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The tax reliefs should help - you should get 30% back as an income tax refund under EIS and then if the business does fail, you can set the loss against your income. Net cost would be 42p for every £1 invested if you're a 40% taxpayer.
steelbike
Free MemberHold on a moment those 3d printers cost lots in parts lasers don’t last forever the Uni place in Sheffield has machines from arcan? From the tour I did of the Uni one year the cost of the machine is 0.5 million and they were alluding that half a mil was gone from the day it lands on the workshop floor it’s very hard to recover the costs without courting the aerospace and medical people where the money is
The volume they'd have to be producing to actually make printing inhouse viable would be huge. I think realistically the only reason they would want their own printers, is so that they can sell the machine time to more profitable industries tbh.
I guess the key question there is, is there surplus or shortage of titanium additive manufacturing in industry just now? Is it getting harder to be a customer and better to be a producer?
But at the end of the day, if it makes good business sense to buy massively expensive hardware and then sell the capacity outwards, it probably makes sense to stop making bikes, and focus on making rocketships.
Are you ignoring the two World Cup wins last year on purpose, or have you forgotten?
Sorry. Just saw this. Yes forgotten. But then again it was Rachel racing at her normal high level. You’d have say the bike certainly wasn’t holding her back didn’t push anyone forward though and a lot of brands scored higher.
They are lovely, I appreciate the manufacturing process, I like the Athertons as racers/people. Won't buy one as I can't afford one.
Possibly the issue for some potential customers, is how do you justify to youself/the wife that your bike needs replacing because geometry has moved on, when you bought a custom geo frame? Its the very pinnacle of admitting that you just followed internet trends and hae no clue what you are on about.
What are they doing differently to robot bikes, why did robot bikes go under, why will Atherton bikes succeed when robot bikes didn't.
greeny30
Free MemberWhat are they doing differently to robot bikes, why did robot bikes go under, why will Atherton bikes succeed when robot bikes didn’t.
You know it's just a continuation of Robot, with some extra people involved and a different name?
why will Atherton bikes succeed when robot bikes didn’t.
If they do, it'll be because they diversify into cheaper, metal bikes sourced from Asia.
But it's a big if.
It worries me that inexperienced people, who know nothing about marketing, manufacture, running a business, have sunk their well earned cash into this. I hope they diversified their protfolio and have moeny elsewhere because Robot was a solution to a non problem for 99% of bike purchasers.
The 1% who crave custom bikes and will pay 3 times as much, already have a saturated market to pick from.
The 1% who crave custom bikes and will pay 3 times as much, already have a saturated market to pick from.
Is that true? I'm not sure there are many people looking for custom geo, but I can only think of Nicolai off the top of my head. Do Stanton?
Atherton frames are about the same price as an off the peg frame from the premium brands, certainly not 3 times as much.
Carbon Wasp in Leeds can do you a full custom carbon frame, sky is the limit on price but about £3k if you take their design and plug your numbers in.
Only premium brands I can think of that ‘might’ do a custom full suss (if you paid them a LOT, and were prepared to wait, if they agreed) would be BTR, Starling, Curtis etc but they’re all steel, so not really in the same market, tech wise, and it’s not something they offer as standard.
Deleted. Misread a post, and responded with nonsense! Sorry!
But it's more like 0.01% of MTBers who might want custom geometry on a carbon FS frame.
There's just not a viable business focusing on that, IMHO.
Perhaps if they could find a way of popping out the standard geo frames on par with most other brands (not just the super-spendy brands like Yeti and SC), they'd be a better proposition.
chakaping
Only if they could spin that as “R&D” somehow.
I'd say testing prototypes in race conditions easily fits that brief.
But it’s more like 0.01% of MTBers who might want custom geometry on a carbon FS frame.
There’s just not a viable business focusing on that, IMHO.
Exactly, I think thats why Robot went absolutley nowhere. Dinky tech, but no market.
when I saw robot bikes at fort bill a few years ago they were talking 6k for a frame.
when I saw robot bikes at fort bill a few years ago they were talking 6k for a frame.
IIRC Athertons are £3400 a frame. A Yeti SB165 frame is £3800, SWorks enduro is £4K
It looks nice, it has a decent enough suspension design and construct, it'll work well and will be niche, cost wise, well we live in the world now of 3.5k frames, you go and buy a spesh enduro or a santa cruz cc or whatever and it's over 3k.
They'll more than likely sell well, but they do need to take advantage of the current selling buzz, so hopefully someone in the company has set up the C2W stuff to allow those who have 6k or whatever budgets to get in on that, same with folk after some type of financing deal, if you want to sell frames at 3.5k and 6k builds, you need to make it appealing.
They’ll more than likely sell well, but they do need to take advantage of the current selling buzz, so hopefully someone in the company has set up the C2W stuff to allow those who have 6k or whatever budgets to get in on that, same with folk after some type of financing deal, if you want to sell frames at 3.5k and 6k builds, you need to make it appealing.
Not convinced they will you know. They need a bit more 'presence' to sell big numbers of units like SC and Specialized. The 0% or even 9.9% finance will play a massive factor too.
weeksy
Not convinced they will you know. They need a bit more ‘presence’ to sell big numbers of units like SC and Specialized. The 0% or even 9.9% finance will play a massive factor too.
Some of their recent social media talks about how they kept a low profile, as their capacity was full from delivering race bikes and the first 50 customer orders ,I think the fundraising is with a view to ramping up the numbers
But it’s more like 0.01% of MTBers who might want custom geometry on a carbon FS frame.
which says more about your knowledge of how wealthy ( and I mean seriously wealthy) folk spend their money...I did a stint in between roles installing garage furniture for v rich folk who have a showy car , it was the sort of cupboards and tool chests that you see in BMW garages and the Aston Martin factory. The company I worked for were literally struggling to keep up with demand for the amount of folk who had the £10-50k to spend on metal cabinets for their garages... we were even being flown out to Europe to install colour co-ordinated stuff to match ferraris and lambos...it was insane
the bikes and kit these folk have is just madness, I saw plenty of £10K road bikes that had been bought on a whim, and ridden maybe once or twice. These folk don’t think twice about dropping a few £k on bikes that they’ll ride maybe once or twice, and there are thousands of these people in just the UK alone.
different world
Nickc - I said 0.01%, which is one-in-10,000.
Do you reckon more than that are in the super-rich category which you describe?
Was going to say: went to one place in Nottinghamshire, and was amazed to see a bike shops worth of SC bikes in his double garage (was a separate building with a flat on the second floor) and speaking to the bloke, he was a bike nerd, but couldn’t decide which bike he really liked, so he’d bought one of each, in each colour...
Cha****ng you said 0.1 of the MTB crowd...these are just regular wealthy folk, they’ll see something like this and they’ll want it “just” because it’s the most expensive.
if I was going into the bike market, it’s where I’d be going. Sod producing mass made with teeny% on each frame, aim for top dollar
Typical single laser AM machines are £500-^£600k, but that's just the start, then you need to think about sieving stations (£50), powder blenders (>£70k), powder storage (full climate controlled room), argon use (££££££ dependent on the machine), build plate skimming, wireEDM to get parts off the plate, heat treatment ovens for stress relieving, grit blasters, etc , etc.
Ti powder for laser machines typically costs between €140 and €220/kg and you typically need over 100kg of it to fill a build chamber. You'll get back most of what you don't use, but can lose kgs of powder through the filters.
Assuming staff time, machine amortisation over 3 years, service contract, post-processing (heat-treatment, blasting, grinding), etc - you're probably looking at about €5-6k per build for about 3-5kg of parts (a single bikes worth, maybe a little more) and assuming only 2-3 builds per week. You've then got the super expensive carbon tubes, the design work, the data prep work and assembly/inspection.
It's hard to see how you can make any money unless you already own the machine. If you did, then materials, maintenance and labour could be under £1500.
It's also worth saying that only an idiot would have only one machine when their business relied on it. These things can go wonky and can take a while to diagnose and repair.
Sadly I also think the market is moving away from Robot/Atherton. I'd say that the majority of people who would think about dropping £6000-£8000 on a MTB are more likely to consider an ebike at the moment.
I wouldn't, but then I'd struggle to justify much over £2500, so clearly am not the target audience.
With road bikes I can see a much better justification for custom sizing because it’s a far more mature field and bikes vary much less in geometry. But with MTBs things have changed so much in the last decade, and suspension travel, riding style and terrain all have big effects on preferred geometry for a given size of rider.
That’s what would put me off a custom frame - and I think I’m more clued up than most about geometry. And without going custom I don’t see enough benefit of this expensive manufacturing technique.
The reality is that not many on here are the target market, i have nice bikes, but i buy secondhand mainly, lots on this thread are the same, or would choose a more VfM bike, or another brand in that boutique price range, it is a small market here, but at present there's a lot of growth and if they plan this well and do the usual stuff they could get a foot into the market easily, it just needs a bit of effort and hard selling, they just need to convince a few to move away from that megatower, or patrol, or a following, or whatever and move to an Atherton this year, the product looks good, they just need to sell it to those who don't need much convincing!
I do think this market is growing, bike parks and so on are making it so, EMTB's are great for everything, but uplifts they do struggle, i have both, i know several others in the group who are the same, and see many more at places like BPW, 417, Wind Hill, etc doing the same.
But they have to actually be able to make enough. Pointless if you can't make hundreds of them and in a decent timescale
Then they lose the market share and get eaten by the competitors, it's already quite competitive in that market as it is, but then i've always wondered how Yeti keep selling bikes at the price they are and what you get!
Only premium brands I can think of that ‘might’ do a custom full suss (if you paid them a LOT, and were prepared to wait, if they agreed) would be BTR, Starling, Curtis etc but they’re all steel, so not really in the same market, tech wise, and it’s not something they offer as standard.
Dunno about the others but Curtis will do custom geo for the same price, says so on the website. There's also Marino. Standard offerings from both. Different ball park but same principle.
My guess is that with a single, single laser machine and ~£1m of capex investment, they'd be able to make between 200 and 300 a year at maximum output and assuming full machine reliability, operating 24/7 365. A quad laser system (RenAM500Q) would be much faster for this type of build (maybe 40-60%) dependent on layout) and an EOS M400 Quad would allow a greater build packing density (perhaps getting 2 or even 3 bikes worth of bits into a single build) and greater speed (maybe a reducing in time of 75%), but both of these machines are £1.2-1.6m so you'd need ~£2m capex to get up and running.
From the news story...
We expect the main return to come from a buy out in the future – similar to the $600m proposed sale of the bike manufacturer Canyon.
Canyon are one of the biggest players in road bikes as well as MTB, employing 850 people with €150m annual turnover.
So quite an ambitious example to choose.
Investment needs ambition 🙂
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Daffy
Full MemberMy guess is that with a single, single laser machine and ~£1m of capex investment, they’d be able to make between 200 and 300 a year at maximum output and assuming full machine reliability, operating 24/7 365. A quad laser system (RenAM500Q) would be much faster for this type of build (maybe 40-60%) dependent on layout) and an EOS M400 Quad would allow a greater build packing density (perhaps getting 2 or even 3 bikes worth of bits into a single build) and greater speed (maybe a reducing in time of 75%), but both of these machines are £1.2-1.6m so you’d need ~£2m capex to get up and running
And even then you’re just running straight into huge amount of machining required at the back end
They can lease or finance Capex right? In addition they will likely be able to get grants alongside this.
Market is global, not just UK. Think pre-COVID how many people fly into Savile Row for custom suits / shoes. They don’t have the same machining costs but their rent is significant with no government grants around R&D etc. They are just the bike equivalent at the top end.
Biggest problem to me seems brand / logo. Doesn’t seem very elite global dentist...
I haven't followed this very closely, I'm not really in their target market, I can't see me spending £3500 on a frame, on a whole bike yes, but not on a frame.
The concept seems cool, you tap your measurements into their website, it spits out a custom geo based on those and they can make you a bespoke frame. One potential barrier I can see is there's a huge amount of 'horse trading' that goes on in MTBing, a lot of people buying their new bike will at least have a thought in the back of their mind that in 2-3 years when they're ready for their next bike, they'll want to sell their current one to help fund it. How easy is that going to be. Atherton might be well served a least loosely sticking to "it's about a medium mate" labelling to help that.
I think they're wise not assume that's going to enough for them to reach their goals and they'll inevitably produce cheaper bikes in a few years before finally churning out the same sort of mid-range Asian made stuff everyone else does in 3-5 years.
I'm not bold enough to invest myself, I don't have any meaningful spare cash at the the moment and as the pitch mostly revolves about their personality rather than much else, the business / former banker part of my brain makes me wonder how many people have invested because of sound financial reasons and how many are fans willing to risk £50 for a signed Atherton Certificate. The largest investor has given them £100k so you'd hope they've got half a clue.
Their summary forecast looks about as optimistic as any I've ever read when I was an underwriter. I wonder how it compares to the first 3 years trading of the likes of Bird and YT? But they of course have a massive advantage of the 'Brand'. I wonder if R. Atherton will retire from WC racing after this has closed. Too cynical? It seems to be on the cards.
I think their success will balance on them maintaining their brand, they might the broadness of appeal in MTBing probably peaked a little while ago.
Good news for all the ‘I definitely want to buy, but won’t send an email’ types, webshop goes live today.
Frame pricing is very much top end, isn't it? About 700 quid north of Yeti et al. Wish them well, but it feels like a long time since the initial rush of publicity, they've kind of lost momentum.
Unfortunately the frame pricing is very much in the realms of fantasy for me, but then it never was going to be any different - even if you win the south coast suspension dream bike comp your looking at a mediocre build.
The extra cash for a custom frame also seems excessive as I thought that was one of the selling point for the frame construction.
How much were robot bike co frames?
With 22 sizes, you're unlikely to go custom.
What's with the bottom end Lyric on the 'cheaper' trail model! I'd have thought they'd have specced the Select+ at least.
monkeyboyjc
The extra cash for a custom frame also seems excessive as I thought that was one of the selling point for the frame construction.
It's sort of baked into the standard ones, there's 11 different reaches and a regular/tall version of each
The details on them look really nice, and love the sizing options. Had to stop watching that video up there after a few minutes due to the dullard's constant hilarious innuendo and love of his own voice. Is he that wazzock from The Inbetweeners?
Prices are,as expected, high, but next to other 'boutique' options like Yeti's Turq series and SC CC models they're cheaper for one of the numerous off the peg options, and same ballpark for the custom.
quite tempted
They look like well made well thought out bikes and the price is no surprise its thereabouts with Santa Cruz etc.
I personally could not justify spending that much on a bike when you can spend half as much on a similarly specked Bird but that's up to you as an individual.
My main gripe is the name! As silly as it is I wouldn't want a bike branded with their surname. If it was exactly the same but called something different I would prefer. Not really sure why I feel like that.
Any how they look like great bikes but I won't be buying one purely based on cost.