Wolf Tooth controversy

[Giuseppe Magnetico]

So the last couple days have been... weird. Highly respected and fast growing company shoots themselves in the foot with this:

Apparently Minnesota nice doesn't apply to everyone there. But good God man, the industry is having a tough time as it is. Too much to ask to better vet people who you put in charge of your company's image? Sad

 

[Irondan]

Wow! :surprised:

Whoever created that graphic should probably get fired or at least sent to some ridiculous HR training session on "how not to look like an idiot"...

 

[kingjr]

That just has to be the work of a saboteur of some sort.

 

[Giuseppe Magnetico]

Apology posted yesterday on their facebook page:

To the greater Wolf Tooth family and cycling community,

We would like to publicly apologize for our recent offensive Instagram post. The image was mindlessly re-posted by our company. Our post reflected a lack of consideration and respect for a large segment of our community. The post was a terrible mistake and in no way reflects our values as a company. There was no malice intended but it was wrong on many levels and we truly regret that it was posted. We would never try to justify or excuse it -- it never should have happened. We are reviewing our policies and training and will be making revisions and additions to make sure it won't happen again. Further, the individual responsible has been held accountable and is very much aware that this sort of 'humor' will not be tolerated and is incompatible with the open and welcoming working and riding environments that we work hard to maintain. We understand that this careless post may be enough to alienate some of you permanently -- but hope that the rest of our coworkers, friends, families, customers and our competitors SRAM and Shimano can accept what is our full and sincere apology. We want to provide a direct line of communication where you can be assured your voice will be heard by everyone involved. We also plan to strengthen and expand our relationships with cycling organizations that promote equity and inclusiveness to show our commitment going forward in supporting inclusivity in the cycling industry. We will provide more details on this soon. Please send comments and feedback to discussion@wolftoothcomponents.com.

Sincerely,

Mike Pfeiffer - President

Dan Dittmer - Vice President

Brendan Moore - Vice President

That "individual" should have been fired and replaced with somebody more competent. I could name a couple hundred people in the Minneapolis cycling community that would gladly take that @sswipes spot and actually do the job instead of doing this kind of crap on company time. Everybody knows each other in that town so he's in for some serious public shaming, or Anna Schwinn is simply just going to take some of his teeth home for a new necklace.

 

[King Boonen]

I saw this after having a discussion with someone wanting advice about a rear road derailleur and MTB shifters. Someone else wanted the opposite, I suggested the Tanpan and they said they weren't going to buy anything from Wolf Tooth.

It's a stupid thing to do, any company PR person should know better and yes, I'd probably fire them in terms of protecting the company image.

That said, I've seen this image, without the Wolf Tooth part several times already, so I'm guessing their PR person saw it on Twitter/Facebook/whatever with all the people laughing at it, edited it and posted it thinking it would drive traffic. It did, just not the way they wanted. I'm not sure what I'd be more annoyed about, the stupidity of the image or the fact the PR person had just recycled an already circulated image for a cheap joke.

 

[sienna]

I like Sram Red.