Campagnolo - Component manufacturer from Italy
The plan of the industrial estate south of Vicenza is hard to beat in terms of sobriety. It shows the road of science, the road of business, the road of physics. And finally, exactly opposite, separated by six lanes of fast-moving traffic, runs the street of chemistry, the Via della Chimica - the destination of a long journey. There is no need for a house number, as the lettering "Campagnolo" is emblazoned on the roof in dark blue cursive script for 36 metres.
As you would expect, bicycle parts do not grow in the front garden of a pony farm. The fact that they are produced here in the industrial district of Vicenza is nevertheless a minor sensation in the globalised economy: market leader Shimano and up-and-comer SRAM mainly produce in cheaper Asia. Campagnolo, on the other hand, has remained almost exactly where company founder Tullio Campagnolo decided 90 years ago to establish himself with racing bike components.
Campagnolo may have a glorious past, but we prefer to look ahead. - Nicola Baggio, Marketing Manager
Around 400 employees are said to work here, and just as many in two factories in Romania. The brand does not reveal what exactly happens where. It is implied that the focus of wheel construction and assembly is in comparatively favourable Romania. Key economic data such as turnover or profit? Also missing. As a family business, Tullio's heirs are not accountable to any shareholders. They are as secretive as an oyster.
Campagnolo 4.0
To celebrate its 90th anniversary, the oyster opens wide this morning to let in visitors from Germany. And just as you are wrapped in a sterile suit before entering some laboratories, at Campagnolo there is a compact information shower before entering the hallowed halls.
The marketing and product management teams are three strong and ready for an update to the current version of the traditional brand. "We are currently developing into Campagnolo 4.0," says Head of Marketing Nicola Baggio. "Campagnolo may have a glorious past, but we prefer to look ahead. It's not about preserving tradition, but about the needs of the riders and the demands of the market."
Stable supply chain
And it is still receptive. A lucky coincidence: with 84 per cent of its value creation in the European Union, according to the company, Campagnolo's supply chain squeaked less during the coronavirus pandemic than that of its competitors. The new Ekar gravel bike component group with its 1×13 gear ratio also arrived in time to ride the current wave of trends.
Large complete bike manufacturers, where Campagnolo was previously only rarely to be found, are now ordering their gravel bikes from Vicenza again. According to the briefing, profits are expected to have increased by 41 per cent from 2021 to 2022.
Then a perfect animation brings the new Hyperon high-end wheel made of many layers of carbon fibre to life on the screen. Spokes magically connect with an artfully moulded hub, the wheel turns and comes to a standstill. Click, click, click, goes the freewheel. A second of silence, then the journey from the virtual world of presentation to the big mechanical world of production begins.
Campagnolo is under pressure
Expressed in the unit of measurement "football pitch": the factory in Vicenza alone covers a good two of them. We will only be able to see or even photograph a quarter of it at most - and even then only exceptionally and in attentive company. Global competition in the bicycle industry is fierce. In the top segment of the market, every detail and every development project is strictly guarded. And Campagnolo is under pressure.
Before Shimano began offering road bike components in Europe in the 1970s, Campagnolo was the undisputed top dog. In 1963, 30 years after Tullio Campagnolo invented the quick-release lever and later the race-ready derailleur, 110 out of 130 riders in the Tour de France were riding components developed by him. Their image seemed untouchable until the certainties crumbled with the rise of the Japanese competitor, the production of unsuccessful mountain bike components and the death of the founder in 1983.
The downward trend in market share can be roughly traced in reader surveys conducted by our sister magazine TOUR. In 2000, 29 per cent of readers owned road bikes with Campa equipment, ten years later it was still 19 per cent, in the 2022 survey the share was a narrow 13.5 per cent. Sram, which has only been on the market with road bike components for 15 years, recently reached around 18 per cent, while Shimano retained its overwhelming market share of 67 per cent. And in the still young gravel sector, things look even worse for the Italians.
Campagnolo - Often one step ahead
Even if this snapshot only shows the German-speaking market: Only a few global bike brands still offer standard bikes with Campaganolo equipment. When they do, it tends to be at the very top end of the price spectrum - where it's all about the finer details and the development costs get out of hand. The fact that Campagnolo is able to survive here at all is impressive, as its much broader-based competitor Shimano is likely to generate at least 20 times higher sales.
Sram and its family of brands is also a much bigger player. This allows for completely different development budgets, but Campagnolo has often been ahead in terms of innovation. The situation is particularly clear in the sprocket race: from 1980 to the present day, Campagnolo has expanded its cassettes from 6 to the current 13 sprockets - on average, the Italians have added a disc every six years.
It smells of steel and oil
On the way in the more than ten metre high concrete hall. It smells of steel and oil and good old-fashioned industry. Campagnolo has been producing at this site since the early 1980s. Presses weighing tonnes shape strip steel into sprockets, while sophisticated machines with lots of pneumatic hoses link small metal plates into bicycle chains. In around a dozen milling cells, high-tech transforms massive blocks of steel into filigree Ekar sprocket packs. A robot occasionally flashes between them, but even it cannot dispel the marketing manager's dilemma: what happens here is classic metalworking that is not meant to symbolise the future.
Campagnolo - The future is invisible
But what the cloudy concept of Campagnolo 4.0 could encompass is so secret that even a glance in the wrong direction is diverted. The electroplating shop is said to be located behind a ceiling-high wall. Want to take a quick look inside? Far too dangerous - the acids, the gases. Carbon rims are hanging from a workstation in the middle of the hall, from which the disc wheels, which cost more than 3000 euros, are made by hand in about a day's work.
A photo of it? No, definitely not, because the spokeless disc wheel and its production are a delicacy of the company. And behind it, the already secret area of carbon production begins - a topic that has long since determined not only the wheels, but also the shifting components. But carbon production is an oyster within an oyster, so to speak. The only thing that refers to it is a cooling chamber the size of a freight container. Its temperature display shows minus 18 degrees. Carbon mats are stored in it, they say.
Please go on!
A few metres further on, the shiny screed of the corridor leads to an office area in the factory hall with glass all round. A dozen monitors glow inside, where a high-tech microscope is used for metallurgical analyses of the raw materials. A few employees look intently at parts... please move on. Behind them is a similar glass box, a fully equipped bicycle workshop in which partially dismantled top bikes from well-known brands lean. Apparently, test bikes are fitted with new components here. Campagnolo is said to carry out extremely extensive practical and laboratory tests... But: Please move on, no photos.
Somewhere behind partitions, walls and doors with code locks, Campagnolo develops the software for the EPS shifters, the moulds for the controls and the layups for the carbon parts. The people from marketing and product management assure us that it all happens here, under the roofs of the grey-yellow concrete building in Via della Chimica. But it remains invisible.
Valentino Campagnolo
Close to this roof, probably under the letter "P" of the dark blue name, is a meeting room with the dignified flair of an executive suite. Parquet flooring, carpet, a seating area by Le Corbusier, a lamp and a wardrobe made of artfully interwoven Campagnolo components. The fact that Valentino Campagnolo is the true master of the house can be surmised from the respectful way in which the staff mention his name.
It didn't sound as if the son of the company founder was the kind of boss occasionally encountered in the bike industry, balancing his plate of spaghetti on a plastic tray through the canteen in flip-flops and slapping employees on the shoulder. When Valentino Campagnolo, an elegant gentleman in his early seventies, enters through a side door, he is the first to take a seat at the conference table. He is followed by the head of marketing and the product manager.
Valentino Campagnolo has been running the company since the death of its founder 40 years ago. His son Davide, the likely heir to the throne, is currently managing director of the Campagnolo spin-off Fulcrum on the other side of the motorway. Under Valentino's leadership, Campagnolo has rolled in and out of the dead end of mountain bike components, cheered with Tour winners Indurain, Pantani and Ullrich, and pioneered aero wheels and electric drivetrains.
Cause for concern?
Now, on the anniversary, only one World Tour cycling team (AG2R) is riding with Campa parts. A cause for concern? Valentino Campagnolo's incredibly calm flow of words doesn't make waves on this subject either. "The cost of team sponsorship has risen dramatically in recent years," he explains, "so we've had to reduce our activities. But it's also not a question of equipping as many World Tour teams as possible. It's about those that win. Mid-range teams are not for Campagnolo. Campagnolo is always top, top, top." His flat hand marks a level far above the tabletop.
Technology development in recent years has also focussed on the top league of racing and gravel bikes - a briefly lifted black cloth over the next evolutionary stage of road components reveals the most expensive high-end technology. The cheaper groupsets of the past have been successively discontinued.
But the mass market, as the brand radiates as much as its boss, is not interesting anyway: "It is Campagnolo's duty to come up with new ideas. We observe the market and think about what we can offer it with our possibilities and whether it suits the Campagnolo brand. Our structure then allows us to act and react quickly. We will never be copyists."
A few photos later, the man with the big brand name retires to his office, and shortly afterwards the company gate closes behind the visitor. The oyster called Campagnolo closes. Valuable pearls may be maturing inside, but you can't watch them. They only shimmer when they lie precious and mysterious in the display.
90 years of Campagnolo - milestones
- 1927Invention of the quick-release lever for wheel removal
- 1933: Company foundation in Vicenza
- 1946Linkage derailleur Cambio Corsa
- 1950Parallelogram derailleur Gran Sport with Bowden cable and down tube levers
- 1973: The Super-Record shifting group comes onto the market
- 1983Death of company founder Tullio Campagnolo, transfer to his son Valentino
- 1984C-Record groupset with Delta brakes
- 1992High-profile system wheels Shamal; pioneer of system wheels
- 1992Ergopower shifting brake levers (according to Shimano STI)
- 2004Foundation of the subsidiary Fulcrum (wheels)
- 2013Electrical circuit EPS
- 2020Gravel gear Ekar 1 × 13
