Hugs and Kisses, The Big S and Cafe Roubaix Make Up

sinyard doesnt seem like THAT much of a dickhead. We can all go back to looking at picture of cats and hating trek again. god speed

Sinyard back tracked and apologized because the owners of the trademark that he uses forced him to do so. I won’t believe that Sinyard has had any change of heart or has any concern for the small businessman until his company abandons its aggressive legal actions against small businesses.

Ahh, how sweet…

this is great news for my soon to be opened shop Canntrekalized!

So Sinyard is gonna get a time-machine and apologize to all the people he sent his lawyers after and also stop bullying shops to carry his brand or else.

Not much of an apology.

Was it when Sinyard said ” really I just want to say a big apology and I take full responsibility for this whole thing” that was not much of an apology?

“Weak Apology”??? What more do you guys want? In my opinion this was the real deal and I have a lot of respect for Mike Sinyard for going up there and working things out.

Not many CEOs have the strength of will to say “I’m sorry, we screwed up.” Very glad to see he came around to doing the right thing. Would have been yet another brand I’d avoid otherwise.

you know, specialized takes it as well as it dishes it out. The Carve/Crave hardtail, for instance.

_”Hi, this is Dan Richter of Cafe Roubaix bicycles …(err, uh) bicycle studio”. (blink blink)

_ Nice of Mike Sinyard to withdraw all claims against the owner seeing as he legally had none, or so we were led to believe from ASI’s statements.

I think ‘Fuji’ was the big winner in all this. Time for them to cancel their license agreement with specilized.

There’s plenty of big companies who don’t sue and don’t hire legal “help” to do so on their part in the first place.

Maybe Specialized should focus less on legal shenanigans and more on making awesome bieks.

They did the right thing, that apology was fine, especially in person. Sore, it was a PR opportunity as well, to face the issue and make up looking good.

It was a very modern and fair way to handle the thing. What’s most interesting to me is the weight that the cycling community put on this issue via social media, comments, etc. I have to wonder how things would be if there were no internet.

without internet, nobody would have known the roubaix shop. neither did specialized. clumsy video, but sinyard did the right thing by heading up there. hope his company (and others!) gets some common sense now in these kind of subjects, and focus on engineering better bikes.

I was sort of expecting Sinyard to give him a concept store or somehow offset the damage he has caused. He also looks in pretty poor health. Interesting time in the world of social media backlash.

Maybe if Sinyard would have made his apology on Oprah it would have been more convincing.

As I read this I keep thinking of what would have transpired if they were successful in their lawsuit…Just kept on throwing around weight and money.. Total bullsh*t that Specialized is trying to spin this as “working it out” and “finding other options”. The deal is they got called on sh*tty big company actions and now that we have outlets to express our discontent hopefully we’ll read fewer about things like this. I planned on a Stumpjumper this year, think I’ll go for the Niner instead…And just for good measure I’ve stopped saying “Epic” and moved back to saying “BRUTAL”.

Why was that video so awkward?

The links provided here in the original article clearly indicated that the trademark pertained specifically to bike related items: frame, handlebars etc, not a shop. There was no case.

The law, which requires defense of the trademark or lose it, is designed to reduce frivolous use of the tm process. It becomes very expensive to defend a poorly designed tm.

The legal team representing Specialized will likely have some pink slips, which they richly deserve in this instance.

What a PR nightmare. Good luck Spesh, it used to be that just industry insiders knew that your business model centered around stealing/co-opting others ideas and using your lawyers to beat the little guy into submission. Now it looks like social media has revealed your true colors to the world.

Trek isn’t privy to what’s going on here apparently. I guess they made enough money during the Lance Armstrong years that they don’t have to worry about how tarnished their reputation is as a brand.

Good on Specialized for sorta making an apology I guess.

@Zap? What does Trek have to do with this story? They are not the ones who didn’t know how to handle a simple trademark dispute with a small business, nevermind ASI owns the trademark and not Spesh. Yeah, Trek sues companies for trademark like Spesh does (Trek Winery, Subaru), but they don’t seem as heavy handed or show up in the press as frequently as Spesh does (Epic, Stumptown, Volagi).

Every brand in the US made off like bandits during the LA times and LA wasn’t the only one doping. In fact, name me a bicycle brand that hasn’t sponsored a doper. Are you going to say Pinarello’s and Giant’s brand is tarnished bc of Ullrich and Zabel? Or Bianchi’s bc of Pantani? What about Contador?

Sinyard personally visiting Dan was a good move, but personally I think it was too little too late. Also the “apology” seemed half assed, like it was forced out of him. What does counterfeiting have to do with this anyhow? The wheels? One look and you know they aren’t Spesh wheels!

I think they realized (a little late) that this was not going away and that it was going to impact the bottomline. Either way, Spesh made the best out of the mess they made.

ew someone needed to send them a c&d just to quit making those horrible kits.