[Closed] Cotic Rocket to be UK made...

I think they struggled to find anyone else who could make them squint enough for their standards.

Fans to the forum please,might have guessed

And then 🙄

People have tried manufacturing full suss bikes in the area before and failed. can't remember the brand, Sheffield made with blue/white paint jobs, hopefully second time lucky.

Edge Bicycles I think?

Anyway best of luck to Cy. Big difference between talking about doing stuff and actually doing stuff.

Thanks for all the kind words and thoughts guys.

No plans for hardtail production in the UK. We have plenty on with FS frames.

Any chance of an XL Rocket now you have your own production facility? I guess it might make more sense when you don't have to order a big batch (note, I know nothing about manufacturing).

I've been rocking a soul in Australia for ages, I well fancy one of these. How long until Tom gets some?

ratherbeintobago - Member

Intense have just poached their new CEO from Crank Bros, so it'll all be fine now.

The perfect storm 😆

cy - Member
Thanks for all the kind words and thoughts guys.

No plans for hardtail production in the UK. We have plenty on with FS frames.

Thank **** for that. My wallet was beginning to twitch!

Great news and creating much needed jobs...now please build a Ti Soul!

Orders are now open - 50 in orange or green, small/medium/large:

https://www.cotic.co.uk/order/framebuilder/rocket/

Finally. Pre-order made.

Excited.

Just hope they manage to hit the promised mid-March delivery date.

Now if only I had £1500 kicking around I'd be pre-ordering one. Ah well, will just have to wait to see if a bonus materialises at work this year...

£1350; is that the same price as before? Either way it sounds pretty good for a UK made full suss frame with shock.

So tempted, but I leave work in 8 weeks time so money may well be tight. Oh well; a boy can dream!!

Full bike price seems competitive too. Full XT, Pikes and Hope Hoops (Stan's Flow) for £3,200.

roverpig - think prices are pretty much exactly the same (allowing for different shock options now they've dropped BOS) as previously. Result I reckon, and pretty interesting from an economic PoV if this first batch aren't loss leaders.

No black 🙁 Still, orange. I'm probably not a customer but you never know.

These here rockets, they still 26"?

Couldn't find any wheelside info so surmising they are as per the original spec with the 26"? 😕

I think they are.

So as the world embraces everything but 26" the new venture is only manufacturing the smaller wheeled bike, that's very UK centric, hopefully there is a big enough market for that

I think Cy has already explained this. Cotic's core market is people looking for frames on which to hang bits that they already have. That market still wants 26". If/when that changes, so will they.

rOcKeTdOg - Member
So as the world embraces everything but 26" the new venture is only manufacturing the smaller wheeled bike, that's very UK centric, hopefully there is a big enough market for that

I'm very interested in a 26" frame just like most of the mountainbike population who are a bit perplexed by this need for change that the industry seem to have. The only way I'm going 650b or 29" is if I'm buying a complete build and then I'd have to compromise the spec massively - I'd have to make do with new Deore and Xt compared to the slightly 2nd hand XTR and X0 stuff I got when building my bike from the classifieds.

Very interested in a Rocket at £1350 though I'd prob go for the CCDB Air over the Fox. Even at £1600 that's great value and makes certain other brands look very poor VFM.

OK as there still some incorrect facts and is it this or is it that....
Copy of the email and why they drop a couple of shocks.

Here's all the relevant information:

The initial batch of 50 frames will be available in mid-March, in orange or green.
Shock options are Fox Evo CTD or Cane Creek DB Air Climb Switch, or no shock at all
Sizes are the standard small, medium and large
[b]Wheel is still 26" !![/b]
Complete bikes with full XT/Pike/Flow EX/Hope build will be available
Prices are as follows:
Frame no shock - £1,099
Frame + Fox Evo CTD - £1,350
Frame + DB Air CS - £1,599
Complete Bike + Fox Evo CTD - £3,200
Complete Bike + DB Air CS - £3,549

We've changed the shock options compared to last year for a number of reasons. Firstly, we've been very disappointed with the performance of the Kashima level Fox CTD shocks, so we weren't happy specifying these on the bikes. The Evo CTD works great, I suspect as a result of having fewer bells and whistles, and it certainly benefits from not having the Boost Valve in my experience.

We loved the BOS shocks, but the distributor pulled out and the customer support ended up not just bad, but borderline non-existent. I was caught out by this by having to have a shock serviced at BOS because they'd not sent the tools to the importer and ended up waiting 2 months for it to come back because they shut for August and were 'a bit busy' beforehand. I wasn't happy to carry on selling their product on that basis. It's important to me that you guys can rely on what we sell you, even if it comes from someone else. With Jungle now looking after the brand hopefully people who bought BOS from us will be looked after in future.

And so to Cane Creek. We've been working with them since talking at Eurobike last year and I've had a test shock for a few months. We have a base set up which I've worked on and we're getting our own firm tune on the Climb Switch. It's an incredible shock for DH performance, but it is a fair bit heavier than the Fox and even the firm Climb Switch isn't a lockout as you'd expect from another brand of shock. This means that it's more of a decision about what kind of riding you're planning on doing when it comes to the shock choice, but you won't be disappointed with either option.

To reserve your UK made Rocket frame, there's no deposit needed, just head over to our Rocket order page and get your name down.

4 months too late, bought a 26" Tracer , tis an awesome bike
, wanted an Orange Rocket 😀

I'm very interested in a 26" frame just like most of the mountainbike population

I think "most of the mountain bike population" is the US & the rest of Europe & I doubt that many of those have heard of a small UK designer who makes hardcore HT frames. I presume Cy is trying to make a living not just doing it for love so narrowing your market to a few riders in the UK who have 26"forks and wheels knocking about (afterall all other bits will fit any bike) is a bit of a gamble given the money that must have been invested in the venture

Anybody know what shock tune the Rockets run?

I think "most of the mountain bike population" is the US & the rest of Europe & I doubt that many of those have heard of a small UK designer who makes hardcore HT frames. I presume Cy is trying to make a living not just doing it for love so narrowing your market to a few riders in the UK who have 26"forks and wheels knocking about (afterall all other bits will fit any bike) is a bit of a gamble given the money that must have been invested in the venture

They're making 50 frames for the first batch - how big a market will it take to consume them? Do you honestly think they've somehow managed to build a production facility which can only work with one arbitrary wheel size?

50 frames? Is that even a production run, I wonder when you could get a go on one as it seems a good upgrade path to go from my current ride which is 26 inch.

If they have any business sense the expensive cnc/milling machines will be running all the time and making other things for paying clients. A big investment to make if it's a case of 'let's make 50 frames and see what happens?'
Hope have got it right as they run 24/7

They're making 50 frames for the first batch - how big a market will it take to consume them?

i hope they aren't planning to retire on 50 frames worth of profit, i hope Mr Smith is right

This is all great news for the British bike industry and I couldn't think if a brand I'd rather have pioneering the way than Cotic. Great stuff!

Hope have got it right as they run 24/7

Making high volumes ,not 50 if hope were making 50 of something do you thing a machine would need to run 24 hours a day, if it did they might need to turn up the speed knob a bit

It all makes sense now. With the cost of bike bits going up since 2008 I suppose it was on the cards that at some point manufacturing in the UK might make sense again. It also doesn't surprise me that Cotic were the ones to move on this first, it always seemed to me that there are some really bright cookies over there!

Making high volumes ,not 50 if hope were making 50 of something do you thing a machine would need to run 24 hours a day, if it did they might need to turn up the speed knob a bit

missing the point. if hope were making 50 of something the expensive machines would be idle and not earning money.

missing the point. if hope were making 50 of something the expensive machines would be idle and not earning money.

Yep so having a CNC machines to make a batch of 50 means that machines must now be stood idle, I can't see how there would be a need for a company like Cotic to have machines running 24hours a day even if they were making hundreds of frames a month.

A couple of links and a couple of dropouts is completely insignificant to what Hope make in a shift let alone a day, I suppose its kind of moot Hope have been manufacturing in the UK for a long time before any others thought of bandwagon leaping.

I can't see how there would be a need for a company like Cotic to have machines running 24hours a day

i wasn't suggesting they would need to run 24/7 but that building 50 bikes and doing no other revenue generating production with expensive equipment was not an ideal way to run a business.

i was using hope as an example of a business that was maximising their profits after investing heavily in manufacturing technology, you only have to look at their hope-hoops business model where they are effectively giving you the rims and build at cost and making money on the hub so their wheels are a no-brainer purchase as it would cost you more to buy the components on their own.

sorry if that got you a bit confused.

There's absolutely no need to have CNC machines running 24/7. All that matters is their output is cost effective when everything is considered. The bigger and more expensive the machine, the greater the likelihood that it'll need to run most of the time but that also means you need to have enough stuff to make on it. The facility Hope have is at one end of the spectrum, vastly expensive machines and high output whilst someone like Works Components is making similar things on much smaller scale with a much less expensive machine and I highly doubt they're running 24/7 (well maybe now with the demand for the chainrings but not before). The smaller machines are no less good, they just tend to work slower and require more human intervention. But the capital cost is far lower so you don't need to work them as hard to justify the investment.

At work we used to outsource to subcontractors - then we bought a CNC machine to do it ourselves and despite the cost and steep learning curve it's easily paid for itself. It runs a few hours a day, five days a week.

I'm sure I read somewhere (twitter?) that the cost of outsourcing CNC bits for rapid prototyping etc in the first year would cost around 70% of buying a CNC machine. Seems like a no brainer.

misinformer - Member
50 frames? Is that even a production run, I wonder when you could get a go on one as it seems a good upgrade path to go from my current ride which is 26 inch

If you read the press release, the detail is that they will also make frames for other manufacturers, I guess that is the business case for the joint venture manufacturing facility.
Richard

and tooling (ie moulds) for composite frames

Unless I'm missing something (wouldn't be the first time!) why would cotic not manufacture their other frames at this facility? Doesn't really stack up, unless Cy is actually planning this, but doesn't want to piss off the current manufacturers as they're not ready to do it at the moment.

Capacity and risk, I'm guessing. Limited space, machines and budget so they can't make a lot of frames (initially), plus it would be a bigger risk to take his existing, successful business and transplant it whole to the UK. This is a separate company, and if for whatever reason it doesn't work out, Cotic is still there. Sensible stuff.

Of course, if it's a massive success, then no doubt stuff will start to move over.

because the figures probably still work out best to get the run of the mill steel frames welded in Taiwan. They are just regular steel tubes unlike the rocket which is more complicated with aluminium machining for the aluminium swing arm, bonded shock lugs on the frame etc etc.

Nobeerinthefridge - Member

Unless I'm missing something (wouldn't be the first time!) why would cotic not manufacture their other frames at this facility?

They've got the production of the hardtails pretty much spot on already, there's probably less reason to want to change than there was with the Rocket.

and tooling (ie moulds) for composite frames

Eh? Maybe I'm not following along but they make steel frames.
How did you make that jump? Further how would they even make the jump to composite frames.