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"I do think that marketing is what holds up prices to a massive extent in bikes. There's a huge information assymmetry between the buyers and sellers, so they can spout any old bull and we, and often, the specialist press just soak it up."
nah, not at all. there would always be a company with no real marketing activity but a credible product / reasoning for it that would undermine them. there are brands like that now. the only thing that affects / varys prices among brands are supply chain differences and the need to be competitive. mags aren't stupid either, a crap product / poor vfm item is highlighted as such, there are loads of examples. there is no great conspiricy )
the basic fact is real high-end kit is low volume and specialist with often high R+D to recoup (cervelo road frames for example) and those that want it will pay for it if they can. then there's good vfm products available to the rest of us that recognise that there is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to bikes kit, and price of a bike is not and has never been related to the enjoyment of using the product. a £500 rigid single-speed with good geometry for example.
plus, marketing BS will never hold up to informed scrutiny.. there's no need to soak it up, be cynical. 'all new and improved' yeah yeah, to a point maybe but it's still just a bike. 'MBS' makes a brand look daft once highlighted. it's not worth it in the long term if you're building up a credible brand and you understand what that brand is for / about / why etc. for that reason, there's not much of it about. there's some bold claims about good stuff, and keen promotion of average stuff, but nothing that really stinks, well not that i've seen )
Joxster, thats a completely different argument. LBS are more expensive than online for a whole host of (legit) reasons. The choice is faceless empty high streets, or £3 extra for branded fairy liquid to clean your fancy toy.
Biking has become unsustainably expensive for me because I've gotten used to fancy equipment I never needed before but now couldn't do without. Case in point being tubeless. Expensive, and a pain in the ass, yet has measurably improved my riding. If I went back to tubes and basic tyres I would spend far less time wrestling with track pumps and repairing holes in expensive UST tyres, but I'm now convinced my riding would suffer also.
Bottom line, don't buy the expensive stuff to begin with and you literally won't know what you're missing, and will enjoy your riding equally as much as the next man.
£500 rigid single-speed with good geometry for example
Can't think of any companies off the top of my head who make nice £500 singlespeeds? Care to give us an example? Preferrably a neon orange one? 😉
It's like growing up in Ramsbottom. You think you have an Idylic lifestyle. Surrounded by big hills, isolated from the big city. You can't get radio 2 but that's a small price to pay. Then you try and buy a house of your own but they all cost £750,000 now because a load of cockneys have turned up with 8 million pounds after selling their garages, even that flat above the chippy with a dead pig with a reamed arse stuck in the fireplace is 500k, so you can't afford it and end up renting a flat in Middleton and get addicted to crack cocaine and have to sell your botty to survive.That's what the cycling industry has done to itself.
😀
nah, not at all. there would always be a company with no real marketing activity but a credible product / reasoning for it that would undermine them.
Oh aye? An example I can think of: On-one Reetard bars were 275g and about £30. Branded bars with the same kind of spec were a fair bit more wedge. I don't remember hearing of everyone stampeding to buy them over Eastons or Protapers.
I'm firmly in the "rest of us" camp - I have 521 back wheel so that I don't have to pay anyone to true it 😆
ok £600 now - but our iO was £500 a year ago 😉
or a £500 ss cross bike, well ok that's £550 next year.. but, still more fun than a lot of £2k bikes i've ridden.
tron, kit like those bars were exactly my point - if you don't want brand name 'kudos', there are lower price options that make you realise that you don't need to pay more. that undermines much of what is said about higher end branded kit by highlighting the law of diminishing returns.
of course we're ripped off, decades old technology branded and priced as the lastest and greatest, one of the reasons I will never (unless I earn a veritable s*** ton) buy a new bike. Your money doesn't go into R&D it goes to a man in an office who designs more acronyms and decides that they'll use a slighlty more expensive alloy this year and up the prices to cover the amazing new wonder metal.
of course we're ripped off, decades old technology
But it isn't is it? They improve over time - whether that matters is up to you as a bike is a bike but full suss bikes from the 90s are very poor compared to what we have now. Rip off? That's what happens to old people conned into paying for work they don't need - those of us who decide that we need more gears or less weight and decide to pay for that are not ripped off - maybe we're scared of looking behind the times but you do get something more for your money and you know what the choice is.
The thing is, even when there is good cheap kit out there, it doesn't seem to shift in bucketloads. You only have to look at the Carrera thread to see how hooked up a lot of people are by brand.
Elfinsafety ....could not agree any more suspension fork prices alone gets my blood boiling.
there no better for durability & improved performance is negligable.
i dont use lbs at all & thebikechain posts is a good example of why i dont bother.
i spent £4.5k last yr on bikes an bits....the end
Ah, there have been some intelligent replies (people who sort of agree with me)!
Seriously though, I think some of the responses on this thread prove my theory that many folk are taken in by marketing BS to such a degree that they really believe the hype. There's the issue of inflation/economics of course, but I think some folk are missing the point a bit.
If a company has a £6-7000 bike as it's TOTR model, then is a £3-4k model 'mid-range'? That's still a very hefty sum for a bicycle. My argument is that the price of cycling has risen disproportionately with the quality of product. Current XT, for example, is simply not of the quality of manufacture as early 90's XT. It's not.The materials are inferior. The tech may be advanced, but stuff wears out much faster, so it's poorer value for money. Even mid-range stuff like Deore is the same; Deore freehubs are very fragile these days. Granted, cheaper end stuff may be better value, but a £100 full susser from a catalogue is poorer value overall than a simple fully rigid bike for the same amount. The latter will probably last longer and therefore give greater value money.
Right. I'd like someone to attempt to justify why a £6500 Scott is worth nearly £4000 more than this £2600 bike from Decathlon. Both from massive companies.
http://www.decathlon.co.uk/EN/comp-pro-fc-900-72884310/#
Anyone? I'd like to know what I'm getting for my extra £3900.
As for other bits; I was looking at tyre the other day, and spotted something at £47.99. For the pair, I naturally assumed. No.
FOURTY SEVEN POUNDS AND NINETY NINE PENCE. FOR ONE TYRE.
Explain please.
Elfinsafety - Member
My argument is that the price of cycling has risen disproportionately with the quality of product. Current XT, for example, is simply not of the quality of manufacture as early 90's XT. It's not.The materials are inferior. The tech may be advanced, but stuff wears out much faster, so it's poorer value for money. Even mid-range stuff like Deore is the same; Deore freehubs are very fragile these days.
All apocryphal. Can you provide any evidence at all to back up these assertions?
One of the reasons that stuff wears out fast is that is gets hammered more. I suspect it's also affected by the amount of dust....
david moyes is my dad - Membersuspension fork prices alone gets my blood boiling
i recently bought some 140mm solo-air Maxle Recons from tftuned. £320. Brilliant performance, stiff, light, easy to setup, easy to maintain.
£320 is a lot of money for some people, Tora's are bloody good forks, they're a little heavier, but the chrome stanchions are very durable, and you can pick up 130mm Tora's for about £200...
i've got some nearly-new 130mm solo-air QR Recons sitting doing nowt in my kitchen. yours for £150 (posted).
forks are cheap, and very very good.
(don't complain about fork prices if you 'need' 150mm travel / 15mm maxle / separate high-low speed compression damping)
I don't think people would begrudge the prices if stuff did last longer. The technology may be advancing and improving performance, but improving durability doesn't seem that high on a lot of companies agenda?
I don't think people would begrudge the prices if stuff did last longer. The technology may be advancing and improving performance, but improving durability doesn't seem that high on a lot of companies agenda?
Why would it be? The idea is that you are suppose to use it for a couple of years at most and then buy newer and "better" bits. Why design something to last 20 years when it is going to be "obsolete" in two years? Reminds me of a case several years ago when a woman in Sweden started a class action suit against Sony Ericsson because a lot of their phones broke after about two years. Phones were not considered disposable back in the early to mid-2000s, but they certainly are now. The court eventually rule in favour of Sony Ericsson, saying that it's perfectly reasonable that a £200-£300 phone breaks in two years. That's probably increasingly where we are heading to now in mountain biking.
It was pleasant in a weird way to see companies like Mercian still offer services to repair older steel frames, including replacing damaged tubes.
Elf, how's the physio thing working out?
"All apocryphal. Can you provide any evidence at all to back up these assertions?"
Yes. I've got an original XTR M900 mech, done loads of miles, still sweet. And a similar vintage XT mech, again still in great working order. I've had newer XT mechs wear out within a year. They may be lighter, but they're not as well made. As for freehubs; I've had old XT ones last years (still got an XT front hub going strong, it's 20 years old), but newer ones have given up after just a few months. Newer STI shifters don't seem to last more than a couple of years. XT, Deore, whatever.
"One of the reasons that stuff wears out fast is that is gets hammered more. I suspect it's also affected by the amount of dust..."
I rode harder and faster when I was younger. Stuff just seemed to go on doing a job; now, it gives up after a relatively short period of time. Oh, and I was faster on heavier machinery. Go figure.
Why do you think Shimano have developed new chainring patterns every few years? I'll tell you why. Cranks themselves don't wear out, so the only way to get people to buy new ones is to make old ones obsolete by changing the bolt pattern. 5 bolt, 5 bolt compact, 4 bolt, what's next? XTR with proprietary chainrings for no other reason than to force you to buy extortionately expensive XTR rings, and scuppering any plans for replacing them with other manufacturers' stuff.
Original XTR stayed the same for a good few years. The next lot had a shorter product line lifespan. Soon, we'll have new XTR every year. Meaning the demand for new stuff is kept up. Built in obsolescence. Very wasteful and needless.
Anyone fancy a go at the Scott V Decathlon conundrum above?
Cranks themselves don't wear out,
oh yes they do....
Joxster_ my sincere apologies. Email me your address and I will send you another bottle foc.
Alternatively pop in for a full refund and keep the fizz.
My balls up-just make yourself known and if I am not there tell whoever serves you I said it was cool.
Mark.
(incidentally i don't even own a car.... in case anyone thought i was actually serious...)
10 years ago £300 forks were along the lines of a Judy Long Travel with 80mm travel, flexed like owt, weighed a heck of a lot and you couldn't do much apart from change preload.
Now you get rebound adjust (which is essential to make your fork track properly. Crap rebound=crap fork performance), lockout (useful for climbing), big ol' stanchions that make the fork stiffer and all in a lighter weight packages (lower by about a pound- which is a heck of a lot). Everything is better and only a fool can't tell the difference.
I'm perfectly willing to admit though that some things are bloody silly- Schwalbe tyres are, the price of Crank Bros wheelsets and several other companies too, obviously Fox forks but if you think it's overpriced, don't buy it. I don't.
Not read the entire thread, but I posted very similar thread couple of years back on TriTalk, varied response. The tipping point for me was the price of Duc 916 vs a Stork road bike....I still can get my head round it but it boils down to demand.
We keep paying it, they'll put the prices up and up a up....
Is the industry overpriced? Maybe, but then, there always seems to be a lot of people working in it that struggle to make a living. Small enterprises come and go, and it's only the big boys that really seem to weather the storms. In some ways I suspect that those of use involved in cycling are slightly skewed in their belief at how popular the activity is. Especially mountainbiking. Sure, it's growing, but how many people do you know outside of your immediate riding buddies who take it to the same level? What about at work? I rarely meet anyone who has the same passion. Most people believe that a £99 special from Halfords is more than up to the job. It's a specialist industry and as such, requires specialist prices to ensure feedback into the system in terms of new design and technological advances.
LBS's are a short-notice-lifesaver and have regularly saved me a weekends worth of sitting around wishing the postman would deliver. The amount you choose to spend is down to personal choice - over the last year I've built up a bike on the cheap (mostly secondhand), and also spend out a huge amount on components for another build (which, if I can just add, were sourced at extremely good prices by The Bike Chain, even when compared to online stores, so I am rather surprised to hear complaints up there ^ about their pricing).
Of course I'd like lower prices, but not if it means that the industry begins to stall and I loose my regular LBS's.
This seems to be turning into a debate about LBS rather than the OP's wider point about cost in the sector, for me I'd agree that 7k bikes are a rip off and XX/XTR aren't for mere mortals but at that level you are basically paying to have something very few people can have so you're not bothered hence companies charge whatever they like. For the 7k trek I'd want Gary Fisher to deliver the thing and pedal it up hills for me.
At a more achievable level the kit on 1k bikes seems to have got worse over the last 2-3 years which is likely tied to exchange rates in part and also the fact that we all went 'what a bargain' when bikes like the pitch were 1k and bought them en masse, companies notice this and see if they can get away with an extra few percents on next years model. Fuel charges on boxes from the far east are an issue as well as we got used to nice cheap shipping in the boom years and now its got nasty prices are up.
For me I've had to accept i'm Deore not XT in the last year and roadie colleagues of mine have done similar with a downshift to 105 on their bikes for the most part as none of us can justify the cost of items like cassettes, partially this is due to most of us being poorer (pay cut/freezes) than before and more concerned about our jobs but also because the items do seem to have got more expensive out of step with inflation quite recently. I'd agree technology has moved on and that explains some of the increase in cost but there are clearly some companies taking the mick. People obsession with upgrades doesn't help headline prices but it makes older stuff cheaper if you keep and eye out and as a case in point i'll probably be replacing bits of my drivetrain towards the end of the year as all the tarts go ten speed.
So yes some companies products cost a silly amount of money, and no I'm not buying them.
It's a disgrace that modern bikes have a fraction of the material of old bikes, but cost so much more.
Shocking!
Cranks themselves don't wear out
They definitely do..
breaks in two years. That's probably increasingly where we are heading to now in mountain biking.
My missus moans if I want to replace bikes more than once a decade as they are a massive outlay
for me I'd agree that 7k bikes are a rip off
I don't think they are at all, because they're not what 99% of people will ever buy. I don't think anyone on here believes for one second that these bikes are £5500 better than the £1500 option from the same range. They might very well be lighter/stiffer/whatever-er by some tiny amount and if that matters to people and they can afford it then they can buy it, and it's up to them to decide if they're being ripped off or not. If it doesn't matter they can save themeslves > 5K and get something else.
The fact that they exist doesn't mean anybody's getting ripped off. The top end will always exist in pretty much any market you can think of.
The bottom end of the market is great value for money. a couple of hundred will buy a functional MTB. £500 buys a decent bike that will be plenty for 90% of mtbers. I would say that was value for money
I get a load of stick from my colleagues and friends about what I spend on cycling and equipment, however unlike one of my colleagues I'm not having to find £30,000 a year to put my children through school, so I don't really care, and unlike others I don't want a flash car or particularly like eating out every day.
I really, really don't believe that there's a conspiracy ripping us all off with bike/ component prices - I just ask myself whether I consider the price worth paying for items and if I don't then I don't buy them - just be pragmatic about things.
I have today bought 2 cx tubs at £65 each though...
Can't think of any companies off the top of my head who make nice £500 singlespeeds? Care to give us an example? Preferrably a neon orange one?
http://www.decathlon.co.uk/EN/vitamin-117071608/
Anyone fancy a go at the Scott V Decathlon conundrum above?
That just proves that there is no rip off - if you think the Decathlon is the best value bike for you then go and buy it and be happy. Or buy a Planet X SL as maybe that's even better for the money? Or maybe it isn't.
This is one reason I like singlespeeds. With some good quality tyres and a simple reliable fork and disks, you have a bike that will last well and be easy to maintain. Supposing you can resist temptation to fiddle and upgrade.
I think the idea that cycling seems to have become more expensive is actually a problem of expectations. Our ideas of what constitutes a good bike have risen ever higher, while our wallets, unsurprisingly, have not. Maybe we should learn to be happy with what we have, and campaign for better public transport to the trail centres?
That just proves that there is no rip off - if you think the Decathlon is the best value bike for you then go and buy it and be happy.
That's not actually answering the question. To be fair, I don't expect anyone to actually do so, because if we're all being honest, we know that the Scott is a rip-off by comparison. I we're really, really honest, deep down.
So, it seems that bike companies charge inflated prices for stuff because they know people will pay it. Fair enough. Market forces and all that. But that's the only reason. Anything else is BS. And the thing about Bullshit is, if you swallow enough, you eventually get used to the taste.
Is it the manufacturers fault? They are making money from stupid people IMO.
You see so many people on £2k+ bikes and are overweight and havent a clue how to ride a bike. There are too many of these people nowadays IMO. They think, "Oh, Im going to get into biking so I need all the top gear"
Its all sprung from the plastic money. Leeping up with the jonesys. They spend a fortune on gear and dont use it.
we know that the Scott is a rip-off by comparison.
Well it's expensive but not sure why that means it's a rip-off; I considered Trek Madone 5.2 the best value for me when I wanted a decent road bike - maybe I should have got the Decathlon one?!
Prices were getting way better for a while there... I bought an Avanti Ridge Rider in 92 for $800 - rigid, all steel, with cantibrakes and the "new" SLX. A mate bought an Avanti Ridge rider in 07 -Ally hydroformed frame, coil rockshox, deore, and hydro discs for $750. I feel ripped off for buying in 92! Same bike now is about $1500. Guess there's been a few changes in the big old world over the last few years...
Is cycling a poor value for money?........
well, when you talk about top end, heres some info that may make you think about it.......
buy an absolute top of the range mountain bike, best of the best - £7500
for this you can go mountain biking, ride on the road, ride where ever you like i spose!!!!
or.....
buy...
A BRAND NEW CAR - Perodua Kalisa 1.0 EX - £4026
A BRAND NEW MOTOR BIKE - suzuki dr125 - £2899
A BRAND NEW CAPABLE MOUNTAIN BIKE - Specialized hard rock sport disc £400
TOTAL - £7325
so for less than the top of the range push bike, you can have a brand new car AND a brand new motor bike AND a brand new mountain bike!!!!!
when you look at it like that it does seem a rip off, ok the car, motornike and mountain bike may not be anything speacial, but i bet theres a lot more RandD that goes into cars/motor bikes.
Having said that, as previously said, who will actually buy the flagship models??? not many, andit really is about what is and isnt attainable.
when i was into mountain biking in the early 90's i had a raligh discovery, it was an ok bike at the time Reynolds 501 tubing, rigid forks and i think the new cost then was £399 (although i got it second hand of my dads mate for considerably less) i used to lust after more expensive specialised and marin bikes, but none the less used to have a blast on mine and could keep up with anyone else on more expensive bikes.
nowadays.....
i have fairly recently got back into it, after having a fair few years of not cycling atall and putting on a few llbs!!!!
i ended up buying a specialised hardrock sport. its a £400 bike is super light (compared to the discovery i used to have) has more gears, suspension, disk brakes, better gears.
so basically its the same price as i could have paid for my discovery but i have loads more for the money. i am very happy with it and am sure it will last me for some time!!!!
if no one had brought the high end bikes with new features in the years a stepped out, i probably wouldnt have a lightweight bike with disk brakes and suspension and more gears for the same money.
If people are prepared to pay for it, its not a rip off, theres no way i'd pay thousands for a bike (at the moment) but when i have more money and they are more attainable, and i feel i am worthy of spending more on a bike, then maybe, just maybe i will!!!!
if you think the clothing is to expensive, then go to asda and buy some shorts from there, that is of corse unless its the "status" you want, in wich case you have to pay for it
thats my opinion
jon