You all suck my 2 month old cracked Niner A9C beats you all!!! 😆

I am happy to proxy for thegingerone while he is absent 😉

Feisty – you’ll have to send that back to China then? Oh, no wait…

I wonder what will happen if the £300 snaps? I guess it’s easier to just buy a new one if it does. You can get 6 of them before you are paying the same price.

My feeling though, and I’m sure that others won’t share the same view, is that when you buy a cheap ripoff, you are undermining the original designers of the frame. Much the same thing as ripping off music or games.

I guess that there are (at least) 5 mouths to feed when you buy a Yeti though:

* Manufacturer
* Yeti
* Distributor (Silverfish)
* Retailer
* Inland Revenue (£360 in VAT alone!)

Whereas when you buy the £300 ripoff, you are only having to pay the factory and the vendor (if it’s not the factory that is).

You can see how £1800 doesn’t go very far when it is split like that.

Sorry for the delay bones, I was reminiscing about the time I met Chris Conroy (Head honcho of Yeti) and his wife and spent a day riding in Chamonix with him back in 2006 along with one of his sponsored riders 🙂 I guess you could also do that with your passionate Chinese bike company owner 😉

+1 Recipher

Nice story to be able to tell, you should have got his number/Email address then that way you could have seen if he could have done you a good deal on Yeti bikes??!! 😉

But seriously i think your bike looks sweet and am well jealous, I have a Carbon Yeti myself and they are top bikes and the Carbon they use(I hope) is the best you can get, and for me like you if i had to choose and had the cash it would be the Yeti no question! In fact you have got me thinking i should sell my 26” Yeti to help me fund a 29er like yours!… 😀

Just being curious but what bikes where they riding back then?

Actually, it was 2004 not 2006 🙂 Chris was on 575 with a Maverick fork up front. I can’t remember what the sponsored rider was on. I think his name was Julian something. Sure he was French and at the time the Junior European Downhill champ or something. Oxymoron might remember. He kept in touch with Chris and visited the factory a year or so later in Golden. Happy days 🙂

recipher – Member

I wonder what will happen if the £300 snaps? I guess it’s easier to just buy a new one if it does. You can get 6 of them before you are paying the same price.

My feeling though, and I’m sure that others won’t share the same view, is that when you buy a cheap ripoff, you are undermining the original designers of the frame. Much the same thing as ripping off music or games.

I guess that there are (at least) 5 mouths to feed when you buy a Yeti though:

* Manufacturer
* Yeti
* Distributor (Silverfish)
* Retailer
* Inland Revenue (£360 in VAT alone!)

Whereas when you buy the £300 ripoff, you are only having to pay the factory and the vendor (if it’s not the factory that is).

You can see how £1800 doesn’t go very far when it is split like that.

Did I miss the bit in this thread where it was established the £300 frame was outed as a carbon-copy (ha!) of someone else’s design?

You did also forget the 6th and 7th mouths, those being the advertisers and sponsored riders. Now, assuming you are happy just riding a plain carbon frame that’s an original design (so no-one is losing out) and have no desire to buy into a brand, it’s heritage, etc then why not?

Meh

It looks pretty carbon-copy to me. I might be wrong but I’ll need to be convinced.

Here’s the kicker – if everyone buys the knock-offs, then Yeti (etc) goes out of business, then all we are left with are the carbon copies. And then what will they copy? And what will the bike shops sell? So, there’s a good reason why not. Yeti researched and designed the frame and paid for the moulds (5 of them). Neither of those things are cheap. But along comes someone who has taken advantage of that, and stolen the design and undermined Yeti’s work.

Ok, that’s somewhat extreme, but me, I’m glad that companies like Yeti exist. Ok, £1800 is a lot of money but once the cake is divided it’s a lot less. The frame is also priced to be a low volume item – that’s a conscious decision by Yeti of course.

If you’re referring to mine being a carbon copy of the Yeti then you need to got to specsavers mate.

Nobody owns the patents on frame angles…

Recipher, you honestly think those two frames are related apart from being carbon frames?

You know what, I didn’t even look that closely. I assumed it was implied – why would you post a picture of a random chinese frame in a thread about the Yeti ARCC?

My comments still stand (about copies), but I guess I’m due a trip to Specsavers. Apologies. Looking at it again, it has elements of a couple of frames, including the Open 1.0 (seatstays).

However, I guess if everyone bought Chinese frames direct from the factory, copy or not, we’ll still not have bike shops for much longer.

No doubt that the bike industry commercial model is somewhat broken, but comparing a £300 to an £1800 one and complaining that the £1800 is too expensive is a bit silly. The commercial models are different.

You do know nobody holds you to ransom, it’s your own choice what frame/bike you buy and how much you want to spend with your own money?

Yous pays your money etc….

I’m sure that value horse meat burger is just a copy of the aberdeen angus burger too 😉

/stands back with flame suit and popcorn

<heritage>ARC = Alumin(i)um Racing Cycle</heritage>
Calling a CF frame an ARC really is taking the proverbial.

That Intense is very nice. Reminds me of a Corratec (in a good way).

yeti have done carbon before, the C26

iirc frank waddleton or chris herting said ARC stood for Aluminium or Alloy racing Composite

http://www.yeti-c26.net/history.html
[/quote]

I know about the C26 – My FRO became a donor for a C-26 remake a few years ago that Herting made up using some leftover C26 tubesets which was a pretty fitting end to it. The C26 isn’t badged an ARC though.

In fairness they also did the TI ARC a few years ago so they’ve been down this road before. Not sure why an ARC would be composite as I’m sure it’s all Program tubing, and I’m sure that the “A” stood for “Aluminum..”.

My comment was more about heritage rape rather than any objection to what they make bikes out of in the past, today or in the future 🙂

Re: an £1800 frame versus a £300 frame. Might be worth considering the probable working conditions of the people building the frames for you, too. There appear to be some manufacturers who are not willing to build carbon fibre frames as they have not managed to find a factory with satisfactory working conditions who can produce frames at a price point where they could sell the frames economically. Maybe Yetis are priced expensively because they are using more ethically and morally responsible fabrication centres than the £300 rip off….

Just my 2p, and with absolutely no evidence either way to support the thought….

Lovely bike that Yeti. I’d have one in my money no object bike fleet 🙂

I guess it’s a bit like any other luxury/boutique brand purchase, if you want one and have the cash then why not.

very late to this thread, but ARC was indeed Alloy Racing Composite