Almost every biker who is curious about road bikes in Turkey looks enigmatically but there are very few brands that can buy bicycles because of the prices. One of these brands is Pinarello. Cicli Pinarello S.p.a is a bicycle brand founded by Giovanni Pinarello in Treviso, Italy in 1952, as many of you know. The brand only produces handmade roads, racing, time trial and cyclo-cross bikes. In addition, there is a subsidiary that produces a component named Opera. After we mentioned a bit about Pinarello, let us come to your position. As far as I know, Pinarello is a superb bike sponsor of Team Sky. As Team Sky rushes to success under the leadership of Chris Froome, we watch Pinarello’s black and blue bikes on the screens. The British giant Team Sky was on his way thanks to an Italian giant. But things are not so simple anymore. Pinarello’s majority feeling was sold to Louis Vuitton Group, one of the world’s largest companies. Fausto Pinarello, the son of Giovanni Pinarello and the former owner of the company, was left with a minority feeling and lost his word. Although Fausto will continue to be CEO, it will no longer be able to make any decisions alone, except for the decisions the CEO office can make by itself.
Fausto Pinarello’s sales-related reasons are very easy to understand. Pinarello earned € 52 million in fiscal 2015-2016 and 90% of this income is from outside Italy. This shows that the brand has to be a global brand. At this point the Louis Vuitton Group is a very good partner. Because Louis Vuitton was founded in Paris, France in 1854, and now operates more than 460 stores in over 50 countries. If you want to grow around the world, a partner who opens more than 460 stores in 50 countries will surely do a lot of work.
We wrote above that the year of Louis Vuitton was 1854. In other words, the company has managed to get out of the World War II right until the end of the day. There are many well-established brands, shops and organizations that have survived the war, especially in the Second World War, without dimming the face in many parts of Europe. But there is some allegation about Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton, published by French journalist Stephanie Bonvicini, asserted in his book A French Saga that the company cooperated with the Nazi during the French occupation of Nazi Forces, had a promise of a puppet ruler established by the Nazis in France and continued trade with Germany during the war. Such an allegation was spoken about in the bicycle world after this sale was nostalgic.
We are not in a position to find out if this claim is true or to take sides. It is as difficult to separate the true and false from the history as it is to count the number of images that are formed between the two mirrors. The resulting partnership reminded us only of the story of the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun. The Nobel Prize-winning writer, the famous writer, has received writings in favor of the Nazis during the Norwegian occupation. The Norwegian people protested by leaving Hamsun’s books in the garden of the writer’s house, which Hamsun had previously bought with enthusiasm for this attitude. Who knows, perhaps Italian Pinarello lovers, one day they leave their bikes to Fausto Pinarello’s house protest.
