I am an insider of sorts. Known an ex-employee who started there 26 years or so ago! This is not a happy story, nor was Kona ever really a professionally run company. The truth, and hate on me if you want, is that a bunch of clueless profiteers looking to buy up the world were apparently too stupid to understand the basic facts coming from their own business degrees, exactly because short-tem greed is stupid as it gets. Too many of these people, none of them could give a crap about the grass roots story or the people at the margins like me that followed that early wave of weird loner guys on steel hardtails just trying to get down the shore at all, and all that led too. I rode so many trails that are now long gone, and many of them on Kona bikes. But what happened here was that the owners fleeced not only Kent but most of their long term employees, my friend among them. The fallout here ruined my friendship and closes my life of riding in BC on very bad terms. I am a vulnerable and impoverished person now, almost 60, 10 years of advanced degress worthless, barely able to afford to keep a single bike going, and that is not for fun, it is my "car", sigh. So, let's not put a dress on the pig here. This industry, like too many, has left the real people behind and mostly chases fat cats and media looks, the lack of standards and pointless innovation is unsustainable too, along with this so easy to predict bust and boom it is just more of why we need to reform our economic and industrial systems much more radically. I am sickened by what cycling has become, it does not value me, and what happened here was that greed coming from 2 directions will now ruin the legacy of Kona, as well as the prospects of all the employees already so poorly laid off to even get here (you have NO IDEA!!!), and now the rest go too. Trust me, Kent were a bunch of idiots here, this was a bad move, Dan and Jake et. al. took the money and ran, and the people and the brand left behind have been tarnished by this, end of story. BIKES DON'T NEED COMPUTERS OR AI EITHER. Sickening industry now, made its own bed here.
April 19, 2024, 4:11 p.m. - eM pathy
I am an insider of sorts. Known an ex-employee who started there 26 years or so ago! This is not a happy story, nor was Kona ever really a professionally run company. The truth, and hate on me if you want, is that a bunch of clueless profiteers looking to buy up the world were apparently too stupid to understand the basic facts coming from their own business degrees, exactly because short-tem greed is stupid as it gets. Too many of these people, none of them could give a crap about the grass roots story or the people at the margins like me that followed that early wave of weird loner guys on steel hardtails just trying to get down the shore at all, and all that led too. I rode so many trails that are now long gone, and many of them on Kona bikes. But what happened here was that the owners fleeced not only Kent but most of their long term employees, my friend among them. The fallout here ruined my friendship and closes my life of riding in BC on very bad terms. I am a vulnerable and impoverished person now, almost 60, 10 years of advanced degress worthless, barely able to afford to keep a single bike going, and that is not for fun, it is my "car", sigh. So, let's not put a dress on the pig here. This industry, like too many, has left the real people behind and mostly chases fat cats and media looks, the lack of standards and pointless innovation is unsustainable too, along with this so easy to predict bust and boom it is just more of why we need to reform our economic and industrial systems much more radically. I am sickened by what cycling has become, it does not value me, and what happened here was that greed coming from 2 directions will now ruin the legacy of Kona, as well as the prospects of all the employees already so poorly laid off to even get here (you have NO IDEA!!!), and now the rest go too. Trust me, Kent were a bunch of idiots here, this was a bad move, Dan and Jake et. al. took the money and ran, and the people and the brand left behind have been tarnished by this, end of story. BIKES DON'T NEED COMPUTERS OR AI EITHER. Sickening industry now, made its own bed here.