Mavic in receivership - how did it come to this for one of cycling's most famous brands?

Here's an odd thing - I have obviously known about the TDF sponsorship since forever, and I knew that my old Raleigh has a beautiful set of MA40 anodised rims on it.  But I've only just noticed that my long-suffering Boardman CX also came with Mavics on it (XM319, nothing special).  Presumably they've lost some ground in the OEM market since it was made.

Anyone remember having Mavic rims back in the 70s and 80s? They never wore out. In recent years I have had new Open Pro rims built onto my winter bike every year.
But this isn't the reason why they have gone tits up. For a number of years they haven't given a fuck about the customers. Quality has dropped, they have gone from completely redesigning their wheel sets every 5 years to every 3 years. What they have done in conjunction with this is.....chucked all the spares away, refusing to sell them to bike shops. Even if there are spares available, my LBS tells me that it is anyones guess when he orders them if they actually turn up. Every wheel set has a different spoke design, after three years you can't get spares so in Mavic world you just throw them in the bin, and buy some new ones!
Mavic's arrogance has been the undoing of their business. I personally would never buy factory built wheels anymore. The way forward is to buy hand built wheels. You can spec everything yourself, if you break a spoke the wheel builder can easily fix it. They are in most cases much lighter and more lively than fancy looking factory built ones. Unless you're speccing Enve rims with Chris King hubs, they don't admittedly look as sexy as factory built wheels but are far, far superior. If they are built by someone who knows their trade, you may never break a spoke. Paul Hewitt builds all of my wheels, in 25 years I have never had to return a wheel for repair. My last set of Mavics, some £1200 Ksyrium SLRs, were shit. Forever creaking in the spoke holes, the only way to quieten them was to spray them liberally before each ride with WD40. My wheels which I specced on my new winter bike are H Plus Son Hydra rims on Hope road hubs. Awesome wheels, very light and very stiff. And they look good too.

Mavic wheels were the best back in the day. But then venture capitalists came along and bought the company, and that was the beginning of the end.

I've seen this before in other industries, many times in fact. Venture capitalists want to make money quickly. So once they've got their hands on a firm they cut costs, with R&D and marketing being the first victims. They take as much profit as they can as quickly as they can, then sell on the brand while it still has a name that's valued. But the business has already suffered from the drop in R&D so it's future is less asured. Then the new owner, another venture capitalist, does more of the same. In a few years a leading brand has lost its shine and quality has dropped.

I dont think it's as complex as people are making out why Mavic are in difficulty, just ask yourself you need a new set of wheels to replace an old worn out set, who do you pick ?

Mavic wasnt the first brand that popped in your head was it? Probably not even the 2nd,3rd or 4th choice...and if Mavic arent the 1st answer you thought of and more than half the people in the market to buy wheels think the same, that's the reason why theyve been struggling.

When it came to finally upgrading the wheels that came with my bike I looked long & hard at all the options. I managed to find a set of Comete Pro Carbon SL UST for half price. Ticked all the boxes for me: wide, deep, TL & reasonably light. Love them! Here is my tribute, taken today in Llangollen just before ascending the Horseshoe pass. Hope someone sorts them out! 

what a great shame, Mavic one of my favourite component manufacturers.

Hope someothing can be resolved, would be awful if they disappeared. The Mavic Ksyrium, an iconic wheel at the time.

Soon you can add Mavic to the list of companies like Pan Am that had their moments in the sun but couldn't be sustained forever.

I liked Mavic rims when I was doing a lot of wheelbuilding back in the 80s. However the wheels they now produce are throwaway items, like many of their competitors. I won't buy such wheels any more. They are typical of the environmentally unfriendly consumerist market that, for me, goes totally against the grain of cycling. Either get wheels built by a good wheel builder who will be able to replace the rims when they wear out or buy a wheelset from a firm that will provide replacement rims, bearings etc from stock at prices that make replacement a viable option. (Mavic provide a service to replace worn out rims that involves returning the old wheel to them, you then wait forever to get it back and it costs more than a new discounted wheel). 

It's a great shame if this means the end - for the employees especially. But the market is fierce and only the strong survive.
I do like the look of Mavic products, with the exception of some shoes a friend has which I thought must be own brand from Morrisons (big yellow M). But my LBS is scathing about custom parts and supply chain issues on Mavic and Fulcrum wheels, and having experienced problems with the latter brand, why would I entertain the former unless the product was far enough ahead of its competitors?
Big brands with attendant marketing budgets either need to use economy of scale to compete on price, or gain a position of trust to attract customers

I'd be saddened to see the Mavic iconic brand go.

I've had a lot of their Aksiums (totally trustworthy) and Ksyriums - mainly for training.

They were almost never my fast race wheels - I don't care about aero but I do care about lightweight and they are just too heavy now.

The peripherals - clothing, shoes, helmets are expensive and just what other brands are doing. Nothing really distinctive or groundbreaking.

shame to see such an iconic brand fail so badly.

If I wanted to pay a tribute to Mavic, which rim-brake wheels should I buy while I still can? I have a single speed road bike I would like to put a 700x25 tire on. It runs 700x23 now but I'm not sure if I want to stay so narrow.

Innovate or die! We all loved Mavic, putting a pair of Mavic wheels onto your first bike was the sign of an upgrade. Bombproof askims, I remember starting a stage race when mavic launched the Helium wheelset, But no one finished the last stage with two red wheels. Cosmics were awesome, ONLY because we had no other choice. The alloy nipples then and now still corrode to the rim in 3 seasons. Kysseriums were fantastic, until you needed a freehub after two years. They were the best available. Now the market place is educated. Forums squeal if someone broke a spoke, regardless if they were broke by 130kg rider in a pothole. Mavic didnt respond fast enough to the market place. they hung one to Carbon Laminate (just a plastic faring) 10 years after zipp (with the worst hubs in the world)were selling full carbon rims. The did some wheels just brilliantly . Cross Max, Open4cd rims, Ma40 Kysserium Elite, but sadly, each broken cosmic ultimate, and the worst looking ghelmets and 900 quid shoes and following the trend to wider rims 4 years. FOUR years after the market had turned. The 2018 road wheelsets came with 23mm tyres. 

Mavic we will miss you in memory, we will miss the neurtal service cars but you, you began this cancer in 2008.It is over.

This is news is really sad.  I used nothing but Mavic rims back in the mid 70's through the early 90's and loved them.  This is like a vintage stable of cycling history just going down the drain.  Someone needs to step up with cycling background and buy the name, and just concentrate on making Mavic branded rims and nothing else, and drop all the other nonsense stuff.

So, hate to speak ill at what is hopefully not a wake, but the truth of the matter is that there are only so many times you can show up late before you completely miss the boat. Mavic was really late to aero, really late to full-carbon, really late to tubeless, and then finally fairly late to wider rims. They finally launched low-profile 19-mm low profile wheelsets just a few months before Enve introduced  25mm aero wheelsets (sorry, "systems"). To this day I don't think they have any 19mm or wider high profile rims. Not only that, but when they joined the party they decided they didn't want to mingle with the other folks: they wanted to make their own standards that integrated with their own tyres. 

To be fair, there is a point to that, and they were in a difficult spot regardless. The OEM industry was under pressure and, less important in terms volume but perhaps not in regards to margins, they could never go as lightweight as the exotic carbon guys, with their ridiculously low weight limits and their "they will break but we will help you fix them" approach to durability. And Shimano was also left obliviously stranded on that same island, to the point that their highest-profile sponsored team has repeatedly refused to ride their wheels at their most important races. But the fact of the matter is that they could've done things differently. DT-Swiss, for one, shows us that if you do play well with others and you eventually catch up, you can keep your focus on quality and still manage to surf the tides of the industry. 

I'm not even getting to their slapdash diversification. Partially because I'm still eyeing the Cosmic Boa SPDs (proof that they can still spot emerging customer needs). But also because I think they make a pretty good product. A single yellow spoke remains a sign of a great wheel and a perfect hub sound (sorry Chris King fans, there's such a thing as too loud). I hope they bounce back.

I thought it was a shame when they stopped making the 26 inch XC717 rim brake rims.  They would have had me buying them forever.

I will miss Mavic, I'm hoping someone can by them and make something of them.