Here’s Why Shimano is the BIGGEST Cycling Company!

Shimano has crushed the competition and become the most dominant component manufacturer in the cycling world, excelling in all disciplines for road to gravel, mountain bike to e-bikes. This is the history and path to success over the past 100 years of the Japanese company's and some product highs and lows.

Supported by Saddleback

Follow me:

[nicholasjohnston]

Love how you comment on cycling issues in a clear objective way. I have had lots of Shimano but best I've had is Campy Record. If I had a dream build I know I'd go Campagnolo. Different gravy for me

[danhouston]

If you spend some time restoring old bikes, Shimano's key to success will be obvious. Their manufacturing tolerances were amazing from the mid-1980's onward. By 1983, engineers in Italy, Austria, and Japan could all diagram magical indexed shifting systems with ever more sprockets, but their employers had to be able to build them to ever more precise tolerances. Shimano could and did. So whether Capagnolo, Sachs, Suntour, or Shimano actually designed one innovation or another doesn't really matter. Manufacturing precision made those innovations work reliably. And for the icing on the cake, Shimano gave a lot of consideration to the little things - an assemply that required two awkwardly held and oddly sized wrenches on a Campagnolo part needed just intuitive and accessible hex bolt on its Shimano counterpart. That elegance is why Japan took over the manufacturing world for a multi-decade run.

[meibing]

Worked with Shimano 15 years ago and had a long meeting with one of the brothers on their industrial strengths and strategy. Super focused company from materials to design and new tech as well as market opportunities. Also very clear; they try a lot of innovative approaches - but only want to release stuff that actually works (not that they get it 100% right every time, but they really never want to let customers down). Already back then they had their eyes firmly on developments in China.

[MitchBoyer]

Loved this docu-style video. Hope you make more!

[rangersmith]

Shimano, Campagnolo, and SRAM have all contributed to moving the groupset forward in quality and capability. It's something else that has made Shimano king. Data is hard to come by, for obvious reasons, but it looks to me like Shimano sells way more of its lower-level groupsets, mostly in the OEM market, than it does its higher tiers. It dominates that segment. The profitability of dominating at the entry level is funding Shimano's ability to innovate. In contrast, Campagnolo doesn't try compete at the entry or even middle level; even its lowest-tier current groupset, Centaur, probably lies between Tiagra and mechanical 105. This disparity seems to have existed between Shimano's entry-level and Campag's entry level for a long time, which mostly explains why Shimano has become the dominant player. To summarize: Shimano's road bike groupset dominance stems from the quality and pervasiveness of its lower-tier components, not from the supposed superiority of its upper-tier.

[harrie]

The problem I have with Campagnolo is the limited compatibility between parts and groupsets. Chainring bcd, cassette body, pulley wheels, rimbrake pads etc are all just a little different. So for every maintenance job you need a specific campagnolo tool and finding the exact replacement part can be really hard. For convenience I’m finally slowly moving towards Shimano.

[CochiTravels]

Great video! Would be cool to see a similar video for Sram and campagnolo!

[nikolausschallhart]

What is usually overlooked when road cyclists discuss their opinions about Campagnolo vs. Shimano is the fact that Shimano is the only full-range supplier. They produce componens for almost every type of bike whilst Campagnolo is only available for drop bar bikes. This means that almost all bike manufacturers have to sign a supply contract with Shimano anyway if they want to equip their mountain bikes, cargo bikes, city bikes, etc. in addition to their road bikes. This means that Shimano can probably always offer cheaper than Campagnolo simply because of the number of units supplied. I'm pretty sure that's the main reason for Shimano's market dominance (even on road bikes) and has a much greater influence than various technical details.

[RoyBramlowe]

Awesome stuff David..love this channel

[robdc]

You could have replaced the word Shimano with Honda in this story.

It's neat how aspects of a country's culture appear in their products. Cars, watches, airplanes.

European stuff is a work of art, requires a bit more care to operate, is expensive to buy and maintain from greater complexity. American stuff works eell for its purpose and is relatively cheap to fix. Japanese stuff is designed to work in any conditions, and durable so it doesn't need to be repaired as often.

[npdf]

Great overview David enjoyed this 👍🤩🏅🚴

[brianpurcell]

Still a campagnolo die hard on my gravel bike ! Shimano on the mtb though 👍

[victorrodriguez]

When do you think shimano will master building crank arms that don't fall apart due to corrosion?

[c]

My best bike has 9 speed Dura Ace 7700 series. Perfect shifting front and back. Good journalism, factual and unbiased

[jeskli]

I have one of the “bloopers” – XTR Dual Control levers (exactly the shown ones) – on my 26er and it’s very hard to criticize them! This bike serves mainly as a commuter and honestly this is the best shifting system for cycling through town. I can easily downshift whilst stopping at a traffic light with barely any hand movement, yet I can still have flat bars, which are in my opinion better for urban riding than drop bats. I also used this bike a bit for true mountain biking in the period after selling one team sponsored bike and waiting for another and I must say it doesn’t perform bad in this behaviour either. Now that I have access to the latest XTR 1x12, I wouldn’t choose it for modern day XC race, but it wouldn’t be no problem doing some not incredibly technical XCM race and I could totally imagine doing any kind of race with this groupset from its era.

[KevinPeffley]

Quite a story and beautifully told. Thank you.

[NewPolishScientist]

I hope campagnolo will no go shimano way - electronic only. I want premium mechanical groupset. I am big fan of Shimano but new 105 really disappointed me

[ultimobici.]

Dura Ace was introduced in 1974, hence the 25th anniversary group coming out in 1999.

[ravenmoto]

They make great fishing reels too. All my Reels are Shimano as are my bike components

[hansschotterradler]

Shimano simply works form top end to budget components. My GF has an MTB that came with Sram NX shifting. I was unable to adjust the indexing for all 12 gears. My LBS couldn't adjust it either. I had to replace shifter and derailleur with GX.