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This was in my feed this morning relating to the shift in balance towards Chinese tech.
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/chinese-tech
Clearly it's been more successful on the the road side so far. I assume that is because road geometry is more settled and there's not the rear suspension R&D issues.
The article only really touches on the possibility of low entry point leading to ultimate monopolisation or a shifting of dominance of the market from USA to China, which is maybe a problem/change for the future and other than tariffs it's hard to see how the USA can meaningfully respond in the short term when it's outsourced both the physical production and the expertise for 20+ years.
It's interesting looking at it alongside the Chinese EV and HEV market where the assumption is that vehicles are currently being priced at a loss for market share/brand recognition/dominance over margin (I can understand they will be cheaper but THAT much cheaper seems unlikely).
Despite the Temu Range Rover type tags they are becoming increasingly evident as a sector of the market prioritise tech and new vs brand and reputation.
Inevitable, particularly for carbon road bikes. They'll cheer the VFM, many will say western brands rip us off (RRPs high, £12k superbikes etc). More western brands will go out of business. The Chinese version of capitalism beats the western version.
Ultimately though, the riding culture is not as strong over there (yet?). Riding culture is what makes great bikes. But that's also less important now perhaps - it's easy to make a half-decent road bike w/o ever riding one when the design is so homogenised. Same goes for e-MTB.
In 10 years to so we're going to either look back and remember how amazing the early days of MTB were for creativity - or be amazed by the creativity that the ride scene and bike market in Asia is producing.
They'll cheer the VFM, many will say western brands rip us off (RRPs high, £12k superbikes etc).
Part of the challenge for the sport and the West is that the relative value proposition just isn't that good on the big brands. Partly we've done it to ourselves because the marketing departments have all pushed these ultra complex aero designs, the UCI has allowed them for racing and so production costs + western element of the finished product have escalated. Although maybe the moulding element of carbon means that's less an issue than it might first seem.
What seems hard to get now is a simple frame (in construction terms) with a good set of wheels and upgradeable mid tier kit but it is nearly always the wheels that are the weak point in an off the shelf club rider's bike and they're one of the most vital bits.
Riding culture is what makes great bikes.
OTOH "riding culture" has also held back innovation - yes, I'm looking at you UCI.
A local independent bike nechanic a lot of us use has been bringing in and building up some Chinese gravel frames which riders seem really happy about - some great and some "interesting" paint jobs and decals.
Can see that being harder to do with full sus bikes, but underestimate the Chinese at your peril
The Chinertown forum is a great place to look for information on a lot of the smaller Chinese brands. From personal experience I'm happy to recommend going the Chinese route for EPS moulded road and gravel frames as the quality is high, price is reasonable and it's great having custom paint. The downsides are the time it takes and being unsure of support/warranty if anything goes wrong.
For a full suspension mtb frame the savings aren't anywhere near as much and I'm not willing to take the risk with alignment issues, especially when there's so many heavily discounted full bikes available in the UK.
The Chinertown forum is a great place to look for information on a lot of the smaller Chinese brands. From personal experience I'm happy to recommend going the Chinese route for EPS moulded road and gravel frames as the quality is high, price is reasonable and it's great having custom paint. The downsides are the time it takes and being unsure of support/warranty if anything goes wrong.
The 'Peak Torque' channel on YouTube has done some in depth reviews on various Chinese factory products.
A lot of the Chinese wheel brands in particular have really come of age recently - Farsports, Winspace, Light Bicycle. They've really done a lot to improve the quality control, the general perception of buying direct / Chinese rather than a known brand like Mavic or DT Swiss and they're usually very very good.
The trick is getting the consumer to recognise that - there's a long history in retail of knocking the price up a bit and the perception of it being a "premium" product goes up with it and customers are willing to spend that money because they'll usually assume that more £££ = better.
shifting of dominance of the market from USA to China
I think Taiwan might have something to say about that USA claim.
I'm still waiting for some decent Chinese-direct endurance/all road frames to emerge. All the frames making the news currently are race geometry (and many are stupidly aggressive as whilst they are ahead of the curve on manufacturing they're lagging behind on frame design and often copying Western designs of a few years ago). I've no doubt they'll sort something soon, we're already starting to seem some gravel bikes with usable real world geometry so hopefully that will spill over.
There are FS MTBs out there but again I think the design side is lacking and lagging, they need to contract out the design more in the short term and accept just being good at making bikes isn't the same as being able to make a good bike.
Oh and they need to sort the stupid branding out (both the actual names and the logo size and quantities) for the Western market.
OTOH "riding culture" has also held back innovation - yes, I'm looking at you UCI.
I'd say the UCI is race culture, if you want sanctioned racing you get the blazers and their rules.
Part of the challenge for the sport and the West is that the relative value proposition just isn't that good on the big brands. Partly we've done it to ourselves because the marketing departments have all pushed these ultra complex aero designs, the UCI has allowed them for racing and so production costs + western element of the finished product have escalated. Although maybe the moulding element of carbon means that's less an issue than it might first seem.
Route to market, margin layers, R+D, QC/QA and liability/warranty/service, wages - trad bike brands have more overheads. There isn't much money being made at bike brands. OEM parts maybe, but not the the bike brands. There may be £12k bikes but they don't sell them without huge marketing bills - UCI team sponsorship etc. The VFM perception gap is from the current market structure overlapping with a more direct market structure.
As for marketing pushing aero etc .. it's racing and performance demands creating that. It's our choice whether we buy into it. The tooling costs for carbon frames are relatively similar still.
I sound like a stuck record on this but personally, I won't touch carbon bikes/forks/bars/posts that don't come from a brand with a UK/EU company behind them. Not because that in itself is a guarantee of safety - too many recalls happen for me to think all's ok with outsourced carbon manufacturing - but it does mean the company at least has to comply with GPSR etc and recalls happen, they're a process. If a Chinese brand is taking all that on as part of selling direct then fair enough.
I'm still waiting for some decent Chinese-direct endurance/all road frames to emerge. All the frames making the news currently are race geometry (and many are stupidly aggressive as whilst they are ahead of the curve on manufacturing they're lagging behind on frame design and often copying Western designs of a few years ago). I've no doubt they'll sort something soon, we're already starting to seem some gravel bikes with usable real world geometry so hopefully that will spill over.
There are FS MTBs out there but again I think the design side is lacking and lagging, they need to contract out the design more in the short term and accept just being good at making bikes isn't the same as being able to make a good bike.
Oh and they need to sort the stupid branding out (both the actual names and the logo size and quantities) for the Western market.
You want western brands or riding culture to develop bikes and sort design and geometry, then the Chinese brands to average out the geometries and make a cheap version.
Not a dig at you as such, just supports why at some point in future we'll look back and wonder why we gave it all to China - brands hand over manufacturing, customers hand over purchases. That's why I said "The Chinese version of capitalism beats the western version."
Clearly it's been more successful on the the road side so far. I assume that is because road geometry is more settled and there's not the rear suspension R&D issues.
I sometimes listen to the nero show, they love a chinese frame and some (technically) un-informed comparisons with equivalent western products.
Road frames/bikes are as prone to over complexity and fashions as MTB or any other niche, they especially love aero nonsense. Some of the bullshit has migrated onto MTBs from the Road, anyone learning to love having their brake lines stuffed through their headset can thank the road side of SBC/Giant/Trek/etc for that “innovation”.
the thing to note is that the stuff that makes it from china to the west is apparently only a fraction of what is produced, they have a growong domestic market driven by a Chinese middle-class who want to emulate the western “scenes” to some extent.
We can sit here in the ruins of neo-liberal capitalism sneering at the commies playing dress up with their poor imitation products, but where does most of the planet’s manufacturing capability now reside? It’s now more probable than not that most people’s “western bike” had a few key components (including frame and/or fork) made in the far-east, and for all the talk I don’t see many of us even attempting to address that (myself included).
Bikes are like most products now, the East has won market dominance, and don’t really care if the punters know or not.
BXT are knocking out some choice track frames at about 1/5 to 1/10 the price of the equivalent mainstream brands. It’s proving hard to resist and have seen one or two in the flesh.
one of my day jobs is looking at chinese companies and their wares in another industry. I will say what they produce and the methods they use are very impressive. If the bike industry looks like biotech, the West will be in trouble! At the Paris Olympics, China was racing mainly Look frames. I bet they won’t be next time.
BXT are knocking out some choice track frames at about 1/5 to 1/10 the price of the equivalent mainstream brands. It’s proving hard to resist and have seen one or two in the flesh.
one of my day jobs is looking at chinese companies and their wares in another industry. I will say what they produce and the methods they use are very impressive. If the bike industry looks like biotech, the West will be in trouble! At the Paris Olympics, China was racing mainly Look frames. I bet they won’t be next time.
I don't disagree but I've seen enough of carbon production (China and Taiwan) and the general production process to be wary. Some good, some not. I don't see anything about testing on BXT's site and most of those frameset images are renderings. Seeing one in the flesh is only seeing the surface. 'Not with a 10ft pole', personally.
OK, that's for chinese branded chinese bikes. I assume the UK branded bikes are simply resold chinese bikes as there aren't many people actually making much stuff in the west, and experience from other industries is that western made doesn't mean better technical quality.
Also, qc and quality can be fixed. You have a much bigger problem if you don't make anytihng in the first place. At the moment most UK manafacture has retreated to the far corners of nichedom and most of that product doesnt have mass appeal
Where do the Chinese imports sit with the CEN(?) regulations. I remember ages ago (26" wheel size ages ago...) Cy @ Cotic did a thing about how the new (at the time regulations) affected how they built frames & the cost of getting them through the MOT.
QC/QA can be fixed, I agree. And trust can be earned. It won't take time for D2C brands to do that well. It can be done, it's just not consistent (and western brands are part of that issue as much as a solution to it)
Where do the Chinese imports sit with the CEN(?) regulations.
If you sell D2C you can bypass it and no-one is about to sue a brand in China. But as my last post, won't take long. They're not stupid and do understand reputation. And they don't build junk, it's more about how variable carbon can be with high number of process steps and there can be low tolerance for error.
The Chinese version of capitalism beats the western version.
if your govt keeps the value of your currency illegally artificially low, has zero interest in protecting workers, workers rights or health, or respecting patent or intellectual protections, and heavily subsidize certain sectors, then yes, Chinese capitalism is great.
I would still be very reluctant to purchase something that hasn't potentially had such tests etc done on it.
If they were forward thinking they could come up with their own standards & ensure it is as good if not better than the EU/American standards.
The Chinese version of capitalism beats the western version.
if your govt keeps the value of your currency illegally artificially low, has zero interest in protecting workers, workers rights or health, or respecting patent or intellectual protections, and heavily subsidize certain sectors, then yes, Chinese capitalism is great.
Yes, I wasn't suggesting it was a like-for-like comparison. A version of.
But to be fair, the UK would go that way with workers rights if capitalism (or Reform) had what it wanted, and arguably it already does - in-work benefits and a too-low min wage are the govt subsidising big business and allowing worker suppression. We subsidise plenty of things too. For sure there are some areas that are off the scale horrific in China. British history is similar. We're not as different as some like to think.
The point on IP is interesting, that's simply us applying our culture to theirs. Traditionally in China the ability to copy well is a skill, as is to produce something more efficiently. They just compete at a different point along the concept-production line. We don't like a lack of respect for IP, but 'that's just us'. And the IP system is abused or is daft/BS in enough areas (more the US patent system than Europe, perhaps). We'd iterate faster if we didn't have patents - they're an incentive to invent but they are old laws and things need to move faster than a 20yr block*. Incentivising to iterate on cost reduction, production speed etc is part of how China are so far ahead.
*Literally used as a block in many cases, patents get taken out as a competitive defence
I would still be very reluctant to purchase something that hasn't potentially had such tests etc done on it.
Same, but passing EN tests is not the same as QA - it's just design verification. Test one fork, pass, and a factory might make and sell 10,000 afterwards. QA is making sure 1% or 0.1% of forks don't randomly fail and put a rider into the tarmac chin-first.
GCN built up a Chinese bike with fairly "premium" parts from the suppliers, and it was unrideable
I'm still waiting for some decent Chinese-direct endurance/all road frames to emerge. All the frames making the news currently are race geometry (and many are stupidly aggressive as whilst they are ahead of the curve on manufacturing they're lagging behind on frame design and often copying Western designs of a few years ago). I've no doubt they'll sort something soon, we're already starting to seem some gravel bikes with usable real world geometry so hopefully that will spill over.
A couple I'm aware of were released last year. The Light Carbon LCR018 is at the cheaper end or the XM carbon speed Gran Turismo is more premium. I helped a friend build up her LCR018 and the quality seemed high and she's much faster on it than her previous Trek.
For the last 25 years or so, most of the 'big brands' shifted their manufacturing to the Far East, starting with Taiwan, then China and now Vietnam in the quest for cheaper costs / higher margins. In that time, manufacturers have acquired the skills and technology to manufacture high quality products. It's absolutely disingenuous to state these are inferior products, or that somehow the cursory glance from a western representative somehow makes a superior products. Big brands have pretty well be shown up for what they are - procurement, a marketing team some product managers and maybe a technical specialist or two - because the engineering and manufacturing has been sub-contracted wholesale. The 'offer' in many cases comes down to some stickers and a warranty and somehow expect to still command a premium price? Victims of their own self-created circumstances I'm afraid. Whilst no doubt a few artisan builders will continue in places like Italy, but with the geo-politics of Chinese state sponsored take-over of traditional western markets, I can see plenty of bike companies being in trouble.
Back up & warranty is everything to most people. Look at Hope or Exposure as examples - both have legendary back up & warranty. If your Aliexpress frame cracks, where is the back up?
We as a planet need to move away from such a disposable update every year mindset.
Warranty and backup is more important when the cost of your product is high. Lower price higher risk is a trade off you decide as to whether you are comfortable to accept.
most of the 'big brands' shifted their manufacturing to the Far East, starting with Taiwan, then China and now Vietnam in the quest for cheaper costs / higher margins. In that time, manufacturers have acquired the skills and technology to manufacture high quality products. It's absolutely disingenuous to state these are inferior products, or that somehow the cursory glance from a western representative somehow makes a superior products.
The real issue isn't Far East manufacturing, it's Far East manufacturing with no comfort that the right oversights are in place in terms of design, safety checks, quality checks etc.
If I buy from a reputable "Western" brand, I'm comfortable that some of the cost involved with that purchase is going towards the quality checks on the Far East manufactured items they're selling
If I'm on Ali Express buying from "YuGoFastBike", I have absolutely no idea or comfort that what I'm buying has had the same due diligence on safety and quality.
The good quality manufacturing in China will likely be far ahead of most other regions, but it's an absolute certainty that there's a lot of absolute cheap garbage manufactured in low quality environments with no proper checks in place. Cheaply made batteries are the perfect example here, with real incidents of deaths caused by poorly manufactured batteries or chargers that came from the Far East.
Incentivising to iterate on cost reduction, production speed etc is part of how China are so far ahead.
Enshitifciation, for physical products. Copy, cheapen, shorten the life of the product. Make shit cheap, make cheap shit for landfill.
For the last 25 years or so, most of the 'big brands' shifted their manufacturing to the Far East, starting with Taiwan, then China and now Vietnam in the quest for cheaper costs / higher margins.
In that time, manufacturers have acquired the skills and technology to manufacture high quality products. It's absolutely disingenuous to state these are inferior products, or that somehow the cursory glance from a western representative somehow makes a superior products. Big brands have pretty well be shown up for what they are - procurement, a marketing team some product managers and maybe a technical specialist or two - because the engineering and manufacturing has been sub-contracted wholesale.
Incentivising to iterate on cost reduction, production speed etc is part of how China are so far ahead.
Enshitifciation, for physical products. Copy, cheapen, shorten the life of the product. Make shit cheap, make cheap shit for landfill.
Certainly does happen, Temu is full of it, but not always - making a process more efficient is what any production line company tries to do? Big difference between cheap materials that are shit and materials that are cheaper, up to spec and better sourced and processed more efficiently.
I think the Temu approach is how it starts then the processes get better. Look at how things went in Taiwan. I doubt many factory owners in Hong Kong, Taiwan or China aspired to make junk long-term. They have values too.
Also .. Temu supplies a demand - the blame for that shit is over here, not there.
Their time will come. My fathers generation said much the same about Japanese motorcycles in the 60's. Oops! I have a few club mates with Chinese frames, road, gravel and TT. No complaints as yet and my experience with mainstream brands is that they are not very concerned about warranties anyway past the statutory period. Just contemplating a pair of 50mm deep + carbon rims.
Interesting video about X-Lab, currently used by Astana. The CEO is insistent they're not subsidised by the Chinese state the same way as electric car brands, and they're cheaper simply because of efficiencies from control over all parts of the process. Others are unconvo
The real issue isn't Far East manufacturing, it's Far East manufacturing with no comfort that the right oversights are in place in terms of design, safety checks, quality checks etc.
If I buy from a reputable "Western" brand, I'm comfortable that some of the cost involved with that purchase is going towards the quality checks on the Far East manufactured items they're selling
I'm not sure how true that is though?
I've bought stuff from "Designed in the UK" brands and then had issues with it. There isn't someone there with a micrometer and bore gauge checking each frame or bike, they just get a PDI if it's a shop, or shipped to your door in the box it arrived at the distributors warehouse in from the factory.
In theory this is why things like ISO9001 exist, if a company has put the frames though the CE tests and has their quality standards and processes accredited to ISO standards then what you're buying should be built to the same standard. That doesn't mean it's a good bike, you could design and build something rubbish, and then make it consistently.
The value added in "western" brands is probably more in the R&D, and that includes having pro-teams, magazine reviewers, press trips tot he alps etc. Hundreds of people have all ridden a Trek Domane and all had to broadly agree it was a good bike. A smaller brand direct from a factory is maybe reliant on one persons opinion of how it should ride. e.g. that GCN bike that flexed far too much, there's probably some Cat1 equivalent Chinese rider who's 5ft2, weighs 48kg, rode a 50cm frame and thought it was just fine so they hit go on production without considering how it would scale up to gate sized frames.
Obviously I'm ignoring the really cheap Chinese carbon that's built by people with zero skill or experience and falls apart on the first ride.
^ just wait until a savvy high quality carbon producer does a Luescher Teknik style tear down of a few competitors and opens up their own kit to the same inspection. There's a marketing upset/win for the taking there, what we see currently in a carbon frame inspection video is the brand, not the manufacturer and the QA process.
As Asian carbon brands go direct they get control of the entire process and the presentation - if anything the high standards benchmark may go up. Partly bc the direct route to market may afford to slow things down and accept higher reject rates. None of that is because sub-contracting is at fault, it's because the bike industry can work in a wider range of QA standards compared to automotive, it's not regulated, and it's certainly well below aerospace (doubt it'd be commercially viable at that level .. but there are $6000 framesets out there .. ).
