Michael Chen This is Me

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1. 1. Kinesis Sells Mountain Cycle Brand to Ideation Industrial

   www.bikeretailer.com/bicyclere - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/15/2006   Last Visited: 10/1/2006

   After considerable internal debate, Kinesis executives concluded that they could no longer justify owning Mountain Cycle and decided to sell it off for several reasons, said Michael Chen, president of Kinesis USA and of Mountain Cycle.
   
   ,When we bought Mountain Cycle in 2001, we pretty much bought it as an experiment in going into our own brand. But we are an OEM (original equipment manufacturing) company, and taking an established brand and nursing it back to health was really a new thing to us,, Chen said.
   
   Kinesis had some success, he said, but the pace of the growth did not justify continuing to divert resources from the company,s core private-label manufacturing business.
   
   ,We felt it was time to take another look, and probably we will go back and focus on our core business rather than spend more energy in this territory,, Chen said.
   
   Kinesis operated a frame-making facility in Portland until last year to serve high-end U.S. customers, but shut it down because of high overhead and sold off most of the equipment.
   
   ,Owning Mountain Cycle made more sense when we had the synergy of our manufacturing business to develop new models, manufacture frames and share some of the overhead. But without the frame production, it was difficult to justify having the brand,, Chen said.
   
   Mountain Cycle,s greatest growth potential lay in becoming a complete-bike, rather than frame-only, brand, but that presented Kinesis executives with another dilemma.
   
   ,There would have been some conflict with our core OEM business. If we took that step, we would have become a competitor with many of our OEM customers,, Chen said.
   
   He is confident that Kinesis is handing Mountain Cycle off to a company that,s better suited to handle it.
   
   ,Ideation has been in the complete bike business and in the sales business for years, and they certainly can do a better job than Kinesis. Kinesis is basically a manufacturing company, not a sales-oriented company like Ideation. So I think Ideation can probably do a better job than Kinesis in terms of the future growth of the brand,, Chen said.
   
   Kinesis USA will remain in Portland and continue as a servicing site for the company.
   
   ,We remain the extension of the Kinesis global sales department, servicing all the U.S. customers and consumers. If they have any requests, they can come to me,, Chen said.
   ...
   Michael Chen

2. 2. Kinesis Sells Mountain Cycle Brand to Ideation Industrial

   www.bicycleretailer.com/bicycl - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/15/2006   Last Visited: 8/1/2006

   After considerable internal debate, Kinesis executives concluded that they could no longer justify owning Mountain Cycle and decided to sell it off for several reasons, said Michael Chen, president of Kinesis USA and of Mountain Cycle.
   
   ,When we bought Mountain Cycle in 2001, we pretty much bought it as an experiment in going into our own brand. But we are an OEM (original equipment manufacturing) company, and taking an established brand and nursing it back to health was really a new thing to us,, Chen said.
   
   Kinesis had some success, he said, but the pace of the growth did not justify continuing to divert resources from the company,s core private-label manufacturing business.
   
   ,We felt it was time to take another look, and probably we will go back and focus on our core business rather than spend more energy in this territory,, Chen said.
   
   Kinesis operated a frame-making facility in Portland until last year to serve high-end U.S. customers, but shut it down because of high overhead and sold off most of the equipment.
   
   ,Owning Mountain Cycle made more sense when we had the synergy of our manufacturing business to develop new models, manufacture frames and share some of the overhead. But without the frame production, it was difficult to justify having the brand,, Chen said.
   
   Mountain Cycle,s greatest growth potential lay in becoming a complete-bike, rather than frame-only, brand, but that presented Kinesis executives with another dilemma.
   
   ,There would have been some conflict with our core OEM business. If we took that step, we would have become a competitor with many of our OEM customers,, Chen said.
   
   He is confident that Kinesis is handing Mountain Cycle off to a company that,s better suited to handle it.
   
   ,Ideation has been in the complete bike business and in the sales business for years, and they certainly can do a better job than Kinesis. Kinesis is basically a manufacturing company, not a sales-oriented company like Ideation. So I think Ideation can probably do a better job than Kinesis in terms of the future growth of the brand,, Chen said.
   
   Kinesis USA will remain in Portland and continue as a servicing site for the company.
   
   ,We remain the extension of the Kinesis global sales department, servicing all the U.S. customers and consumers. If they have any requests, they can come to me,, Chen said.
   ...
   Michael Chen

3. 3. ORblogs - Oregon's Weblog Community

   www.orblogs.com - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/1/2005   Last Visited: 6/29/2006

   [Mountain Cycle's new owners.] Following up on my post from Tuesday, I just got off the phone with Kinesis USA President Michael Chen. He called to give me more details about last week's sale of Mountain Cycle. Mountain Cycle has been sold to a... topics: sale
   ...
   posted on Mover Mike in Portland - 1 hour ago
   ...
   posted on Mover Mike in Portland - 1 hour ago
   ...
   I have just gotten official word from Kinesis USA President Michael Chen that Mountain Cycle has been sold.