Connolly has also backed individual racers, such as international-road-race champion Linda Jackson. When Jackson was competing in the 1996 Summer Olympics, in Atlanta, she was profiled on NBC, prominently displaying her Spinergy wheels. And when 76-year-old Spinergy-sponsored Ironman triathlete Bill Bell appeared on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, he presented the garrulous host with a bike equipped with wheels made by you-know-who.
In cycling, much of what drives hot products is the trade and consumer press, which influences consumers and, more important, the oh-so-skeptical salesperson at the bike shops. That salesperson, Connolly notes, "is the guy directly interacting with the consumers. He knows how to communicate the value of the wheel." To get shop personnel interested, Connolly offered them deep discounts. Besides getting good product reviews from the cycling magazines, the Rev-x was featured prominently in their pages and on their covers. Bicycling Magazine, the cycling magazine with the largest circulation, chose it as the best overall road wheel for 1998. Beyond the cycling press, BusinessWeek singled out the Rev-x as one of the best new product designs for 1994.
Connolly capitalized on any opportunity he saw to create buzz. When he noticed that the big hitters at the Spinergy Web site were employees from the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Intel, and Microsoft, he devised a series of corporate cycling seminars featuring champion cyclist Dylan Casey. Casey gives in-house lunch-hour motivational talks. His attire and cycling equipment leave little doubt about who's sponsoring the event.
And when, at an industry trade show a few years ago, the creator and executive producer of a TV show under development appealed to Connolly for 25 sets of complimentary wheels, the CEO opted to take the gamble. Pacific Blue, now in its fourth season, turned out to be worth it.
Such gambles helped make the Rev-x wheel, and by extension the Spinergy brand, cooler than cool. As proof, Connolly points to the wave of serendipitous product placements--in ads for Motrin, Mighty Dog, and the U.S. Postal Service, to name a few--that the wheel has received. In 1995, with sales pushing $6 million, Connolly also started hearing from dealers that the wheel was catching on with the famous and the fashion conscious, including former Seinfeld star Michael "Kramer" Richards and news anchor Tom Brokaw.
Given the company's fast growth, it's perhaps not surprising that Connolly has suffered the entrepreneurial equivalent of "road rash," the term cyclists use for the scrapes they sustain when they kiss the pavement. In the past couple of years, Connolly admits, Spinergy's internal operations have been riddled with problems: incorrect invoicing, delayed shipping, unpaid bills. And his crew fell behind in customer service, taking too long to repair and return wheels to dealers and customers. "As you grow from 300 to 3,000 dealers, naturally your systems growth has to keep pace with your company growth," he says. "The past 18 months, we've been fighting, trying to improve these systems."
Such distractions have cost the company on another front. After helping to grow the market for high-end wheels, Spinergy lost market leadership to Mavic, a division of Adidas-Salomon, the $6.2-billion maker of athletic equipment. Mavic, which introduced its Helium wheel in 1996, now sells twice as many wheels as Spinergy does. Not that Connolly hasn't tried to boost Spinergy's volume. His attempt to steer the wheel into the massive mountain-biking category--the Rev-x-Roks wheel, introduced in 1995--didn't exactly rock. After two and a half years, Connolly decided to discontinue the line. The product was heavier than a comparable set of Mavics, and while the wheel was more aerodynamic, that proved insignificant to mountain bikers, who prefer a lighter wheel.
Then, at last year's Interbike, Connolly met Richard Campbell, then a 19-year-old engineering prodigy who had developed a new, lighter bicycle spoke. By December 1997, Campbell had joined Spinergy as R&D manager for its newly christened Spox line of lower-priced wheels. Connolly hopes that the more-conventional-looking wheels will enable Spinergy to expand further into such areas as mountain biking and bicycle motocross. Last July investors--who don't expect to see a profit until the second quarter of 1999--pumped in another $2 million to fund the effort. Connolly has also brought in additional management. Tucker Mays, who came on board in May 1998, is now chief operating officer and has taken over sales, marketing, and operations from Connolly, freeing Spinergy's founder to concentrate on what he likes best: R&D.
Which is why, in September 1998, he's prowling the annual Interbike show in Las Vegas. Stopping at the booth of a high-end frame maker, Connolly sees that one of the company's bikes had been outfitted with Rev-x-Roks wheels. A representative at the booth tells him that someone wanted to buy the bike and was particularly interested in the Spinergy wheels. Connolly, while pleased, admits that the company is ditching Rev-x-Roks. He suggests pushing the new Spox line. "We are really psyched about it," he says. "Our goal is to come back next year and have Spox all over this convention floor."
Christopher Caggiano is a staff writer at Inc.
