Evil Bikes Announces Company Layoffs
Evil Bikes has announced that it has faced layoffs following "several challenging years."
In a public statement, the company revealed the round of layoffs affecting its team in Bellingham, Washington. Evil Bikes said the members of staff had helped the company as it "navigated the pandemic & its ups & downs" but "it is with heavy hearts that we bid farewell to some of our best friends."
 | Today we bid farewell to a few members of our team who have worked so hard for Evil. They helped Evil through several challenging years as we navigated the pandemic & its ups & downs. The individuals in this photo design, assemble, and ship every Evil bike to you from our headquarters in Bellingham, Washington. It is with heavy hearts that we bid farewell to some of our best friends. Join us in raising a glass to a few of our teammates that are sidelined until the next big game. We hope to recapture this image when the industry recovers. Until then, we thank these few for everything they have given Evil & we wish them all the best. |
In a further statement supplied to Pinkbike the CEO, Jason Moeschler, added that while the company has continued to produce and sell bikes at a "reasonable pace" the current margins are "not sustainable toward our current staffing levels." Jason Moeschler also said "this decision was heartbreaking, although necessary to maintain healthy business."
| Evil is a small company that very much behaves like a family. We eat together, we ride together, and we work hard together. In March 2022, demand fell industry-wide, coinciding almost perfectly with the COVID-era supply chain blowing wide open. Retail inventories quickly amassed & prices fell. While we have continued to produce & sell bikes at a reasonable pace, the retail & wholesale margins associated with these sale prices are simply not sustainable toward our current staffing levels. Today’s reduction in staff was one made entirely out of necessity. None of these decisions are personal – these individuals are hard-working, dedicated members of our team. This decision was heartbreaking, although necessary to maintain healthy business & continue providing some of the best products & services available to our valued customers. We have confidence in our brand, our product, and our team. Evil is here to stay & today’s decision was a necessary, yet heartbreaking bump in the road. |
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Or…maybe an LLC, I’m not sure
A-HAA!
A truly Evil Limited Liability Corporation!
What? How? Last year my friend got a cracked frame (inner part) near the derailleur (Sram Transmission) installed with a digital torque wrench. So nothing else could have happened except weak carbon layup. They wouldn't hear anything. Blew our brains. Never ever again an Evil.
I don’t know how the bike name would look better anyways. Doesn’t evil encompass sex trafficking, child molestation, murder, abuse, sexual assault, and basically anything evil?
I just don’t want to buy a bike with the name evil. I don’t know why everyone is getting so bent over it. If the bike was called the molester, the raper, or trafficker, would you all buy it? To me evil encompasses all those horrible vile acts. So I don’t want it on my bike.
It’s not a neutral word and naming your company that word is going to be polarizing. That’s fine, but they gotta realize that some people are going to react negatively to it and not buy their product because of it. It is what it is.
That said, based on the comments here, it seems their problems go far beyond the mere name.
I would like to add I don’t think the brand or anyone that rides them intends to endorses anything evil. I have friends that ride them. They are beautiful bikes. I just choose to go with other brands.
The brand name is marketing, as is yours to a lesser degree. You're obviously a principled person, but that is not apparent by your username. Just as you wouldn't ride a bike labelled "Evil", there are people that may refrain from engaging with you because they take issue with your name and may never have the chance to discover it's origin from your perspective.
Anyway, Sunday afternoon boredom and soapboxing. Have fun whatever you ride.
Wait, did we just have a constructive conversation in the pinkbike comment section? Evil has brought us together…
problems like yours above are quite rare but can happen with many brands.
in my personal experience the customer assistance is quite awesome both from a private owner and from a retailer point of view
Fearing a word and start doing random associations with it
Y’all crazy
At the end of the day though, everyone is free to not buy a product for whatever reason, whether that reason can be justified or not.
Cove and 24Bicycles: Because their frame names are sex related.
Cannondale: Because cannons have caused lots of collateral damage throughout history.
Da Bomb: Similar for bombs even worse than above.
Abus: Because of their discrimination of women, based on fundamentalist believes.
Pole: Because a link snapped in their huck-to-flat test.
Shimano: Because of rapid rise, dual control levers and the oversized Saint centerlock interface two decades ago...
It your responsibility to educate your daughters, and that means having uncomfortable discussions so they are well equipped for what faces them every day.
If youre not equipped to have those conversations, then you prolly should have given a second thought to having children.
Side note, theres no way your nick name was P-Diddy before it was popularized by Sean Combs. Youve made an excuse for being called out on something.
But, nice choice with the Troy! Seems like a mean bike!
Why is everyone making such huge assumptions just because I don't want edgy names on my bikes? You are literally questioning if I am fit to be a father. Who the hell are you? You don't know me, and you don't know anything about me. All I said was I don't want to ride a bike with the word Evil on it and everyone is losing their shit.
I am 48. I met my wife in 1996. I was 19. Her younger brother was 13 at the time. He started calling me pdiddy not long after we were dating. The nick name spread to a few close friends that still call me that to this day. I don't know when Sean started calling himself that, but I know it was later because we thought it was hilarious. You can believe what you want. You want to call me out as a hypocrite. That is why you care so much about my nick name. I can tell you I am a hypocrite. I don’t lead a perfect life. I’m no better than any of you.
I am still not sure what all the aggression is about in this comment section. So, I don't like the name Evil, or wouldn't want a bike named after a sexual innuendo. I think the innuendo names from cove are funny. I was laughing when I was reading the names. I have a sense of humor about it. I still don't want it on my bike. It’s like this, I may laugh at a dirty joke, I don't go home a tell my daughters it.
I get that the name Evil is to be edgy. I don't think the owners are some satan worshipers or the people that ride them are either. I don't scream "Sinner!" as one rides by me. I have a friend that owns one. we've ridden together. He is a great guy, certainly not evil. I just don't want one for myself. That's it.
Evil is just a bike brand name, you carry such a mess to the table, that's calling for trouble.
Bwaha
Maybe like Orange people don’t want a single pivot anymore? …. Joke
The bikes are great. They didn’t follow the trend of super slack of long and the bikes are numbers are still relevant. They updated to allow UDH and Transmission.
As for working on them, it seems like a lot but it’s quite easy. Internal routing is tubed and easy, yes there are lots of little bolts but it’s slightly more time than hard.
I’ll gladly work on an Evil over a RM and Scott any day.
Go work on a Scott or RM.
Its not lack of innovation, I'll say that much.
Santa Cruz Bicycles offers free replacement pivot bearings to the original owner for as long as they own their bike."
They changed it
That’s really good
You think anyone would want to license a single pivot with overly elaborate geometry adjustment now, it’s a pretty old system.
I am sure it works pretty well but I can't see any other brands wanting to pay for it when there are so many other systems available for free that achieve the same thing.
I don't understand the obsession so much of the MTB community has with "new" stuff. I think the significant performance gains of updating mountain bikes started to level out around 2020. Now, most innovation seems focused on shoving batteries into every possible bike component.
Evil has a fleet of bikes that:
- spans the range of short travel to long travel
- has mullet and full 29" options
- is UDH compatible
- utilizes Superboost
- offer a truly unique ride quality based on suspension kinematics
Not really sure what's missing from the "modern bike equation" other than their frame's not having a 500mm reach on a size medium. Since this is pinkbike, I also understand that a STA of less than 90º will not suffice. That being said, I love riding Evils because the geo feels modern without going totally bananas.
I guess you're paying for the "family atmosphere"
Should also be noted that a lifetime warranty is more likely the life of the company, not the bike. How's that warranty look for people that put down thousands on a new GG last year?
5010 has worse everything, c frame, worse dropper, worse brakes, worse wheels, worse suspension,
a "GX" evil, whatever it is, comes with ultimate suspension, i9 wheels, code rsc brakes, bike yoke or one up droppers. most other brands offer pretty much garbage for nearly the same price on "GX buildkits", let alone the ones offering GX with some NX/SX components here and there, while evil is FULL gx
Back to my point that "lifetime warranty" shouldn't be considered as the life of the company like many of these boutique brands.
Doesn’t get any easier.
Rule of Acquisition #21
Your coworkers absolutely can be.
UNIONIZE.
- C. Montgomery Burns
But, as someone who as only worked for small companies thus far in my life, I can certainly say with confidence that there are plenty of people within small independently owned companies (inside the industry and outside as well) who have a family outlook on the people they employ. Not to be taken as gospel, but not to be forgotten either. I would HATE to be in a position to have to lay people off of a small close-knit team.
Don't get me wrong, there's times and places for unions, but know that some workers are just passengers on the boats the rising tide is floating. Especially in a governmental context. The ideal of unionization tends to not turn out that way in real life these days.
At any rate, I'm probably being pedantic. Hopefully the affected employees can get sorted sooner than later, wishing them good luck.
That said, just because the business has to make business decisions at times it doesn't negate the rest. Family does messed up things to eachother sometimes too.
A combination of genuinely high demand for a couple of years combined with over-optimism about the future of cycling and over-reporting of demand by western brands lead to huge over-ordering. During the bike-boom brands committed to huge order quantities for the next several years in order to encourage factories to open new lines and increase production capacity to help the brands meet the high demand. Once that tap was switched on it couldn't easily be switched off once the demand started to fall. Factories had built new units, opened new lines and trained new employees to meet the demand and the brands had committed to help the factories pay for those new lines with sufficient orders.
Bike industry employees are a positive bunch who love cycling and want to see more people cycling - so they tend to be optimistic about getting more people out on bikes and tend to believe people will stick with it, rather than buying a bike, riding it twice and then leaving it in the garage to rot (which is actually what happens a lot of the time). There was all this talk of the "new normal" and people were going to be working from home more, travel less and have more leisure time. The unfortunate truth is that once people could travel again and bars and restaurants re-opened tonnes of people lost interest in cycling.
The fall off in demand was sharp, the production couldn't be switched off and now there is a massive oversupply of bikes.
What is making this particularly painful for the industry is not that the numbers are SO much lower than pre-pandemic (they are lower, but not by a huge amount) it's that the stock is crippling their cash flow and prices are being depressed super hard as other companies discount - so they're selling a pre-pandemic amount but with terrible profit margin - so tonnes of companies are making a loss even if the sales volume is reasonable.
In the UK Wiggle/CRC have gone under. 2pure, MooreLarge, Raleigh, Hotlines and Cannondale have either closed or made considerable changes to their business (cut back their operations considerably). Trek are closing their UK warehouse. Orange went into administration but luckily came back out. Tonnes of other brands and distributors are struggling.
It seems to be fashionable currently to be a cynic about the bike industry - people question where all these profits from the pandemic went and how people could be so stupid to commit to such large quantities. There is also a lot of accusations of greed and unnecessary price increases.
All I can say is that I think pretty much every brand would have preferred steady years to this huge boom and bust cycle. It's hard to make money in the cycling industry at the best of times and the only company in the bike industry I would buy stocks in is probably Shimano. I don't think there's any bike companies outperforming the S&P 500 at any time.
I have a couple of friends who are involved in the component side as we have made some small bits for them occasionally and they haven’t seem to have dropped off as much as the full bike sales have.
I suppose many have bought new bikes over covid or are buying them for huge discounts at CRC / other sales if they are buying now, I doubt many pre orders are in right now.
@justanotherusername Bikes mostly
@chriskneeland Yes definitely. The reduced spending power is a big factor.
I love buying new bikes and bike parts. I’m just not in a financial position to buy the expensive stuff. For a new bike I usually look at Marin bikes or used bikes. I buy used components probably 90% of the time. So, I don’t think I help the industry stay afloat much.
I would like to see more brands like Marin, modern geo, smart specs, and good pricing. Specialized comes close with the Status. It’s I nice build for the price.
I may not be in the majority. I still see a lot of expensive bikes on the trails.
I used to chat up the employees at my local bike park during the pandemic boom... they were 120% convinced this was the 'new normal'. All these were going to be lifer-long MTBers now. Everyday would have lift lines, they would expand hours to meet demand, etc. When I went to the park in '23... lift lines were basically non existent, and hours were cut back to 4 days a week from 7. Everyone on craigslist is selling their 2-3 year old 5K+ bike 5K for under 2K now so they can pay for plane tickets or new cars. I bought my newphew at 2021 Ripley AF with full SLX and non-stock upgrades for 1500 a few months ago. Bike was barely used, guy was desperate to sell and had listed it at 2000.
Hell, I bought two bikes this year for 5K. The MSRP on them should have been 9.5K. Lots of my friends are buying '23 bikes at 50-70% off now, even steeper discounts that I had.
No-one wants a long travel motorless bike these days. No-one. Specialist bikes like DH, xc or kids bikes will still sell though.
@Steadite: You're right that supply chains would be more robust if there was more domestic manufacturing and if more of the brands manufactured in house.
However, to manufacture bikes domestically at a good price you need an excellent (and cheap) local tubing supplier, local spoke maker, local tyre manufacturer, components manufacturers etc. This is why pretty much all the world's bike manufacture is concentrated in a few cities (Taichung, Tianjin, Ho Chi Minh City etc). If you manufacture frames domestically but still have to order all the parts from Taiwan/China that doesn't strengthen your supply chain at all - that makes you similar to Orange Bikes or GG who have suffered tremendously. To get bike manufacture back to Europe or the USA and have strong supply chains you need to build out an entire supply chain from forging companies to tubing companies to component manufacturers. You will often find the forging and tubing suppliers that make the metal parts for bicycles derive their primary income from making forgings/tubes for cars or motorcycles. Industry on this kind of scale doesn't just pop up and there's a reason so much of that business moved away from Europe and the USA in the first place. I'm sure you can see how a single US or UK bike brand can't just decide to start making price-competitive bikes domestically and also that the move to Asia was mostly a necessity - the necessary suppliers to run a bicycle business either don't exist or aren't price-competitive.
@Marvintheandroid: I agree the cost of bicycles has gotten super high and that the majority of brands are leaving customers behind. The majority of people want to pay £2-4k for a full sus MTB and so many bikes don't even start until north of £4k now. However, that isn't the brands fault generally, their cost prices are too high from the suppliers (their prices from Fox, Shimano, SRAM etc don't allow them to sell cheaper) and the cost of running a bike business is high. If it was possible to sustainably produce awesome bikes at a lower price point people would do it. Some are trying via D2C models e.g. Canyon and YT - but inevitably service suffers when you cut out stores. I have a lot of opinions about this, but it's definitely unfair on the brands to accuse them of greed - they are genuinely all making losses currently and this "correction" isn't sustainable and we will see a lot more companies go out of business if this continues.
I'm sure similarly you feel the price of new cars is too high, but if it was possible to make a great brand-new quality car and sell it for £20k somebody would be doing it.
@Hayek: Congrats on making such a good call and your company only sitting on 100 days of stock rather than 700. That's great. And yes, the bike industry did suffer from not having enough wet-blankets in the room calming everybody down and tempering expectations. The danger in the bike industry (and I'm sure it's similar in your industry) is that if you were measured and didn't increase your order volume you missed out on tonnes of great full price sales. Then as the market crashes, even if your stock level is healthy, everybody else is overstocked - so they're all selling their bikes 20-40% off and that impacts your ability to sell anything at full price. So you miss the good times and you still have to drop your prices in the bad times. Hard to sell your bikes full price when the store down the road has a 30% sale on. So even companies who were sensible still get shafted and may still have to make redundancies etc.
You are forgetting a positive cash flow. If you don't have it, you end up as the bike industry right now.
I’m more jester than clown sweetie xx
Omnibus bills should've been specifically prohibited along with Congress delegating their authority in the Constitution.
That's the reason why the only good choice during the covid bubble was to be conservative with the forecast, as @Hayek said.
Good planning as he says would ultimately have resulted in a reduction in overstock but as Tom says the end result is still competing against fire sale product regardless.
I’m not convinced evil are actually carrying such a crazy amount of stock either - cash flow is ultimately irrelevant if you have taken on staff to match a demand 2 years ago that no longer exists, the end result is the same unless you pay people to sit and twiddle thumbs.
Also, mountain bikes are quasi luxury items bought mostly by people who can barely afford them. Only an idiot would think the good times were gonna roll forever.....
E-bikes are what’s selling, because they’re bringing in new demographics to the buying market. Everyone else Already has a good mountain bike that they’re riding. That’s not the same thing as claiming they’re the new standard. In my area, most ebikers are too old to ride a mountain bike, or too out of shape, or have some medical issues.
Someday I will need an e-bike, until then, I will ride my bikes as much as possible.
www.theguardian.com/business/cost-of-living-crisis
Forget Trump and Biden. I still can't see how people believe the economy is better now (2021-2024) than is was in 2017-2021 minus the pandemic because the pandemic would have torched the economy no matter who was in office.
You will benefit from Bide's investments in infrastructure and the energy transition for a very long time to come, which is what we Germans are currently lacking.
Biden's investments into infrastructure and energy has not seen any improvement. One example, in 2021, 7.5 billion was allocated to build tens of thousands of EV charges. Not one has been built since the Politico article posted Dec 2023.
Not sure why EV advocates really think that EVs will take over ICE cars. It is really not possible because there are so many logistical problems with EV cars. There are not enough EV charges for the entire populations especially in dense cities where many live in apartment/condos and park their cars on the street or parking lots. People who think that EV chargers can be installed everywhere are just ignorant of the construction process of how EV chargers are built. They are extremely difficult to install on the streets/parking lots and extremely expensive.
www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-chargers-billions-00129996#:~:text=Congress%20provided%20%247.5B%20for,reelection%20messaging%20promoting%20electric%20vehicles.
Biden never got the inflation down to 2%. 2% is the Fed's target for inflation that has not been met. Biden got inflation down to 3%, but the damage has already been done. The prices for essential goods got inflated way too high.
In addition, the toughest border laws have now been offered but rejected because someone wants to make a profit from them. Apart from the suffering in Ukraine. Very few people really think about the people.
Biden did pump 6.8 trillion into the economy in 2021 when interest rates were low. The Fed did not start increasing interest rates until inflation was high at the beginning of 2022.
Perhaps you should research some.
Inflation rate being more normal right now doesn't matter. The damage was already done in 2022 with skyrocketing prices that have not gone down. Everything essential has gone up tremendously. It would take a decade or more of zero inflation for prices to be normal again.
Especially what freedom are you talking about? We have long since lost our freedom to the secret services, you even more than we have. Exactly what is common practice in communist countries.
What freedoms? The freedoms and choices to go about your daily life (go to work, go to school, go to the store, go to restaurants, meet with family and friends, travel, etc, etc). The government chose what behavior was acceptable and not acceptable. The government also chose winners and losers in business by determining what businesses and jobs could function by determining what was "essential" or "non-essential". I think every job and business is essential to the people who need them to support themselves.
I'll pass on all the negativities.
I have a new Evil Insurgent waiting for me when I get home in April. From the short time I've had riding one, I have a lot of fun ahead of me. I am happy to buy into what they are trying to do up there in Bellingham, it is clear they are fueled by a passion for mountain biking and fun.
And in the case of Evil it seems to me a lot started with their customer support and warranty department leaving a surprising number of people unhappy - I don’t think they had this “this is our passion, our industry, our friends…” approach at that point.
The layoffs are often not directly visible too, if the company owns a factory in China / Taiwan and they lay off half of the production staff nobody would hear a thing about it vs Evil laying off a handful of their staff in the USA.
My Costco food bill is double of what it was 4 years ago for the same or less items. Gas is up 2.00 a gallon where I live. Housing is literally unaffordable for anybody to rent or purchase.
Stop looking at numbers and use your actual eyes. The economy is headed into the abyss for normal blue collar workers.
Wages are not keeping up on any level.
I'm so sick of people that just look at published stats. I don't need to look at BS numbers, I just look at my Bank account and expenditures month after month.
So sick of all these dummies that say "but the Economy is so strong"
The econmy is crap and will be getting much worse.
That's all great and stuff but some of us live in the real world.
Year over Year every single expense I have to provide for increases.
The only solution is that our employers pay us more, its really not hard to understand.
Then this drives up labor rates and the cost to produce or cost of services.
its all just a mess and its not going to get better soon.
Demand low, bicycle manufacturers to consumer: why you do this so mean
So @Azrocktester , yes, I do think it's better to take a layoff or accept that your friends and peers needed to be let go. Edit: sorry, I misread your comment as a question. Sounds like you've had some personal experience with a situation that wasn't great. Sorry to hear it, if so.
Now as a company owner who has been forced to lay people off, I can tell you it feels like shit from the other side too. There is nothing fun about being involved with a company that is struggling.
I've had coworkers and managers that I get great along with, but never have or will I think of them as "family" due to the fact that my work isn't who or what I am. Work is what I happen to do, but it's not what my life is about or revolves around. To me, people and/or companies who refer to workers as "family" are trying to mindf*ck the employees into putting work above all else.
but i'm just being picky both are great bikes.
I’ve had a kitsuma coil, float x, dpx2, and an x2 on my switchblade and the float x was by far the most fun tk pedal but the coil turned it into a downhill machine. If I lived at Pisgah I would have never gotten rid of the coil - but I live in central flat NV where j pedal 95% of the time so I went back to air eventually.
btw the switchblade is already 160
Yeah it’s a killer setup
And agree on a tad more rear travel
Evil Bikes and staff are very prompt and very likely to fix a problem that is legit, and has in my experiences.
Hopefully that will continue in the future of the company to.
I’ve always heard mixed reviews on working with them. One of my good friends is a total fan boy, and I’ll admit I wanted one at one point. But it seems like they have their circle of friends, and if you’re in, you’ll be taken care of, otherwise they didn’t care. Most of my experiences were when their popularity had really peaked. Maybe now that it’s declined, they value dealers a little more, but I’m not in retail anymore.
The rest of what you wrote is incoherent dog shit.
Size alone