Banshee is a far smaller company than most people think. Last year we sold less than 2000 frames globally across all 8 models... compare to say transition who I heard do around 10,000 a year, santacruz who i heard broke the 30,000 mark a few years back and god knows how many hundreds of thousands the big guys (specialised, giant, trek etc) are doing... (all trade show chitchat tho, so can't confirm numbers are accurate).
We are a small brand doing our best to make bikes that are fully focused on perfomance, as our main goal is to sell a product we are proud of and want to ride ourselves rather than maximising margins by cuting costs. We don't have any shareholders to pay off, or any fat cat CEO's (my salary is very much a lowly bike industry salary). We don't have a central office to minimise overheads and our annual global marketing budget wouldn't cover the cost of a single edit by a big brand, let alone a bike launch week of helibiking in the Alps with 50 invited media fully paid for and wined and dined.
I wonder if we could call ourselves a non profit charity? Any money we make goes back into the bikes, and the outcome we aim for is to put a smile on our customers faces. Hmmm, I like this registered charity idea... I wonder if we could make that pass. haha.
So yeah, we are't a big corporate brand, and you will not see our bikes everywhere. Hopefully you will feel proud to be on a banshee and want to show it off.