More on a local bicycle manufacturer.
And then there are guys like Tony Karklins. The Little Rock, Arkansas, based former bike retailer is the man who brought Orbea to the U.S. I remember seeing one of their bikes in the late 1990s and wondering why they hadn’t made an effort to sell bikes in the U.S., so when Karklins started bringing them in, the brand’s penetration was immediate. Just consider the stillbirth of the Museeuw brand here. Remember that? Classics master Johan Museeuw has a brand of bikes that he launched here and they went nowhere. I personally knew some of the staff and they were good, bright people, but they lacked the capital to build the infrastructure to get the brand off the ground. To this day, I don’t know how Karklins did it, but he built a dealer network that has given Orbea a lasting presence despite the loss of the Euskatel Euskadi team, which was their single greatest marketing asset.
Source: The Value of Experience | RKP
