Vulpine Clothing

@Hoops @Sumo

I was making the point that high-end cycle clothing companies make some hit-and-miss stuff, but the Rapha fan-boys on here say Vulpine was always shit and that's why it failed, while there are quite a lot of people out there who did actually like some of the Vulpine stuff.

Poor cashflow management and overspending on non-core stuff seems to be the main culprit. I suspect they massively over-extended on the Hoy deal.

Rapha is the prototype for the new, hip cycling brands. All others will always be compared to them. Especially given their [your? Is it you that works there? Someone with a username like yours does] success.

Benchmark. As soon as I hit reply I remembered the word i wanted. Waffa is the benchmark.

Not me!

Hmmm. Someone else then.

Half the forum works there these days TBH.

You opened with "For all the snobbery on LFGSS against Vulpine for not being Rapha...".
My point was that it's not snobbery to compare them to Rapha as they seemed to want in on the same market but didn't make as nice products yet charged equivalent (sometimes higher) prices.

That doesn't mean Vulpine never made anything good, just that everything they did would be compared to the established competitor, especially if you paid rrp.

The rapha comparison is daft. Rapha started with an incredibly strong core - good brand and a few good products, from the off. What was it, classic bibs and merino jerseys, if memory serves? Built steadily from there.
Vulpine started with a huge song and dance - very social media-based, very Nick Hussey-based. That's a huge risk because as we all know, people can get very tiring on the socials. If your products aren't strong enough to back up your promises, that's even worse. Did Vulpine ever have a good core product, shrinking socks aside? Everyone I've ever spoken to, even if they liked the look of it, complained the jackets did not work as promised.

That's why it's being compared.

The comparison could go on business studies syllabi for how to do it vs not to.

A lot of the criticism seemed to be that Vulpine wasn't enough like Rapha - in particular, that they were too focused on commuter/casual wear and not enough on the more technical stuff that Rapha does very well. But of course, Rapha is already well-entrenched in that space, so it'd be silly to go head-to-head there.

In any case — the Vulpine clearly brand didn't succeed in attracting similar devotion as Rapha, and that's probably part of the story of why they weren't able to achieve their RRPs and ended up selling most stuff at a discount. Someone on the Road.cc comment thread made the point that Rapha has a fairly solid core product line that it refines over time - I think with Rapha the majority of the products are the core, with the more changeable stuff peripheral. Vulpine had it the other way around. I wonder if that's why they had so many problems - it's hard to maintain quality control if you're constantly changing your product lines, whereas kaizen-style continual refinement can help build up a very strong reputation around some core products, which again Rapha has succeeded at. Hence the fan-boy devotion.

In any case, enough of the thread derail. Vulpine failed because the business was poorly managed and burnt through cash, that's clear as day - maybe if they'd kept focused and not overextended so much, they'd still be making a small range of casual stuff you wouldn't mind riding to the pub in.

I wonder if I can get any xl jackets cheap.....

Work accidentally threw my last fire jacket out. Knowing what their stock was like last year's winter jackets might have just arrived.

If anyone hears anything let me know. Also depending on the cut might be a xxx. Have no fucking idea on sizes these days

A lot of the criticism seemed to be that Vulpine wasn't enough like Rapha

Where? Only you have put forward this point, repeatedly.

Nick wasn't very good at talking about the products, but loved talking about himself, that's enough to put most people off.

@h2o Can all rapha comments head for the fucking rapha thread now..ffs

I said I was done, chill out.

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/what-the-hell-happened-at-vulpine/021275

The headline is misleading though, it's no clearer what the hell happened other than the business lost control of it's cash flow.

He added: “There’s two things that made me not stop. First of all, I’m very pig headed. If someone tells me not to do something, it’ll probably make me want to do it more. And that’s an essential thing for an entrepreneur, because pretty much everyone tells you you can’t do it. So you’ve got to ignore a certain amount of advice.”

Someone should've told him to start a high end cycling commuter clothing company.

Someone should've told him to start a high end cycling commuter company for weirdly proportioned, colour blind people who don't care about the quality of the garments they are buying.

ftfy

Where were the influencers?

chris hoy has less followers than glorious.cc

Well there you go then.

I wonder if the Jenks family knew he was taking out 90 large after investing £130k in the business.

This isn't going to happen to Morvelo, is it?

Had to, no? BikeBiz article states the entire director board were all on £90k