In summer 2012, Blue Competition Cycles was busy revamping its aero road and triathlon bikes leading into a sale to Lake Rudd Capital Partners. That sale completed, followed quickly by a move to sell to Divine Group. With Divine Group’s recent bankruptcy (which led to Mad Fiber going on the auction block), the brand was in limbo.
We buzzed CEO Steven Harad to see what was going on. Here’s what he had to say:
“Last week, we officially sold the company to The Minds Group. We’re setting up our business in Delaware, but it’s owned by a factory out of Taiwan that will largely remain anonymous. From the consumer end, it’s a U.S. company and will remain that way. It’s literally baby steps right now. We’ve got a million dollars worth of inventory in Asia and the first container leaves today. So we’ll have a lot of bikes here soon.
“We’re financially sound, the backing is great. I’ve rehired Daniel Stallings as our sales manager. He was with the company through the the original owners and the mess that happened in the interim. The decisions -sales, marketing, product management- are all made by the two of us, and it’s great to have the history that Daniel brings.
“We’ve been working behind the scenes so we wouldn’t lose momentum. We have four new bikes designed and almost ready for 2015. We won’t be at Eurobike, mainly because we won’t be ready, so our debut will at Interbike. We have a couple new cyclocross bikes, and we’ll definitely be in Kona this year for Ironman. We’re looking at road teams for road models, and we’re looking outside those three basic categories for expansion in 2015 and beyond.
“The cool thing is it’s a huge challenge, we’ve got a lot of work to do, but if I didn’t believe in the new product and designs we have I would have gotten out of it. There’s room for niche brands in the market, and we’re bringing some cool stuff. We’ve got more engineers on our team now than we’ve ever had. That’s one of the benefits of the new ownership. You’ll see some pretty cool stuff out of us.”
