Tony Malone - Old Kent Road Cycles - his new venture?

RPM don't you start up again, go on change your name to a "." and go away

Poor little fellow :)

• TheBrick(Tommy):This is why I love you guys. It's like watching some ironside*
  
  

Wayne_f14 * TheBrick(Tommy):This is why I love you guys. It's like watching some ironside*

where's the hearing aid?

pardon?

Nice.

The 3.5k beauty does indeed have 20 beautiful Campagnolo Record gears and is my Omega Alchemy called Angelina

In light of Design for Diversity’s threatened legal action thought I’d return to the fray on this one.

I’m pretty certain I was the first person to post about Tony Malone, the substance of what I posted was that the new pricing at Witcomb Cycles seemed to directly coincide with Tony Malone’s coming on board as the head of Witcomb’s (new) Research and Design department, where he was going to be, “designing livery, products and working on special engineering projects”.

I questioned what price Barry and Ernie Witcomb would be paying for his services and wondered whether they would be getting value for their money, or were being exploited by a self serving, self publicist who was long on self aggrandisement but rather shorter on talent. Especially bearing in mind that while Tony is demonstrably not remotely shy about publicising his (many?) achievements, he doesn’t refer anywhere to his background in the niche marketing of luxury goods, this strongly suggests that he has no such background. Yet he seems to be set on nudging Witcomb towards this highly competitive market. I also questioned his competence as a designer, but specifically on the basis that the copy on the Design for Diversity Website and the copy that he’d written for Witcomb’s website clearly hadn’t been checked for typos and bad English. My inference being if he couldn’t do the basics why should anyone have any confidence in his ability to do anything more involved, I did note that this was my opinion as a layman, I’m not a trained or practising designer.

I also questioned what of substance he knew about bikes, what I didn’t ask, but should’ve was why when he was such a successful and innovative designer did he seem to be doing little more than ripping off Paul Smith/Mercian designs and rather more importantly, unless he has some undisclosed training in engineering what on earth was he doing taking the lead on special engineering projects with a bicycle manufacturer? The more I think about this, the more I’m amazed about it, am I right in assuming that in Tony’s professional opinion it’s good marketing to say to the world that as a quality bicycle manufacturer Witcomb now has a non-engineer with no previous experience in bicycle design (beyond pretty colour schemes) taking the lead on their special engineering projects.

If so I both openly question Tony’s commercial competence and invite him to test whether this is libellous, I’m happy to forewarn him my defence will be people who buy bicycles tend to feel safer/happier if they’re engineered by engineers not type face designers. So are rather less likely to pay a (hefty) premium for a bike designed by a type face designer, with no significant public recognition (Paul smith vs Tony Malone, which one have you heard of?) than one designed by an acknowledged BICYCLE designer or engineer, if he says differently IMHO he knows squat about the commercial realities of the bicycle industry and has no place offering the Witcombs marketing advice, it borders on the exploitative to be telling two people who are clearly as naive about marketing as the Witcombs are, otherwise, and IMHO brings anyone doing so into disrepute, especially if they’re charging for it. People should judge Tony Malone and those associated with him (Design for Diversity) accordingly.

Also what kind of half-competent, INCLUSIVE, professional blogs about engaging in petty theft and justifies it in the basis that the locals are a bunch of design ignorant red necks living in the Styx. Tony darling you can’t have it both ways, either you’re a responsible, politically aware designer genuinely concerned with diversity or an elitist design snob making humorous asides to your friends at the expense of those less savy than yourself.

Turning briefly to the specifics of Nicholas Chinardet’s complaints I, for one, am not voicing my concerns or opinion about a brand or company, I presume he’s referring to Witcomb. I’m voicing my concern that an individual, Tony Malone, has come on board as a professional advisor to promote the Witcomb brand, but instead, from what I observe, has done a shoddy, less than professional job on their web site and used Witcombs as a vehicle for his own ambitions and self promotion. In doing so he has begun to undermine the historical strengths that underpin the brand and potentially damaged the interests of Barrie and Ernie Witcomb, who (and this is the important bit) I presume rely on the business for their livelihood. If Nicholas Chinardet is saying that Tony Malone has done this as an employee of and on behalf of Design for Diversity, then and only then, do I also implicate Design for Diversity in this fiasco.

I take personal offence at the suggestion that I have said anything discriminatory about Tony on the basis of his disability or for that matter his sexuality. I haven’t. As Nicholas has raised this as an issue I would though comment that Tony Malone does seem to cynically play both on his disability and his sexuality to promote himself as an “inclusive” designer, is this because he doesn’t cut the mustard as just a designer, irrespective of his gender, sexuality, disability status or anything else. In doing so he does both the gay and disabled communities a disservice by raising a question mark over whether not just he, but others as well, from both communities, resort to playing the minority card to compensate for their own short comings in their chosen professions. I find this distasteful.
Should Nicolas, Tony or their solicitors wish to contact me to discuss this further they are welcome to do so via my email address that they can find under my personal profile. For my part I will be sharing with all those it seems relevant to my misgivings about Tony Malone, through it’s association with him Design for Diversity and the basis for those misgivings.

I thought of cc’ing this email to a number of friends and colleagues who are barristers, solicitors, senior local authority or voluntary sector managers and involved in public affaires and equality work, but then couldn’t be arsed.

Wow

ouch

+1

;-)

Sorry for the over long post and poor grammer. In case anyone hasn't guessed I'm a might irked about this. Anyone seeing I've edited my post, please be assured this was only to slightly improve the grammer not change content. I haven't and stand by every word.

Fishy....

Design For Diversity are moving their office to 25 Tanners Hill, SE8.

tbh i feel bad for the witcomb family who seem to have suffered the most out of all of this.

danger joel tbh i feel bad for the witcomb family who seem to have suffered the most out of all of this.

I wonder how much money they are making at the moment?

who? the witcomb's or tony malony?

Witcomb. His prices are considerably higher, but is he getting as many orders?

tynan [quote]RPM don't you start up again, go on change your name to a "." and go away

Poor little fellow :)[/quote]

go on, change your name to a "." and fuck off.

photoben Witcomb. His prices are considerably higher, but is he getting as many orders?

i didnt think he would be getting as many orders, but maybe im wrong.

someone should edit the external links in wikipedia and add a link to this thread...

winston someone should edit the external links in wikipedia and add a link to this thread...

Someone did, labelling it 'Tony Malone in the eyes of others'. It was removed in a matter of hours.

can "discussion" be removed?

Dunno - but there's a bunch of rules about not criticising people and, let's face it, if anyone's likely to go sobbing to the Wiki moderators that 'someone's saying mean things', it's Mr Malone.

Lets start another wiki page. Call it something like "The Tony Malone londonfgss discussion" and document the fact that the discussion is taking place discussion.

There's some nice photos from inside the Witcomb store on flickr...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14242435@N07/