Not withstanding the cost of carbon,
Bronson C £2599 or $2699
Mojo HDR £2399 or $2699

Do Santa Cruz bikes cost more to import? Or is someone making a bigger profit?

You’re paying for the brand name in both cases.

The difference in £200, I reckon people are buying islands in the Caribbean for that sort of money 🙂

$2699 is £1717 + 15% Duty* = £1974 * 20% VAT = £2369
Leaving £30 difference on the Mojo and £230 on the SC which will go towards handling warranty, sales, support, carrying spares, demo’s etc.
It may also reflect the time at which they did the import – we just had to shift our prices due to exchange rates.

*Yes I know they pay the duty on the wholesale price but this is a useful comparison

Nobody’s mentioned the Ripley…..yum

A good comparison there. For two bikes that retail for the same amount in the USA it does make the Ibis seem better value in the UK over the Santa Cruz. £200 is £200 after all.

The differnce is actuall £400 as even though your paying £2600 for the Santa Cruz it comes with a crap shock and the kashima upgrade is £200. Making the frame £2800!!!

The mojo comes with the kashima shock as standard.

Making the Santa Cruz even more of a rip off.

I’ve always thought Santa Cruz bikes are a rip off anyway. They are undeniably fantastic bits of kit (I demo’d one around the Surrey Hills) but they’re so expensive. I’d love to have one if I had the money but in my opinion you can get a very good bike for the same amount of money one of their frames costs.

I’ve always thought Santa Cruz bikes are a rip off anyway.

Well, latterly the Butcher & Nickel frames were selling for a Grand. Not VPP but in a blind test I doubt I could tell the difference.

Great value 😀

Santa Cruz are not a rip off. A rip off is when a vendor cheats the buyer somehow.

If you think they are over priced and not value for your money, buy something else, nobody is obliged to buy Santa Cruz.

If you think you can deliver a similar product for less money, start your own bike company.

£2800 for a frame? You could buy a bike for that! 🙂

That’s a joke but in all seriousness nearly 3 grand for a frame? The bike industry are really doing a number on us all with this black stuff eh!?!? Add to that the fact that they’ve obsoleted all our wheel sizes in the last 12 months and this mountainbiking lark could get expensive.

Thank god I’m a tightwad shortar$e who mostly buys 2nd hand.

£2800 for a frame? You could buy a bike for that!

2.

Riding a sc carbon frame very very happy with it and the price I paid though. Glad I live in a country where the currency is worth something 😉

That’s a joke but in all seriousness nearly 3 grand for a frame? The bike industry are really doing a number on us all with this black stuff eh!?!? Add to that the fact that they’ve obsoleted all our wheel sizes in the last 12 months and this mountainbiking lark could get expensive.

Who’d have thought, premium product, premium price huh?

I must have missed the memo that says we all must ride Santa Cruz’s that cost £2800 for the frame. Just like we must all drive around in £900k McLaren P1’s, rather than £15k Ford Focus’s.

Santa Cruz are overpriced. Some of the most expensive frames of their type, both made in China (IIRC), out of a material that is significantly cheaper to produce with an unskilled workforce.

But it does look nice on top of your white Audi, while you drink your fair trade Starbucks and after strava’in Llandegla.

Have you ridden one Wozza??

Just interested I had the same discussion with my mate about his 4K road bike compared to my 1k version. The difference was like night and day in the ride quality.

Mikes calcs haven’t taken the us tax deduction into account.

Poor wozza. Shoulda stuck in at school, got good qualifications and a decently paid job. Then you’d not be so bitter about the cost of some folks toys.

Generalisations – who needs them?

Familiar shapes, strange prices

scotroutes – Member
“Poor wozza. Shoulda stuck in at school, got good qualifications and a decently paid job.”

Yeah, like those things go together! 😆

Wookster
Have you ridden one Wozza??

Yeah I have, I’ve tried a few alloy Santa Cruz and an Ibis Mojo. Can’t say I was blown away to be honest and definitely not at the prices they are new. Also, you mention road bikes as a comparison. Excusing the inflated price over alloy debate, carbon is a good material to make a road bike out of. Carbon off road, specifically 140mm+ enduro things, is a terrible idea.

That is unless you’re sponsored and those chinese kids keep sending you free frames.

Right, must dash, I didn’t pay attention in school, so now i’ve got to get myself down ‘t pit. It’s grim up north. 😉

I don’t know if it’s still true but it used to be that Santa Cruz had a better rep in Europe than in the USA- in the US they were a bit run-of-the-mill whereas here there was a bit of exotic, just because they were foreign. Whereas Ibis are exotic everywhere. So, if that still holds then santa cruz would be smart to make use of it. Everything’s worth what people will pay for it.

The rrp of any product has little to do with what it costs to design/manufacture/ship, and lots to do with what the market is willing to pay for it. The market in the UK is obviously willing to pay more for a santa cruz frame than an ibis frame, whereas in the US, the market values them the same.

Wozza – not sure why you think carbon fibre isnt a suitable material to build a 140mm+ mountain bike out of, it seems ideal to me. Aside from the cost there dont appear to be any real negatives.

Do find it a bit odd that jungle seem to load the price of Santa Cruz more than they do for Niner (comparing retail prices for Uk and US. As Julian’s says, maybe the uk market values them more highly.

Always amuses me how Santa Cruz get referred to as a ’boutique’ brand.

Veblen Goods

Santa Cruz are “reassuringly expensive”

They are also fairly well known as expensive. So a good way to advertise that you are a “serious rider” is to own one.

This brand recognition is probably worth the premium over an Ibis, a Turner or a top end Specialized for that matter.

Everyone knows SCs are a rip-off but people still lust after them so from Sc’s PoV, it’s savvy marketing, from the customer’s point of view, well…You decide…

Santa Cruz are “reassuringly expensive”

but they’re not a rip off, which some people are saying.

People who buy know what they’re buying and what they’re paying. No rip off there. Neither do Santa Cruz have some kind of monopoly they can exploit, there are masses of alternatives.

It feel to me like there’s a bit of victim culture claiming brand X, Y or Z is a rip off because they’re expensive. Folks who feel that way need to dump the feeling of injustice and see things more clearly IMO.

Do find it a bit odd that jungle seem to load the price of Santa Cruz more than they do for Niner (comparing retail prices for Uk and US.

I expect they have a far higher advertising and marketing budget for SC.

Look at the amount of bikes they give away to sponsored riders and to journos in the UK. There’s always a new carbon fibre SC dream machine on long term review when I pick up a bike mag.

I don’t blame the hacks for taking them, but it gets a bit tiresome.

Nobody’s mentioned the Ripley…..yum

Saw a pic of this yesterday, thought it was a Santa Cruz ‘cos of the frame shape!

Santa Cruz are really good at what they do, a part of which is making bikes, (and part of that is licensing the VPP patent IMO). And a large part of the rest is marketing.

It feel to me like there’s a bit of victim culture claiming brand X, Y or Z is a rip off because they’re expensive. Folks who feel that way need to dump the feeling of injustice and see things more clearly IMO.

I’d guess many non-SC owners would argue they are seeing things more clearly than those who pay the premium price to have one.

But I agree people can spend their money how they wish, it’s a bit childish to get het up about it in the way that people do about Apple products.

Rip-off is semantics, you know people mean it’s just bad value – not an actual fraud.

I got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.

julians:
Wozza – not sure why you think carbon fibre isnt a suitable material to build a 140mm+ mountain bike out of, it seems ideal to me. Aside from the cost there dont appear to be any real negatives.

I put 140mm+ because I think it’s still a good material for your 29er XC race bike too. But for your enduro bike, which lets face it, is more akin to what mountain biking is for most of us than XC race, I don’t think it’s very good.

At 140mm+ you’re getting more into rocks flying, drop off riding, jumping etc. You’d ride a dented/marked alloy bike, but you wouldn’t ride a blemished carbon bike and that’s my point. My old Trek 9.8 I sent it off to be repaired at a couple of points. Was it chip to the paint? Is it a crack? You just don’t know, owning one is a bloody nightmare and a constant worry. Where as my alloy Kona or Intense are a lot more robust. I really don’t see why carbon is a lot more expensive than alloy when it’s cheaper to manufacture, I can only guess it’s to subsidise the cost of replacement frames.

I’m sorry to the OP for dragging this off topic. For my 2p… yeah they’re both overpriced but if you have your heart set on them and you can afford it, buy the Mojo.

Hi wozza – it clearly is a worry for you, but not for me. I ride a mojo hd, with all sorts of blemishes and I havent given them a second thought. Its a complete non issue IMO.

You just don’t know, owning one is a bloody nightmare and a constant worry. Where as my alloy Kona or Intense are a lot more robust. I really don’t see why carbon is a lot more expensive than alloy when it’s cheaper to manufacture, I can only guess it’s to subsidise the cost of replacement frames.

A lot of this is perception rather than reality. Modern carbon frames are strong and robust. Carbon is also pretty easy to repair.

Its been a common material in higher end frames for over 10 years now.

Plenty of threads on here about cracked alloy frames.

No problem. I was just curious as to the difference in UK pricing between two frames that retail for the same amount in the USA. I’ve been on a Heckler since 98 myself and I think the latest one is pretty good value.

Yeah that’s true, and they’ve come a long way since. It’s how they crack and how they fail that gets me.

I really don’t see why carbon is a lot more expensive than alloy when it’s cheaper to manufacture.

The economics are a bit different.

Very very roughly: each welded frame costs about the same to make, regardless of volume. You could make a welded frame in your shed if you wanted to.

But with carbon there is a chunk of cost up front for the molding and so on, that needs to be paid for before a single frame is made. Then the more frames that are made, the cheaper the cost per frame as the startup cost gets spread out across the frames… but on a ‘short run’ that’s not going to really kick in.

I suspect also that imported ‘premium brand’ frames are brought in in relatively low numbers – the importer would probably prefer to bring in less and sell out, while keeping the price high, than bring in more than they’re going to easily sell, then have to deal with stock sitting about, discounting and so on.

Cheers for that Matt. It wasn’t something I considered.

Another side benefit of the cost of imports is it leaves a space for the homegrowns, such as Orange, Cotic, Singular, On One etc to trade in.

I was going to buy a Niner a few months ago myself, but decided I couldn’t justify the price and bought a Singular instead.

I know in my head it probably is ‘the emperors ne clothes’ but I do fancy a 650b.
I would like a Bronson C and don’t drive an Audi or have that much money really.
The price disparity does annoy me as does the upgrade on the shock which at £200+ is in my opinion disgusting. I feel like going to another brand Pivot / Ibis.
However the Ibis warranty is 3 years and the SC is 5 years.
They do break, my mate is just having his Nomad C replaced after 2 years.
Is this why they are dearer, and is it worth the extra knowing you will get at least 5 years out of it?

wozza

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/santa-cruz-bicycles-test-lab.html

you get what you pay for, i ride a nomad mk2 and the only change i would consider is another santa cruz!! might i add i drive a BMW and it looks lovely on the roof but yet to strava llandegla