I see P-X are offering a Tomac ‘Gravel’ bike now;

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/FRTOMO/tomac-montezuma-carbon-gravel-road-frameset

Now they’re clearly marketing Tomac as their ‘premium’ brand which makes sense.

But does knowing it’s the same team doing the design etc as Planet-X and On-One lower the value of what they’re offering?

Is £999 for a Tomac/Planet-X frame too much?

If it were a BMC/Scott/Santa Cruz etc and probably had the same effort put into design and build everyone would think it was a good price and move on but I can’t help doing a bit of a reverse whistle (like I did with the Tomac Fat Frame) at the price.

Or am I just over analysing stuff and when they start offering complete builds for £1500 I’ll be happy?

Nice looking frame, spose it depends if it’s made better and they provide a better service. Although personally I’ve never had poor service from them.

Planet X name would bring down the Tomac name a bit though.

Anyone had a look on aliexpress to see if the same frameset is available there?

I think they’ve always bought their own moulds haven’t they?

Not sure but the Dirty Disco was (and is) available on Aliexpress.

In fairness that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve bought a generic, it could mean someone’s copied it or is knocking out extras from their tooling.

Wouldn’t touch any of their brands with a 10 foot pole, though. Not new anyway. No real drawback to buying used considering their “warranty” is worthless anyway for anything that comes out of their pocket.

Bit strange offering a bike in 2015 with no DI2 routing options.

For the Tomac brand, this is the 3rd/4th incarnation, they seem to last a few years normally, not too sure why they (PX) are starting your a gravel bike, as Tomac was associated primarily with MTB’s, a little with road cycling, but gravel came about long after he retired (unless you stick a suspension fork on this one).

if you peel the stickers off does it say chinarello, speshalise or deloser underneath?

just leave it a year and buy it for bobbins in the sale.

It does look not much more than a paint job away from the Viner gravel bike frame they’re selling for the same price.

Viner:

Tomac:

Which in turn suggests there’s a good chance you could get it direct from China.

Same dropouts = same frame? It justight be that some other aspects are different, beyond the shaping visible even in your pics.

That said no way is it as “high end” as a proper Tomac (for what that’s worth). In these scenarios this is always the case. Not to say its crap (unless Tomacs were).

It does look not much more than a paint job away from the Viner gravel bike frame they’re selling for the same price.

See also the Viner Mitus and Planet X RT90 road frames. I guess they must at least believe people see some different value in the alternative branding, maybe its just that it doesn’t say Planet X 🙂

Personally, since I know they’ve just bought the Tomac name, I just see “a Planet X frame”, and I think the paint job on the Viner version is nicer 🙂

viner:

tomac:

more than just the dropouts?

No, it doesn’t but if you’ve looked at a lot of the carbon frames, you’ll see that it is a very common pattern. Of course you still need a manufacturer that you trust to build it properly regardless of which design or mould it may use.

EDIT – and seeing those pics just posted, it seems pretty clear cut.

Sorry, I’ve been drinking.

The lay up may of course be different.

Its all getting a little Sports Direct isn’t it? I can’t think of one of the brands they have acquired that comes near to what they were (in either innovation or quality terms) before they were acquired. Thats not to say they are not a decent enough product, it just seems a shame to differentiate between brands merely with a paint job.

Hello British Leyland Austin/Morris/Wolsley/etc! 😆

Dark side, it was reading a Rouleur interview linked off here where they explicitly cited Mike Ashley and Sports Direct as their aspiration that made me lose what little goodwill I had for them (after the London Road seat post fiasco).

Rebadging identical kit (P-X Pro Carbon as a Holdsworth yet another example) is just insulting your customer base.

Is it made of cheap flexi chocolate like their time trial frames ?

Are the viner and tomac not the same price anyway?

some would accuse me of being a planet x fanboi, currently have a pompino, an inbred and a scandal. have previously had a couple more as well.

but without fail all of them have had problems. some as minor as cable guides unuseable, some more serious: inbred dropouts wouldn’t accept a wheel.

not such a problem at £150 a frame, but i wouldn’t spend a grand to get the same quality. london road seatpost issue just highlights their approach to QC.

Comparing with the brands mentioned in the original post they have a Distributer and Retailer taking a cut, so a PX frame should cost a lot less than the equivalent big brand. I think it will probably sit at that RRP for a few weeks then go on sale with 50% off.

They do seem to be knocking out the same frames with different branding options at the moment. Maybe they should just offer a bare frame with a selection of different branded sticker sheets 😛

the rt90 is on aliexpress too its called a fm066 but don’t know if the carbon layup be the same

Bump on this – anyone ridden one yet?

Since when have Tomac been a “premier” brand?
Maybe in the early days when the man himself was heavily involved but since then?
I would rather be buying the PX named one. No worse and probably got a better resale value.

Have yet to have anything but perfect service from PX/OO though.
2 Kaffs and 2 Picks with no probs and great follow up to problems that were not theirs.
Win some, lose some I suppose.
That Tomac is ugly. Matt black has no place on a bike and the front is trying to be a Bianchi.

Didn’t Tomac lose the ‘premium’ tag pretty quickly the first time round when most of them snapped?
I seem to remember Nirvana swapping out quite a few of them when they were a dealer.

On-one seemed to have, and to maintain, their own identity for a while under the Planet X umbrella, but even that seems to be going somewhat. It’s confusing when they don’t even seem to have set ‘identities’ for each brand with a number of very similar bikes appearing under different names. It does, to me at least, give a very Sports Direct kind of impression, like they’re just flogging whatever fell off the back of the lorry last month. I guess they must have their own reasons for doing it, but can’t help feeling that they’d be better off picking just one brand, developing a consistent range together, and then concentrating on marketing that. After all, having road bikes, MTBs and others under the same brand doesn’t seem to have hindered Giant or Specialized that much.

I wouldn’t consider any of the brands they’ve acquired on the cheap to have any additional value or kudos over px.

Less in some cases.

They used to have a degree of integrity and innovation in their MTBs at least. Seem to be lacking a bit of direction now though?

Have yet to have anything but perfect service from PX/OO though.
2 Kaffs and 2 Picks with no probs and great follow up to problems that were not theirs.

I had a problem with a frame recently, welding issue. Email to px and they agreed it looked a bit off (hmm that was easy thinks I). Put it back in the box and what do i find, written on the end of the box is a big list of all the faults. I dont know what shocked me more, that they had sent me a frame that had failed QC, or that they do QC. LOL!

The PX “Gravel” range:

£999*

£599.99*

£999.99*

*Price just now when I checked… We all know how fluid PX pricing is.

Skimming the three descriptions sound similar, viner and tomac give the same weight, PX is apparently 50g heavier and has Di2 routing, the others don’t mention Di2, PX appears to have longer stays and other minor differences, other two appear very similar… So yes, two frames from one mould, different paint jobs, not exactly unheard of TBF, so if you’re comfortable playing PX/OO customer satisfaction roulette, wait for one or the other to fall within budget…

It’s all a bit VAG…

I’ve seen P-X shipping cartons with the manufacturer’s details on them from XPA who are an OEM in Xiamen – you can buy the same frames on Aliexpress/ebay. If you know the manufacturing process, you’d know that changing the mould layup for a specific buyer makes no sense – no manufacturer want to tie-up WIP for one customer and buyers want flexibility in terms of stock call offs and demand – the difference between the Viner and Tomac IMO is no deeper than a coat of paint, you can see that the Bish, Bash, Bosh is a different frame however.

Proper Tomacs were ridden by Sari Jorgensen

Everything since has been bit meh at best.