Knob Magazine

It was only a matter of time before Specialized brought the Globe brand back to its roots.  Over a decade ago the company launched a line of european style commuter bikes with minimal Specialized branding and maximum mid-nineties do-gooderness.  The idea flopped.  This second attempt at launching Globe as a sub-brand certainly has higher chances of success provided the recent boom in commuter, craft and utility bikes; trends which Specialized has happily co-opted.

The line will feature the roll, an $800 fixie with some rather elegant finish work; two cargo bikes, and a couple of custom, plywood bottomed, front basket tulip haulers.  Indeed, no trend of the past three years has gone unturned.  The bikes are attractive and well finished, a welcome departure from the past years Globes which have struggled to assert an identity and gain market share in the growing urban market.

By now I think it can be said without resignation that urban bikes are almost entirely about trend. Even the re-designed globe headbadge features a slot for ironic headbadge art, and the brands marketing takes advantage of the hipster’s wistfulness for their blue collar past by harkening back to an obscure brand of local, crappy beer.  It appears that Specialized is on target with the exception of one weakness:  the hipest new brand in the urban scene is made in taiwan by the big red S.  Something which should instigate extreme ambivolence amongst hipsters, pitting their penchant for irony against their still latent concerns about corporate multitnationals.

While I would not go so far as to say this brand will fall as flat as the original Globe line, the extent of the new brands success will be in how well Specialized can separate it from it’s traditional retail channels.  It would seem that purchasing a new Globe amongst the $6000 race bikes and the quintessentially frumpy comfort bikes that populate the average Specialized dealer would bring all the consternation of purchasing an Apple computer at Best Buy.  Moreover, there is little more that bike salespeople like to say than where or by whom a bike is made.  Every time the words “Globe is made by Specialized” escape salesmens’ mouths, a bit of the brands hipness will shrivel and die, leaving Specialized with the me-too crowd of the aspirationally cool who currently buy the all too obvious Langster.

Of course time will tell whether Specialized can be the first big bike company to break the amber glass ceiling of the urban bike market.  The bikes look dead on, its the execution that will be the lynchpin.