 required) and on some additional platforms shortly. I’m very excited that Paul Kimmage will have a “big piece” in 2r every month.

In issue 1, Paul interviews LeMond about his relationships with Hinault, Fignon and Armstrong. In the 44(!) page interview, they also cover races being sold, cocaine, and awkward dinners (with the chef of Renault and Lance). Boonen revisits his worst loss, Gesink draws his first bike and Nuyens contemplates retirement. To top it off, Cavendish thinks about what he would do as the UCI president. Plus the most beautiful photos from l’Équipe and Sirotti.

2r will appear monthly and best of all, it’s FREE. Download it for the iPad here. To follow 2r (and receive announcements when other formats are ready), choose from the following:

website:   2rmag.com
twitter:     @2rHD
facebook: 2rmag

I really hope you like the magazine and if you do, please tell your friends about it! Thanks.

I stumbled upon this celebrity behavior a while ago, and to be honest I was amazed. Or maybe I’m naive and “this is how the world works”. Say there is a celebrity who wants to do some charity work (to feel good or look good, who knows). So she proposes to a bunch of business people:

• Let’s do an event in your town, sell 500 tickets at $200 for a total of $100k, and “100% of the proceeds go to charity”. Are you in?
• But for me to show up to the event, for you guys to be able to claim “We got her to come visit for charity”, you’ve got to pay me personally $1M.

How do you feel about this?

• Praise the people who paid $200, which is going straight to charity?
• Praise the business people who paid $1M to generate $100k for charity?
• Damn the business people for being so star-struck that they paid $1M to the celeb, instead of straight to the charity they claim to care so much about?
• That celebrity is a lot of things, but a giving personality concerned with charity she ain’t?

I’m feeling a mix of all four. How about you?

I promise I’ll get back to cycling in my next blog.

Probably the hardest thing for companies to do nowadays; customer service. I can appreciate it’s difficult, and usually I’m not too upset when I don’t get a response or only after a long time – as long as I get a feeling the company is trying.

A few days ago however, I visited a presentation from Lithium. It’s a pretty interesting company that helps brands create communities (forums on steroids, to be disrespectful) and some other social media stuff. They had a panel discussion with three of their clients as panelists; KPN, TomTom and HP. The stated reason for these three companies to create a community? “Call-deflection”.

The idea is that if you create a community, people ask questions there and other people answer them, reducing the need to call customer service. Why do they want to do this? Because customers hate customer service and because it’s expensive.

“Call-deflection”. Think about that for a while. So customer service sucks and instead of fixing it, they ask their customers to fix it. Don’t get me wrong, the result is probably pretty positive, as I have no doubt that the average customer knows more about the product than the average call-center-voice.

But the cynicism was just shocking to me. We’re not talking about a company where sometimes the lines are busy or the person picking up the phone doesn’t know the answer, we’re talking about companies who actively try to avoid talking to you.

Of course this started back in the 20th century, with endless phone trees. That worked for a while but people started to figure out how to get to the end of the tree. So they moved all that stuff to India, ensuring that if you managed to get through, at least it wouldn’t cost them very much. Whole towns in India have adopted Texan and New York accents for this purpose.

But now they have found a new way to not have to talk to their customers – the community. For all the beautiful reasons they could have to start a community (learn their customers’ frustrations, ask for input on new products, reward loyalty), the one they pick is the polar-opposite; contact avoidance.

I just don’t get it. I have been involved in a few companies, all of them far from perfect. Also in customer service, I am sure there are plenty of areas in which they could have been better. But the one thing we always enjoyed was to talk to the customer and learn. From the early days of Cervelo when Phil and I visited every possible race to today’s world of Twitter and blogs, contact with customers is key. How can you ever hope to have a long-term relationship with your customers if you don’t want to talk to them? Bizarre.

This evening I will be a guest of  “de Avondetappe”, a Tour de France talk show on national Dutch television. Two years ago I was there for the first time, and my appearance shocked the homefront.

You may remember, it was just after the first Giro for Cervelo TestTeam, where we won four stages and Sastre finished on the podium. But it could have been five wins. Serge Pauwels was in the lead group on a mountain stage but was called back by JP van Poppel to help Sastre (as were a few riders from other teams). Through miscommunication (both human and electronics-caused), it was a complete disaster.

At first Serge refused to slow down, and when he finally did 10 minutes later, it was no longer necessary so it looked like a complete cock-up – which it was but a different one than it appeared on TV. Anyway, a team blunder but an honest one. Unfortunately, an inferiority-complexed commentator saw it as proof of a Dutch conspriracy to prevent a Belgian win. That week several people on the team received death-threats.

Somehow I had never bothered to mention these threats at home. I can’t really remember why I never mentioned it (“Anything happen at work today?” “Nothing special”). So my family learned about it while watching some relaxed talk show two months later. They were not amused. So let me get this out of the way before the broadcast: There have been no death threats in the past two years.

I’ll be away next week for a long-long-long-awaited vacation. I have some posts lined up, but I won’t be able to respond to your comments until I return home. But I do appreciate your comments, so I will catch up asap.

Note: This post is about the poll results from Friday, a “normal” blog post will follow shortly.

Thanks to everybody who filled out the poll. 3x a week got the most votes, but very closely followed by 5x, 1x and “other”. So it’s all over the place. Most people wo voted “other” said to post whenever I had something interesting and/or intelligent to say. No pressure!!

That said, I understand what you mean, and maybe that sentiment was also in the votes for 3x per week when I am currently blogging 5x. Maybe it’s not about the frequency per se but more a reflection that some of the posts simply haven’t been what you were looking for. Obviously I write about what interests me at that moment. I do try to ensure it will interest YOU as well, but that’s hard to know for sure.

Maybe we can make a deal: For the moment, I will keep writing 5x per week (especially with the Tour coming up), but:

1. If I don’t feel it’s up to snuff, I skip a day
2. If you don’t feel it’s up to snuff, you let me know (privately by email at gv@gerard.cc, via the comments section of the offending post or via twitter)

Not a traditional blog entry today, but a question about this blog. I really hope you can help me figure this out. I don’t want to annoy people by blogging too much or too little (and frankly, I don’t want to kill myself writing either), so why don’t you tell me?

Thanks in advance for your answer.