you can make anything you want right here in good old britain

trouble is like many people that frequent this site the thought of turning up to work for the square root of **** all loses its interest after a while

@milfordvet – Just out of curiosity, what sort of business are you in?

I’m not a frame builder (so have no idea about the costs involved if you want to make a professional job of it, like Shand do) but I do work in the bike industry, and I’m always interested to hear the backgrounds of those who try to dissect the business models of others in the bike trade.

I know this is a UK based site and I imagine most comments are from U.K. residents, but the bike shop I used in Houston for a couple of years, West End Cycles, had plenty of fargos, veyas, cross checks, and all the other models salsa and surly do. They are not a rare commodity in the US of A. It was one of the coolest bike shops I’ve been in. There was a museum of bikes hanging from the ceiling.

@milfordvet – Just out of curiosity,are you friends with Bartyp?

So back on track.

Are we blaming brexit for the salsa increase or are we saying that salsa has become a cool niche brand with problems importing so they have decided to restrict supply, increase rrp and make the brand all the more desirable because they are harder to get.

Surly on the other hand seem to be abundant and reduced towards the end of the season.

I think this is as much to do with marketing as it is to do with brexit.

Flame away 🙂

Going to largely keep out of this slagging fest, but just a short word about the Salsa pricing.

Regarding the Fargo/Deadwood etc, don’t forget these are a frameSET and come with a nice fully custom carbon fork. The fork alone does have a mental UK RRP of just under £600, which is insane, but even if you took it as being £400 this means the ‘frame’ part of a Fargo frameset is £500, which is inline with any other steel frame.

Whoever said the Spearfish is overpriced now, shirley you are having a laugh? The carbon frame is £1999.
Same for the Horsetheif, Pony Rustler and Redpoint.
These are really nice high quality carbon frames. Most of my experience is with the Pony Rustler, we weighed MY ‘demo’ frame at 5.7lbs, building it up was spot on and it’s one of the fastest bikes I have ever ridden. It it pretty much a Hightower, that frameset carries an RRP of £2750.

Ignoring the fact we have sale price Horsetheif/Pony Rustler frames for £1650…

A fairer frameset comparison for Salsa would be the Marrakesh with it’s steel fork, but no one will mention that because it’s £450.

Damascus – it’s mostly brexit. No one in the trade wants higher RRPs, trust me.

We were going to buy a boatload of Traitor cycles into the UK on clearance as we think they would have gone down well at the right price. Went away on holiday to Torridon and all these **** brexited us, over night all of our prices shot up, and suddenly rather than being a cheap option with nice colours they would have been the same price as hundreds of other options, and we just let it drop..

Haha the fact that get’s caught in the swear filter makes it read much ruder than it really was :p

So be it.

A fairer frameset comparison for Salsa would be the Marrakesh with it’s steel fork, but no one will mention that because it’s £450.

Hiya.
From CTBM?
I hadn’t noticed that.

If that’s going to continue for a while, that’s great news, and renders my point invalid.

Apologies, I had no idea they’d come down so much.

It’s only the steel frames and forks I’m interested in, last time I checked they were still between £800 and a grand.

Will the Vaya/Marrakesh frames be about the same price in future, or is this just on older stock?

Are we blaming brexit for the salsa increase or are we saying that salsa has become a cool niche brand with problems importing so they have decided to restrict supply, increase rrp and make the brand all the more desirable because they are harder to get.

Surly on the other hand seem to be abundant and reduced towards the end of the season.

I think this is as much to do with marketing as it is to do with brexit.
Brand has higher pricing, and smaller scale which probably means smaller & more frequent imports which means the exchange rate increase will impact sooner. Smaller brands are also less likely to encourage discounting as it undermines their dealers.

Mr Shand is awesome – my new favorite brand purely based on this thread

Whoever said the Spearfish is overpriced now, shirley you are having a laugh? The carbon frame is £1999.

Where?

Anywhere that is a Salsa dealer, that’s just the RRP.

Spearfish Carbon Frame

Marrakesh Drop Bar Frameset

Marrakesh Flat Bar Frameset

Marrakesh Flat Bar Bike

Other dealers are available.

@Damascus

Don’t forget that Surly are imported by Ison as opposed to how Salsa appeared to be individually imported by shops themselves. That and Surly have also had a rare shake up of their range and so complete pugs, etc were reduced to clear the way for the new stock.

Salsa is brought in by Raleigh Uk (Accell)