Kudos to Marinoni
 

I have to give a shout out to Marinoni. I have a Vintage Marinoni road bike that I got from a neighbor who's son was the original owner. She was not sure of it's age, but based on the 7 speed Shimano 600 Tricolor groupset I thought it would be late 80's to early 90's. I thought I would see if I could get confirmation from Marinoni, so I emailed a picture of the bike and the serial number (8XXXX) to them. As I plan to rebuild the bike for my personal use I though the history would be interesting.
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Within a day I received an email from Julia at Marinoni saying the serial number stating with an 8 meant it was manufactured in 88 or 98, but as she was working from home during our current pandemic she could only look at newer on line data, and based on that she said it did not match with the 98 bike. She said she would get back to me when she was in the office and could look through their scanned archives.
Yesterday she sent me an email with the original order sheet which says the bike was manufactured in 1988 and was ordered by Russ Hays, and my bike Does have a Russ Hays Bicycles sticker on it.
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I am quite impressed that the effort was made to help me with the history of the bike which is 32 years old. If this is how they support their product it reflects well for anyone wanting to do business with them today.

You cannot beat Marinoni for customer service, I would encourage to consider having them repaint/refinish if you are going that way and their prices are far more reasonable as well.

Their story and history are crazy cool too.

Have you watched The Fire and the Frame?

I have an even better story. One of my friends bought a Marinoni very early on, I think that his bike had a 2 digit serial number. Over the years he often went back to their place of business to have his bike serviced. After close to 40 years of use by a guy who regularly rode several thousand kilometres per year, the frame failed and could not be repaired. Guess what they did? They built him a brand new frame to replace it and put his bike back together. I have dealt with them many times when I was working for another bike distribution company. We were a distributor for pedals, and Marinoni was a big customer of ours. We loved doing business with them. I have gone there a few times to have my Ergo shifters rebuilt. They will do it while you wait. The last time I did that I had a nice conversation with Guiseppe in their showroom. If you live anywhere close to Montreal you will know them well and respect them

No, I haven't. I just watched the trailer and will have to see the movie now. Thanks.

Just received two of these emails today (:

Yep- same story. I found an '88 Special, emailed them teh serial # and some photos, had a copy of the build sheet in a day. Fantastic people to deal with.