Whatever happened to the colour pink?

[Vorpal]

Pink is used to define gender in marketing terms, especially for girls toys and clothes. As sad as that is, it also means that women who do something a bit 'masculine' like cycling tend to avoid it like the plague. I don't mind it, but I know more male than female cyclists who are willing to wear pink.

That it is the leader's jersey colour in the Giro d'Italia, makes it an acceptable colour for men's jerseys, but because it is 'girly', it's not acceptable to many female cyclists.

[bertgrower]

You must remember that the colour pink was until quite recently was associated with boys.

[Debs]

In May this year i visited a bike shop with intent to purchase.

The salesman kindly let me have a demo-ride on a bike my size and type requested, it just happened to be a bike on display that i'd been walking past in the showroom for quite a while not having noticed it or giving it a second look for being a yuk matt black with bits of pink.

However the demo ride i had was so grin factor ten inspirational i not only ended up buying it but after a short while of ownership soon began to really dig the colours too.
It's strange how one can have a change of mindset on colour if the bike itself lends to such operational endearment

[Mick F]

Pink is used to define gender in marketing terms ..............

It shouldn't do and it never used to.
It's a modern Far East thing and a Walt Disney thing IMHO.

[landsurfer]

Spa Cycles Red Audax and Touring frames are a actually a kind of salmon pink.

But it's a gastly shade of pink and currently being discounted i believe.

[thirdcrank]

In the days when Paul Milnes shop in Bradford used to be up Great Horton Road, he used to have several large cardboard boxes - really large - full of clothing seconds and end-of-range odds and sods, all at really cheap prices. Easy to get carried away with "bargains" but I still have a pair of pink Lusso arm-warmers which have served me well. I had some leg warmers with a broad pink stipe from the same source but I'm not sure what happened to them. Just as warm as any other colour and you can see them a mile off.

For bike frames, "any colour you like so long as it's black" is my motto: easiest colour to touch in.

Thinks: "Are we tight-wad riders a dying breed?"

[landsurfer]

WELLLL .... i do believe that until the Great War in GB blue was always seen as a girls colour and Salmon Pink as a mens and martial colour .. then the yanks turned up and suddenly it was pink for girls and blue for boys and that horrid red and white coca cola Santa etc etc.

Pinks my favourite colour, i have a number of pink Oxford and pink line Tattersall shirts ... always worn to positive comment.
My pink Converse baseball boots often raise a smile, my wife thinks i look "cool" in them ...

[softlips]

In May this year i visited a bike shop with intent to purchase.

The salesman kindly let me have a demo-ride on a bike my size and type requested, it just happened to be a bike on display that i'd been walking past in the showroom for quite a while not having noticed it or giving it a second look for being a yuk matt black with bits of pink.

However the demo ride i had was so grin factor ten inspirational i not only ended up buying it but after a short while of ownership soon began to really dig the colours too.
It's strange how one can have a change of mindset on colour if the bike itself lends to such operational endearment

I love that.

[Vorpal]

Pink is used to define gender in marketing terms ..............

It shouldn't do and it never used to.
It's a modern Far East thing and a Walt Disney thing IMHO.

No, these big companies do marketing studies, and they have found that they sell more if they market things in a gendered manner. I suppose that it means that families with both boys and girls buy more stuff because either the girls won't play with 'boys' toys or vice versa, or parents and relatives figure they won't. I never bought extra for that reason. I just let Littlest play with the same stuff his sister did. He wears her outgrown clothes, too, though he doesn't wear dresses, anymore. He got tired of telling people they were being sexist

[Grandad]

Kent Velo Ladies club colours are pink and a large clubrun is a very distinctive and impressive sight.
I heard that they organised a Ladies Only sportive but said that men could enter if they wore pink

[old_windbag]

I love that.

Yes I agree its a really nice cat.

In fact you can get a similar one in pink too.

[Mick F]

WELLLL .... i do believe that until the Great War in GB blue was always seen as a girls colour and Salmon Pink as a mens and martial colour .. then the yanks turned up and suddenly it was pink for girls and blue for boys and that horrid red and white coca cola Santa etc etc.

Yep.
Spot on.
Hollywood and international marketing. Absolutely true.

Chatting to Mrs Mick F last evening about the pink/blue subject, and she let fly at me about knitting yarn!
She's a knitter, and likes doing children's jumpers and hats. It's very difficult - she tells me - to get colours that aren't pale and "girly", but not good decent colours. It never used to be like this.

The problem with marketing, you can only buy what is available. Therefore things sell and the people become accustomed to it and they buy more which sends a signal to the suppliers so they produce more of it. Anything slightly different doesn't sell well.

[honesty]

I was under the impression that, like most modern marketing trends, the colours assigned to gender thing started with the card industry.

On men’s clothing colours I find that the online retailers (Stolen Goat, Morvelo, Cafe du Cycliste, etc.) have some great coloured stuff but most cycling shops carry Altura and Endura only and they produce drab stuff to sell to the masses.

[reohn2]

Fashion - colours come and go, I had my Hewitt painted grey in 2004 and had to put up with lots of ribbing about when the top coat was going on! Five years later and it seemed every other bike was grey. Then it was orange, you never saw one that colour then they all were. Pink has come and gone, though not to the same extent, it'll be back.

First word nails it.
Personally I like grey with orange or pink hi-lighting.
When in Italy a few years ago I wanted to buy a pink Giro leaders jersey as it was plain and had no advertising on it,it was met with much disapproval no from Mrs R2 ,so I had settle for the blue one

[thirdcrank]

I wonder if big organisations have no sure way of knowing what people want so they have to guess. In one sense, this is just being ahead of fashion and setting the trend, but in another it's an inefficient market. Using the example of frame colours, a bespoke builder knows what people want because they go in and order it. If they do any production for off-the-peg sale, they can use their knowledge of what's been popular and assume it will continue to be. Away from cycling, some huge companies have got into a mess by not getting this right. What mechanism is there in big retail chains for knowing what people wanted to buy but couldn't? Hillards was a local supermarket chain taken over by Tesco. They used to have notebooks at the checkouts to record this info with a view to meeting demand. My wife used to shop at one of the former Hillards and on one occasion, her unfulfilled purchase went in the book. (This is how I know about it.) She asked what would happen but the shop assistant didn't know; something along the lines that she thought Tesco didn't want to know what customers wanted to buy in Cleckheaton ..............