Google Street View of Trek’s Waterloo, WI facility.
In February 300 workers at Trek’s Waterloo, WI road and mountain bike assembly plant were forced to work one week on, one week off without pay to help the company cut costs according to a human resources manager. There are 900 employees at the Waterloo plant and in March a “smaller number” of workers continued to work one week on, one week off. Side note: did you know Trek offers tours of their Wisconsin factories? Check this out.
Anyway, getting back to last week’s discussion about MTB price trends, this seems to be another indication that demand for bikes is slowing just a bit (after all, total employment at Trek was reduced just 5% as a “proactive” measure). Lower demand means even better deals at the bike shops. Maybe bike shops will start offering mountain bike two-for-one deals like some car dealers are doing – I’ll take one XC and one DH bike please 🙂
