Campagnolo ditches iconic thumb shifter and goes wireless with new Super Record Wireless electronic groupset... and it'll cost you £4.5k

The Price is still very relevant. Campag cant survive selling groupsets to pro teams alone. Their has to be a large enough customer base and it has to be worth it more than just being Italian = Cool. Its no longer a 2 horse race with Shimano, Sram are really  hurting Campagnolo. Shimano will always be comfortable with the knowledge they produce groupsets for nearly every bike going from world tour bikes to £300 Halfords specials. Thats not Campagnolos game. They need top end sales and is this really over £1k better than Sram Red? 

The day that Shimano feel comfortable with their market position will be thebeginning of the end for them. Don't forget until Shimano innovated with SIS they weren't even in the top 3 drivetrain manufacturers. If somebody else comes along with something utterly game changing like that Shimano will cease to dominate.

Deifferent era. There is no one anywhere near Shimano for thier dominance in the groupset market. Forget about high end road bikes. Think about every form of bike on the market at every possible level. Shimano makes the gears and brakes for them. Kids mountain bikes, Casual city bikes, e-bikes, World tour road bikes. Shimano has them all covered. Their existence is not going to b=come under threat. Camapgnolo, on the other hand, make groupsets for top end road bikes and wheels. Thats pretty much it. its a very precarious position to be in by comparison. Especially when upstarts like Sram come along and show innovationand buy up brands like Zipp to add to their empire. If anyone is going to threaten the market share its them. Shimano will always make money selling front mechs to fishing rods.  

Brands like Microshift are breaking into the bottom end of the market. Shimano have acted quickly by creating the new CUES system, which, when rolled out, will streamline a huge array of component ranges which will save them a lot of money.

As for SRAM, Not 100% sure how they started up but they amalgamated a number of small pre-existing component brands into their umbrella piece by piece, After designing the gripshift and then the ESP derraileur, they bought out Sachs in 1997. Avid, Rockshox and Time are other brands in their group. They built their market share by buying up and combining brands and utilising their designers and engineers. 

Off the back wrote:

Camapgnolo, on the other hand, make groupsets for top end road bikes and wheels. Thats pretty much it. its a very precarious position to be in by comparison.

Ekar, which has been selling by the truck load since release (resulting in a huge profit leap for Campagnolo) is soon to go electronic. When that happens it’s Shimano that’ll be in the precarious position in the gravel market which the Italians and SRAM dominate at the moment. The company won't have any issues selling (and selling out of) this new SR groupset, and once the lower tier wireless system is released they'll coin it in from the Chorus riders. 

Taken from the many articles on the growth of Campagnolo in the last few years that can easily be found online:

“Campagnolo says that their staff numbers have increased by 30% over the past two years and 45% increased product turnover, as they shift to meet increased demand. In fact, their Italy & Romania factory capacity has been boosted by 75% to meet that growing demand. OEM spec of Campy group sets has grown 5 x since 2019, representing a remarkable return for the company, and their strongest growth since the 1980s.”

Shimano have 3 electronic groupsets available for road, Sram has 3 wireless groupsets for road. Campagnolo have 1 and its the very premium. Shimano/ Sram releasing electronic groupsets lower down the range is the total opposite of Campags model. They cant both be right. 

Glov Zaroff wrote:

...it’s Shimano that’ll be in the precarious position in the gravel market which the Italians and SRAM dominate at the moment.

Using the totally unscientific heuristic of BikeRadar's 44 best gravel bikes of 2023, 21 run Shimano, 13 SRAM and 3 Campagnolo (7 groupset not mentioned), which doesn't really look very dominant for the US and Italian companies to me.

Off the back wrote:

The Price is still very relevant. Campag cant survive selling groupsets to pro teams alone.

Besides which, do the pro teams actually pay for groupsets? I had, perhaps naively, assumed they were given them so they could market to the actual paying customers.    

Not all teams get their groupset components through sponsorship. Any team that does not have a groupset sponsor have to buy (in reasonable bulk) the components themselves. In this instance, the logical choice for any team is Shimano. This is due to Dura-Ace being both the cheapest, and best performing, and most available option. Most of these teams will be those with smaller budgets and Continental teams. Think Intermarche, Alpecin-Deceunick and Cofidis etc. If the logo isn't on the jersey or the bike, they are probably not sponsored.

FSA K-Force is competitive, but little is known about its performance & reliability, and spares are not the easiest to get hold of.

Whilst SRAM is close in price to Shimano, they have had some supply issues, but their 12 speed AXS system gives away a significant amount of watts: (according to independent tests) as being up to 5 watts slower than either Shimano or Campagnolo whose 12 speed chains are within about 0.5 watts of resistance of each other.

Campagnolo is the most expensive option and that of course eats into a seriously limited budget.

Ok, fair enough - showing my ignorance and, I confess, thinking of only the very top slice of teams.

It is understandable, it is hard to think of another sport where pro-level teams have to buy their own major equipment. Could you imagine a professional football team have to buy their own shirts? Some of the players may need their own boots in the lower leagues but the league organisers supply match balls from their own sponsored supplier. 

I know some of the bigger teams do not have a sole saddle or shoe supplier by choice - to give the riders (who may also have personal sponsors) free reign of whatever they find most comfortable.

Would they have faced extinction though? After this year's Giro I really wondered how much the pro peleton REALLY wants electric gears and how much it is being thrust upon them to sell ludicrously expensive groupsets.

It's a genuine question though, I guess if the peleton didn't want electric gears more of them might be riding Campag mechanical systems...

Campag have electronic already, it is quite old though. I don't necessarily believe that pro teams choose their groupset on rider preferences or even functionality, it comes down to money:

Is there a groupset supplier wanting to spnsor the team and pay them to use their groupset?

If not is there a supplier willing to sponsor in kind by providing groupsets FOC?

If not who will give us the best price?

I get the impression that Campag concluded a while ago that it wouldn't use its marketing budget to place product with pro teams as it didn't drive sales, and on the basis that I couldn't tell you what the split is between Shimano/ SRAM in the peloton they could have a point.

SimoninSpalding wrote:

Campag have electronic already, it is quite old though. I don't necessarily believe that pro teams choose their groupset on rider preferences or even functionality, it comes down to money:

Not that old.  Last version of Super Record EPS (move to 12sp) was in 2019.

Compared to say 11 speed GRX which was launched the same year but hasnt had a sniff of an upgrade ... yet. 

I don't think anyone on the Protour peloton is riding mechanical anymore. I look around on clubruns and I'd say as much as half of riders these days are on some variety of e-shifting. That's the reality. People like e-shifting. I know I do.

When you see Shimano going 105 Di2 and Sram going as low down the range as Rival for their Wireless shifting I would hope to see Campag so the same or they are going to lose a huge share of the market. 

I still want to see some more innovation though. Something like self-charging deraillieurs using the motion of the pulleys and chain or magnets etc. Having an electronic groupset you never need to charge has to be a bonus over its rivals

They do look much smarter than shimano Freeza tech. 

Its not a great pic but I see a lot of similarities in the chainset design to the previous Shimano chainset design. At a distance it looks like an Ultegra chainset. Considering this is the most prominent component on the bike its a bit samey looking. 

I see what you mean, but they are an evolution of the 4 arm design that debuted on the 11sp Super Record.

If memory serves, people thought this was ugly compared to the 5 arm that preceded it. Now this one's a bit of a looker by comparison.

I think even more so with regards the front derailleur - looks like a bobblehead alien.

That probably doesn't account for the weight of the shifting cables that are now gone. Comes out in the wash.

Better pics on the Campag website.

I love the rear mech (especially compared to SRAM and Shimano). Not so sure yet about the shifters and front mech.