Foffa Bikes

You misunderstand - it doesn't matter whether it's his surname, first name or nickname for his cat, the Foffa brand was first seen on some shit bikes, and has ever since been tainted by association. That's not unique to Foffa, Raleigh have a hard time getting a premium price for their better bikes because everybody's first impression of Raleigh is of sturdy 3-speed roadster, whereas Colnago gets over the odds for his Chinese carbon bikes because Ernesto built a strong reputation over decades of hand built steel before he started outsourcing production. A Chinese carbon Colnago isn't necessarily better than a Chinese carbon Raleigh, but the brand value is much higher among cycling enthusiasts.

At this point, Foffa's problem is that his brand is so badly compromised that he actually has to supply bikes which are clearly better than Fujis and Charges at the same price point in order to recover, something which, as you say, is probably not feasible for a small company. Even if the capital were in place to fund such a brand recovery plan, any sensible person would see that there are better ways to spend it. That, of course, is the great peril of using your own name as your brand; if it goes tits up, you probably need a Deed Poll before trying again.

I understand perfectly, I'm more pointing out the fickleness of the forum. If it does go tits up it'll more likely be because not enough people in places like this gave the guy a chance. One of the biggest influencers of brands is word of mouth (and indeed one of the most effective forms of advertising) and the longer people here bad-mouth Foffa the more responsible we'll be (as a community) for it's demise should that happen. Hopefully this won't happen. However, as a cyclist and a member of this community if it did it would be something that I think we could be thoroughly ashamed of. Apart from the truly nasty twisted people in the community who could then turn around and say 'see, I told you so!'. With some sort of sickly glow of self-satisfaction.