To replace my carbon scout with all the upgrades would cost more than that. But I won't be doing that anytime soon and wouldn't be paying full price
I don't believe anybody is buying complete £5k+ bikes and paying that. The vast majority who walk into a bike shop and point and say "i'll take that one please" will be higher earners doing it on C2W. There's 40% off straight away.
I've not bought a new, complete, really to ride bike in decades - tend to build my own. I reckon my Rocketmax (early 2020) was the closest I've come. Drivetrain and saddle was used (bar cranks); second hand bars, pretty much everything else was new but at mates rates and deals. reckon that set me back about £3.5k. In the last 6 years though I've changed forks, brakes, wheels, cassette and endless chains and chainrings, so there's another couple of grand. I've done some ACE riding on it though, so I (mostly) don't begrudge the spend.
I think I'd struggle to spend much more than that on a depreciating asset though. I already have a loft full of unsaleable frames gathered over the last 30 years that are worth money to me, but not to anyone else.
My Cotic Rocket Max is the equivalent of their Gold XT version so RRP of just short of 6k. I got the frame & shock at a discounted price, then on C2W so saved fair a bit there, although I'm not a higher rate tax payer so not as much saving as others.... Then I built it up with some bits from a previous bike and other discounted bits inc very cheap forks from Merlin, so all in I probably paid no more than 3k.
I couldn't justify more than 5k I don't think. Even for a e-bike.
How are folk getting such chunky discounts on new bikes?Last years new bike... I'll happily buy last years colours, (or three years old colours!) as long as the kit is still relatively current, it doesn't bother me if the colour is out of fashion, they get ridden, not looked at.
Usually upgrade as soon as i buy, as no one seems to build the specs i like, so i've never spent 8k on a bike. Why buy top end kit that i don't like and then take it off and replace it with other top end kit?
TBH, my most expensivest bikes are all my ex team stuff, so would probably (given inflation) make even an S-Works owner wince... Think my nicest road bike would have cost about 6-6.5k to put together at retail. In the late 90s. So probably 13-14 grand now. Still in storage, skinny round tubes, no hidden cables, tubulars, rim brakes... Most expensive MTB was probably about 5k, maybe 2005-6. Long since gone to the tip. In pieces. The 4k FS i bought 5-6 years ago is more competent in every way. (that was discounted too)
There’s a lot of talk on why bike industry brands are struggling, especially at the smaller end. I think this thread demonstrates perfectly what, or at least one of, the reasons is.
I have an sworks tarmac that, even building from parts, cost me 9 grand.
Bought it 3 years ago. I reckon I coukd get 3k if I sold it tomorrow. It's a great bike, but it sure ain't woth what i paid for it.
Most I've spent on a full bike was 3.4k for an eeb but I probably spent more on my flaremax which was 2k for frame and shock. But as above, it's diminishing returns over a certain price point, especially when you're a no-talent bimbler like me. There's always parts and frame bargains to be found so even if building something custom with new everything I'd get nowhere near 8k.
There’s a lot of talk on why bike industry brands are struggling, especially at the smaller end. I think this thread demonstrates perfectly what, or at least one of, the reasons is.
Bit cryptic.
Can I take a guess at what you are getting at and say you reckon it's because no one (or very few people) are willing to pay RRP for anything?
Nope, £6k is about my psychological limit for spending on a bike (although I did buy 4 last year...). The amount of £8k+ bikes at trail centres these days (compared with about 8 years ago when I was last going to them) is pretty astounding though. A lot won't be discounted as makes like Amflows and Athertons aren't generally are they?
8 grand now is £5910 8 years ago .... Is is still as astounding?
*BOE Calculator, Dec 2025...
(I'm not disagreeing with you, its still mad, but you just have to remember to account for the passing of time)
I'd quite happily spend £8 on a bike. I bought one for over £5k back in 2009 so probably similar.
Absolutely no way I would spend that on a car though. It's all about priorities isn't it. A car is just a tool for carrying a bike to races. A bike is something which is fun, can be a work of art and something on which you make memories.
how you all getting these discounts? just wait for the end of season sales, or is there some magic incantation?
There's an element of that too I guess. My riding is too varied to spend a lot on any one niche. Plus there's nothing I ride that would actually benefit from a £3k bike, let alone £8k.
Yes, very true! I have six (old) bikes which combined might have been £8k RRP, but they're between 2 and 10 years old. Each one has quite a specific use.
And also yes. I did pick up a very light carbon fibre gravel bike which probably weighed 3kg less than my steel equivalent AND with wider tyres. I briefly convinced myself that YES it would be faster and YES it would be more fun. But since I couldn't afford it I then convinced myself it would probably break or squeak so I walked away 😎
I don't and probably never will.
Mate has just splashed north of £8k on a custom Atherton S150 build......
When I change my bike it will just be frame only and swap bits over from current build which has Hope kit, XT and Fox suspension.
I've only ever bought 3 complete bike since I started riding seriously and they were all less than £1k each.
I have bought 2 Santa Cruz's this year, which even I can see appears excessive. However the cost of the pair is still 1k less than the RRP of one. Previous years model and ex-demo both with warranty.
Last frame I paid RRP for (from memory) was an IBIS Mojo4 as there were are rare as the poo of a rocking horse and I really wanted one. Those SCs are the first full bikes I've bought for years. Some of the "savings" may have gone in upgrades...
I have owned £8k bikes... I don't currently, but I have
That said, I do own 3 bikes that would all have been around £6k each when new, another that would have been £4k, and 2 others at £3k...
My only defence here is that I have spent most of the last 20yrs working in the bike trade, so have had access to various trade discounts as well as buying most of them at the right time too (end of season, new model coming etc.)... I would guess I probably have around £14-15k invested in bicycles in my garage, but to be fair, would realise 80-90% of that back if I had to sell them soon for whatever reason too... There has to be an upside to working in the bike trade eh?!?! 🤣
There’s a lot of talk on why bike industry brands are struggling, especially at the smaller end. I think this thread demonstrates perfectly what, or at least one of, the reasons is.
Bit cryptic.
Can I take a guess at what you are getting at and say you reckon it's because no one (or very few people) are willing to pay RRP for anything?
Yeah. I think people forget that brands, again, especially the smaller ones, don’t really factor in a margin to specifically allow for discounting. The bigger ones don't either, but needs must sometimes to save storage costs/clear room for a newer version. The RRP is the price they want to sell at to cover their costs, pay their bills, staff etc and then have some money left over to reinvest in RnD/build a rainy day fund Etc to sustain the business. ‘Profit’ shouldn’t be a dirty word.
7 bikes in our house totalling less than £3000 between them. Most I've paid is £1100 for a new canyon road bike which I've had 12 years and will be keeping as long as it still works.
‘Profit’ shouldn’t be a dirty word.
No, but 'chasing profits' should be.
Just when it looks like things are starting to settle down 'the industry' decides it's time to launch a new wheel size. I would be very skeptical about paying any significant money for a bike if we have a new wheel size on the horizon. If there is a new wheel size then soon there will be new hub standards, new crankset standards, and whatever else needs to be tweaked in the name of 'incremental improvements.'
If I could be reasonably certain I could buy a bike and it would be a forever bike and all the bits that bolted onto the frame wouldn't be out of date and difficult to get hold of in ten years I'd quite happily pay £8k plus to get everything just right.
As it stands everything I buy feels like it has a sell by date. When you look at it like that you'd be mad to not find the biggest discount you can get.
But yes, smaller brands are always going to be the unfortunate victims of the big brands' corporate greed.
Profit isn't a dirty word, but people don't owe it to you to buy your products if they are too expensive. If a brand devalues it's products through extensive discounting, that isn't the consumers fault.
And the people who won’t buy without a discount regardless of price?
I bought me, my daughter and wife e-bikes for around £6.5k in total. Two Merida e-one sixties used and a Lapierre Overvolt AM new (very low spec and insanely cheap as bought). Lots of part swapping, selling and buying bits. All have an excellent spec now, Zeb, Fox 38 Performance Elite and Psylo for my much lighter daughter, Fox X2 shocks, 4 pot Shimano brakes all round, excellent and bombproof wheels along with our favourite tyres. There is nothing I would change on any of them although note, I have mentally put aside a contingency in case one of the Merida EP800 motors decides to leave this cruel world! 🤣 anyway, I really enjoy the process of getting “cheap” bikes and building them up, regardless of whether I need to.
We have the same approach to most things, which means we don’t have mortgages, only need to work part time and can both retire early if we want. We don’t care about the next new car or the biggest house we can afford, we’d much rather have time to do everything we love which is outside and largely on bikes. Cheap (er) bikes are just part of the story that facilitate this.
I dread to think, but yeah, if I had to replace some of my custom ti bikes they would easily exceed that.
I love how many of you are coming up with the comment of 'I bet I have just as much fun as you', I'd be interested to also do a comparison on how much you paid for your houses, I bet my house works just the same as yours and I have just as much fun as you do and I didn't pay as much as you. It's all relative isnt it as to a persons priorities and what they want to spend their own hard earned money on.
For me I dont have kids and nor do I drink or smoke, I have a very sensible house and mortgage which fits two adults and all their associated hobbies. I can't take my money with me so I shall spend it however I decide and instead I shall take my memories with me.
Spec Levo SL I paid £7.5k for discounted and I think my transition sentinel would be around the same if I added up all the parts as it's a custom build rather than off the peg as I have a preference for components that dont generally come on the off the peg builds.
I love how many of you are coming up with the comment of 'I bet I have just as much fun as you', I'd be interested to also do a comparison on how much you paid for your houses, I bet my house works just the same as yours and I have just as much fun as you do and I didn't pay as much as you. It's all relative isnt it
Not really no, more expensive houses have more things you can do more stuff. My £1000 road bike can keep up with £10k road bikes. Expensive MTB's are also only marginally more capable than a decent modestly priced one. I can race my Whippet xc and beat people on much pricier bikes.
I can't take a shit in my house when my son is on the bog though, and I'll bet a more expensive house would have two bogs, or a swimming pool or a gym for the turbo etc.
I can't take a shit in my house when my son is on the bog though, and I'll bet a more expensive house would have two bogs, or a swimming pool
Peeing in the pool you can get away with but I think taking a dump is a step too far!
And the people who won’t buy without a discount regardless of price?
You can give them a discount or not sell to them!
Just priced up my Stanton and if I'd bought the frame new and done the same build it would have tipped over the £8k mark.
S/H frame and shock, some full price parts, some slightly discounted parts and probably stands me around £5.5-6k
Does absolutely nothing better than a £3k bike, it was just a wish/want
I'm not saying it's easy but people don't owe it to you to buy your stuff.
I just bought a bike because it was pretty and at half off was hard to resist. Canyon had the option to hold onto the inventory or take a hit to shift it. No way would I have paid the 4k rrp for it unless I really needed a new bike and there was nothing similar for less. Even then I would probably have settled for something cheaper with less fancy kit. So there was never an option to make that sale happen at RRP.
Have not paid that much myself, nowhere near. RRP of one of my bikes is £7k but I got it second hand for £1600. Built my XC bike for around £4k I think? Probably the most I've ever spent? Similar spec at RRP would be a chunk more.
I had a 2006 Orange 5 that I kitted out with full XTR so that'd be expensive now. The original bike was discounted though. Thinking about it every main bike I've had since then was either in the sale or second hand.
Reckon I'm going to get an e-bike when I retire in a few years and that could easily be over £8k going by what I've been eyeing up so I'd certainly pay it, just haven't had to so far.
In the not full price camp.
My FS has full axs and flight attendant, that and the carbon wheels are worth way more retail than I paid for the whole bike.
Saying that it only has that because it was such a ridiculous bargain.
RRP and actually worth are two very different figures.
My new ebike (Norco with Bosch SX motor) has an rrp of £8K... I paid £3k
I bought a Santa Cruz Hightower 18 months ago... rrp well over £8k... I paid under £6k. So that's two £8k bikes for the price of one 🙂
Some of my bikes are worth far more to me than £8k, even if I paid nothing like that!
Wait till you see the price of a top level track bike frame. That 8k will almost get you something you’ll see on the TV. You will need some wheels, bars and chainset, and see no change from about £12-15k. Of course there are cheaper options. But who wouldn’t want a Factor, Look or (gasp) Koga Kinsei like Harry’s?
£1250 for my most expensive bike purchase.
The most expensive bike I bought relative to earnings would have been the 1995 stumpjumper which cost £900 when I was a uni student. M1000 (discounted to £750) 4 years earlier a close second.
All other bikes range between £30 - £1100 and the replacement cycle is between 5 and 10 years.
I have probably only just come close to spending £8k on bikes and maintenance in 36 years of mountain biking/cycling 🤔
So, lose/lose for the manufacturer then? Careful, you might’ve stumbled across my point.
It almost sounds like we should be making a moral decision to pay RRP, even though we could buy the same product at over 50% off.
It's not far away from the argument that we should use our LBSs. I don't use any LBS (apart from one or two where I personally know the person who will be working on my bike) because I can't be sure that if I take my bike in for a brake bleed they won't use mineral oil on my Sram brakes because 'it's all brake fluid*'
The cycling industry in general has not been functioning efficiently for a long time. The last time I remember 50+% discounts not being the norm was in the last century. There is definitely scope to make it more efficient but as long as manufacturers are happy to 'design' their bike in the US/Europe but outsource all the manufacturing to the Far East then these inefficiencies are going to continue.
But cycling is nothing if not traditional and the tradition seem to be to try to guilt customers into paying over the odds because, 'it might not be here if you don't'.
*Source: this is what the 'mechanics' were doing in the workshop before I took over.
If I'd bought my bike new when the model was released in autumn 2020 (when it would have been full covid price)
Couldnt find a £ price but Enduromag has it in Euros.
€ 7,199 for a component spec slightly worse than mine
€ 8,399 for the above but with carbon wheels, so arguably better than mine.
I actually got it frame only in early 2022. £1000 off, last large in the country.
Build cost as it is now, probably around 4-5k.
Money spent on it total in 4 years, a bit more (theres another shock, set of brakes, wheelset, coil conversion on the fork) , still under 8k. But its gone out 2 or 3 times a week, plus one or two week long riding holidays a year.
Thats optimistically £10 a ride so far (maybe more like £15), ignoring any potential future resale value.
On the one hand, I can't see how a £8k bike from the big brands is anything other than profiting at RRP, there's even examples of bikes you could buy the frame only, and every part at RRP, and it still be cheaper than the model in the shop.
Worth it? It's a fundamentally pointless hobby that makes us happy. The value for money calculation is always infinitely bad, you're into the mathematical concept of not all infinites are equal. So if you can afford it, why not?
Had they bought a second hand Berlingo then the whole family could have posh bikes and they could probably go heli biking too.
You could buy two houses in the north of England with the change .......
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87496257#/?channel=RES_BUY
The highest list price of any of my six bikes was £2800 - for a genesis grapil 😂 which I bought as a frame only for £350, I could probably give it away as a full bike if I tried.
On the one hand, I can't see how a £8k bike from the big brands is anything other than profiting at RRP, there's even examples of bikes you could buy the frame only, and every part at RRP, and it still be cheaper than the model in the shop.
Worth it? It's a fundamentally pointless hobby that makes us happy. The value for money calculation is always infinitely bad, you're into the mathematical concept of not all infinites are equal. So if you can afford it, why not?
Had they bought a second hand Berlingo then the whole family could have posh bikes and they could probably go heli biking too.
You could buy two houses in the north of England with the change .......
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87496257#/?channel=RES_BUY
The position of the throne, possibly enhanced by the wide-angle lens makes of think of a MDMA come-down I had in the late 90s. I can imagine sitting there wondering what I was being dragged backwards into the wall.
Not for me that one.
I could be dead before you know it (as many acquaintances of my age (58) already are), and I can afford it, so why the hell not? No I didn’t pay full rrp for any of them. 3 were used and 2 were well discounted but they weren’t 50%. And the amount of first-world pleasure I’ve had out of all of them is fabulous. I ride my bikes almost every day of the year, so in rides per pound I figures im still not doing badly.
I'm at the point where my wife won't let me have any more. I'd like a carbon gravel bike with all the pannier and fork bag fixings - a do it all. My road bikes are vintage and can only run a 39x26 lowest gear, so can be hard work with a broken body if I get the hills wrong. The CX bike will go up walls, but it has nothing to carry bags - I've bodged a rack with P-clips before and handling was 'interesting' (the whole thing swayed and I ride all the time with heavy bags). I thought my request was fine, run it through "bike to work", the £3.5k max will cost me £2k. Gone is the idea of a carbon GRX Di2 2x12... and carbon wheels.
Nope you don't need another bike.
So I've gone out and bought a QR/Axel mount rack and some new gravel panniers to do some mini tours on the CX.
Nope and never. £8000 is a simply ludicrous amount of money to consider for a bike. I don’t think any of mine go much over £2.5k and event that is faintly ridiculously when I say it out loud.
Nope you don't need another bike
Sounds like you need another wife tbh.
Sod that actually, not another one, N-1 😉
