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Blend sfscott's thoughts with many others here and I think we're pretty close to the reality that we'll never quite know. You don't do the deal with Bradway except from a position of weakness; DCG was just another step along that same hail Mary spiral. They were a symptom, not a catalyst.
I have long thought that the MeiVici was emblematic of a core problem: you don't declare superiority to achieve it, it is a designation bestowed by others. Serotta spent time and money to create an infrastructure to support the best carbon bike, in their opinion, starting behind the curve with the Ottrot. Having spent the money and created the overhead, they said it was better because the machine could make lugs that allowed angles greater than Parlee (to simplify) (which mattered to almost nobody) and otherwise, well...crickets...it's not all about weight (which we won't tell you). Then the market voted on whether it was better. Has any reviewer ever said it was clearly better than the other (less expensive) high end CF frames? Rather than build the infrastructure with demand, they built it before demand, gambling that belief in superiority would lead to superiority. Meanwhile, the coolness factor was gone. Neither cool nor better and with a cost base for maybe both. Ouch.
Bob Parlee strikes me as a stubborn guy who believes in his own ability to design the best CF bike. How come Parlee succeeded? He bought tubes from Edge (probably Reynolds before that), kept his overhead low (that Peabody location was minimal), applied his personality to Asia when it made sense, found a great customer service guy in Tom Rodi, moved outside painters around as necessary until the volume supported in-house work, etc. So when people talk about the importance of management decisions, they're right. Every company reflects a string of management decisions, over years. Bob Parlee kept it simple, kept hitting singles and doubles, never created a credibility gap, never swung for the fences, and BTW never had a great web site. He just worked his seam very hard and let the owners speak to the quality of the product on the sites where prospective customers were likely to look. I'd pick a Crumpton over a Parlee, but I have never had a reason to question Parlee quality. Parlee has allowed the market to define his product niche and sized the cost base to reflect that. BTW, I think he benefitted by hiding under the MeiVici's price umbrella. Very smart.
Serotta had a lot of success with technologically better in its metal days and then tried to repeat that. Like a pop artist trying to write another hit song that reflects a former hit song, they could not capture the magic a second time, and did not perceive that until it was too late. CF is either a big money game or a relentless pursuit of perfection game; neither is played well from a mid-sized base.
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