Originally Posted by
genejockey
In theory, The Market should take care of that - if the price of innovation becomes too great, companies will either cut back on it or go out of business, or both, and companies not burdened by those excessive costs will undercut the market and flourish.
...we've already had several opinions about how this is a luxury market demographic. Luxury items do not necessarily follow market theory in this way. It is true that in spite of Di2, Shimano's profits are way down. But that's a reflection of bicycle sales and inventories at all levels of product. There's this for high end road bikes:
Under these market conditions, the Shimano Group received a favorable reception for high-end models for road bikes as a whole, including SHIMANO 105, and sport e-bike components, SHIMANO STEPS series and other products.
As a result, net sales from this segment decreased 17.7% from the same period of the previous year to 204,986 million yen, and operating income decreased 39.5% to 42,093 million yen.
Originally Posted by
PeteHski
Probably more employees and infrastructure today. Shimano seem to open a new facility nearly every year.
Shimano : Summary of Financial Results FY2023-Q2
...if you follow
the link to further financial data, you'll see that Shimano's indebtedness outpaced earnings in 2023, and is projected to do so again in 2024, 2025.
This is the data for the company as a whole. Given their circumstances, it would seem like an odd time to be opening new facilities. But maybe they are rolling the dice on the future of sales.