Just spotted the new Yeti frame is £3700 quid!! WTF???

Oh how I long for the days when I couldn’d afford the latest £2.5k santa cruz…

£99

http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/FROOPK27/on-one-parkwood-275-frame

Just spotted the new Yeti frame

It’s nice, though.

Nope, On One stuff is cheap, my complete ready to race YT is 2k on the nose.
Bird frames are good value….ditto Ragley, Nukeproof etc….but yeah if you’re gonna limit yourself to boutique brands like Yeti I suppose things do seem expensive.

tpbiker – Member
Just spotted the new Yeti frame is £3700 quid!! WTF???

other frames / bikes are available…

f’rexample: my Codeine, it was a total bargain, and it’s chuffing ace.

I get the impression that the priciest of the pricey are, er, very pricey these days.

The big brands tend to make some very expensive complete bikes, too. Even accounting for inflation, far more expensive than they once were.

But as others have said, more competitively priced products are available.

my twopenneth.
sold a bike recently, frame price is now £1600.
bought a new bike as a replacement, frame price is £480.

both are steel. weight is negligible. and on this mornings 7 mile offroad commute, both ride the same.

if you want it, and can afford it, I don’t think it is something I see as expensive.

Depends,Cotic Flare £1499, Santa Cruz Bronson £1600. You could buy an On One for a lot less but most folk are brand loyal and will want to spend extra. Those prices above are really reasonable IMO for a product that gets good design and testing. Whereas I wouldn’t spend money on an On One due to poor design and customer service. (Had 2 Cotics and 2 Santa Cruz)

Like the Fox 36 and fork pricing I think the Santa Cruz V10 was a watershed moment at £2,500 a decade ago (£3,500 now). People bought it and so companies kept charging it. Then a few years ago we had the first trail bike frame go over £2k. People bought it, now everyone does it.

For the 2017 model year both Evil and Yeti are charging over £3k for a push bike frame. If people pay it every other boutique brand will charge it, and I think with very limited justification.

Over £3k then it goes pop the swinging arm and have to wait 4 months for a new one and people put there noses up at Treks when you can get a whole bike for that,that rides just as good if not better and they cough up on the warranty too, pays your money and takes your chance 😀

The guys at Silverfish seem nice, but they’ve got some brass neck when it comes to pricing.

As mentioned, the Cotic FS frames seem like a bargain compared to a lot of brands.

people put there noses up at Treks

trek boone 2016 £550, 2017 £750. Thats over 36% increase product year on product year. That’s crazy.

So is toilet paper

A Yeti Lawwill 6 was £3K frame only in 1997.

That’s about £5K at today’s prices adjusted for inflation.

Just sayin’

…most some folk are brand loyal snobs and will want others to think they spend extra…

“Boutique/premium” bicycles are mostly just another Keeping up with the Joneses/wealth display thing now aren’t they…

It’s the same as pulling shiny new golf sticks from of the boot of your newly registered German business saloon, apparently “it matters” which brand of dandyhorse you affix to the roof too…

The first owners never actually use the bastard things do they, just keep it 12 months, start talking about depreciation and flip it on…

Wow where do you live I would love to pick up a Trek Boone at £750 that’s a bargain!!!!

Some bargains at Silverfish UK
http://www.silverfish-uk.com/Category/14029/Clearance

A Yeti Lawwill 6 was £3K frame only in 1997.

That’s about £5K at today’s prices adjusted for inflation.

Just sayin’

Is your point that Yetis have always been a rip-off?

Expensive bikes have always been expensive. The original intense m1 was £2.5k over twenty years ago.

“Boutique/premium” bicycles are mostly just another Keeping up with the Joneses/wealth display thing now aren’t they

But define boutique? Boardman, On One ,Vitus? Or Townsend, Barracuda BSO’s??
Some folk are happy with a £100 bike, some with a £400 entry level Trek.
I think MTBers buy quality , quality costs. You can ride a £100 bike around any trail centre. Probably never again, but you could. We buy what we can afford.

£3700 for a Yeti frame vs £3799 for a Carbon Capra?

Maybe if Teti were especially high quality there’d be some justification, but all that comes to mind for me when I see the brand name is “snapped chainstay”

I think MTBers buy quality , quality costs.

I think most people just buy what they’re told to buy.

Buy alu, spend the literally thousands of pounds of left over money on suspension tuning and riding.

There’s an awful lot of not comparing like for like on this thread lol

The 10K Intense is crazy alright as are 2.5k on Enve’s wheels! But hey ho, prices are what people will pay I guess. Carbon frames are going through the roof (for branded frames) SC, Evil, Yeti, etc, groupsets are also going up and up, even XT at RRP is £800.

I’m not sure that the R&D costs equates solely to the high costs, I think the marketing smoke is probably at least the same! I’m not sure I could tell the difference between SLX and XT or XT and XTR, but the shininess will appeal all the same, until the bank balance tugs me back to reality!

Blame the “take meh money” muppets who proclaim everything is too cheap.

Businesses are always happy to oblige.

Boutique brands will always be more expensive than the likes of Canyon etc. because of the business model. Supposing you have a bike that costs £1200 to build (in base costs).

Direct @33% margin thats 1200 * 1.5 + VAT = £2160. If you compare that to a boutique brand sold via a distributor and then a shop as most are (Yeti, Santa Cruz etc. as mentioned here), then thats 1200 * 1.5 * 1.5 (Distributor) * 1.5 (Shop) + VAT = £4860. So you get a naturally higher price for the ‘same’ product by virtue of its distribution channel. So logically, ignoring all other factors such as marketing spend etc. If you think that you’re getting a better product (lets call that a 20% premium) you should expect to pay around £6000 for a boutique ‘equivalent’ of a £2180 direct bike…. so they don’t seem so overpriced after all when you think of it in terms of where the costs come from.

I should say that I don’t know the distributor and shop margins for these products, but I am sure you get the idea.

Working for a distributor (not in the bike trade, admittedly), I dream of making double figure margins…

Expensive frames are expensive – what a shocking revelation! Have you rung the Daily Mail yet?? 😆

In real terms, i suspect Bikes are cheaper than ever, especially considering the spec you now get. Go back 10 years an £2k got you a nice, but pretty basic ally HardTail. Today, for the same money you can get a Carbon FS bike with probably twice the travel and weighing less…..

The 20% slump in the £ against the $ and Euro hasn’t exactly helped.

Alternatively the new chameleon frame is 50 quid cheaper than the 2013.

Is your point that Yetis have always been a rip-off?

It’s only a rip off if you have no choice but to pay it.
They’re expensive? Yes. They’re a rip-off? Not so sure about that.

The reality is that there has never been a better time to be a mountain biker. Yes, premium stuff has always been, and will always be, expensive. However what’s now considered a low/mid priced MTB is a hell of a lot better than it was 10-15 years ago!

I realise other bikes, and most often really good bikes are available for far less.

I’m not complaining, I’m not going to spend 3.7k on a frame any time soon so it doesn’t bother me. I was just a bit startled when i saw how expensive they were. I thought the top end frames (santa cruze, yeti etc) were around 2.5k not so long ago. To be fair Santa Cruz pricing now seems reasonable in comparison.

They arent always “top end frames” though – for gravity racing the 3.5k frames arent automatically faster – some are shit!

Buy/ride what you like. Personally I wouldn’t;t judge anyone by their choice of bicycle and the “look at that *whatever* and his/her expensive bike, what a ****” way of thinking is really, really dickish. Some people need to have a word with themselves.

There’s a lot of wealthy people playing at “mountain biking” that are willing to pay the current prices so yes it’s a lot of money but it’s not going to change anytime soon.

However, these rich people also buy a lot of stuff so there’s always 6 months old yetis on pinkbike going for less than the cost of a frame only. I bought one last month for significantly less than £3k.

The guys at Silverfish seem nice, but they’ve got some brass neck when it comes to pricing.

Firstly, thanks 🙂
Secondly, you appreciate we don’t set the global pricing do you?

Look at the Euro pricing, or Oz, or NZ, etc, and you’ll see prices that convert very similarly.

I doubt they expect to sell too many £3.5K frames, but that’s not the point of them. The point is a) to get people talking about the brand (job done), b) to make you think of it as a “premium brand” and c) to make you think that £2.5K frame (the one they do want you to buy) is actually good value (rather than taking the piss).

Fair play to anybody who does buy the frame though. If you want it and you can afford it then why not.

There’s a lot of wealthy people playing at “mountain biking”

What makes a wealthy person “play” at mountain biking any more than a poor person?
I am not wealthy, but I do find inverse snobbery just as unpalatable as common or garden variety snobbery.

In 2006 my (alloy) S-Works Enduro was £3500 rrp, bike not just frame and 36’s plus full XTR (including cassette).

Current one, carbon though, is £7400 rrp but the dearest alloy one is £2900 (with a Yari and 1×11).

Seems good value tbh.

Purchasing power reckons that £1.00 in 2006 ought to be nearer £1.35 so it would seem to me that we’re still getting good value.