[Closed] Research - What bike clothing products do you feel are overpriced

Who are you doing this 'research' for and why?

I'd take Decathlon prices to be fair. Everything else is just marked up to pay for brand advertising, lack of scale or large profit margins...

I feel that everything I buy is at a fair price, otherwise I wouldn't buy it. I know that some cheaper stuff can be less well made, but sometimes I don't care. On the other hand, some brands have a certain cachet that I don't buy in to, so the likes of Rapha - where you are paying for the label - don't interest me.

You can buy cheap usable kit from Aldi, Sports Direct etc or expensive kit from Rapha, Assos etc and pretty much anything in between.
In a world where some people will pay £100+ for a pair of jeans and £30+ for a T shirt, what does overpriced actually mean ????

Im doing this research as I find the cost of a lot of sporting products (not just cycling items) ridiculous and have an interest in what others may think.

Nothing sinister as your comment appears to insinuate........ apologies if im incorrect

thats what im trying to work out......what do people see as overprice, you are correct everyone's opinion is going to be different but its nice to see what the overall view is.

Nothing is overpriced. Cheaper alternatives are always available.

Things cost money 😯

Define overpriced? If I can afford something, I buy it. If I can't I either don't buy it or find a cheaper one that meets my needs/wants/whim

Never pay RRP for anything.

Brake pads. They're more expensive than car ones.

Reading glasses. So expensive that glupton can't afford them.

Druidh - You have just reminded me that I do need to go and get my eyes tested. Thanks.

Helmets

A lot of mountain bike stuff is over-priced, because the name or the brand carries weight. Camelbak stuff is more expensive than Tesco stuff, but it does the same job; cue lots of people sayoing how much better the Camelbak stuff is..

Rapha is a case in point; it's a veblen goods product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Some other stuff is similar, but has a history or a technological standpoint which goes some way to justifying the cost.

Mountain biking is an aspirational activity, and most things are priced accordingly, but as you do more and get wasted by people on cheap bikes, in cheap kit, you begin to develop a sense of perspective.

🙂

I'll pay out for decent waterproofs ie jacket, shorts, gloves so that means Gore Bike Wear.

Certainly the price of some ladies shorts has gone through the roof. As regards jerseys - don't wear them as I prefer tops from outdoor manufacturers.

If you look after clothing and footwear, it can last a long time.

- Waterproof jackets. For £200+ I want an Italian tailor to touch my bollocks and comment on how manly sir is despite it being a little cold in the shop today.
- RRPs for tyres. £50 for a bit of rubber made from recycled condoms?
- Replacement parts for anything broken. £20.99 for a replacement brake lever for an Elixir 7. That's a fifth of a whole brake plus rotor damn you! In fact, any replacement washer, nut etc. Was looking to buy a circlip to replace one I lost during a fettle. £1.99 from a well known online retailer. £1.99 for 200 of the bleeding things on e-Bay.

Aren't Rapaha/Assos supposed to do free repairs for the lifetime of the product? Anyone tried testing that on kit they've used mountain biking?

I rode for a team last year and got a lot of stuff (not just clothes) at 'cost' price. A little eye-opener for me at the margins on these things! No doubt those in the industry won't be surprised but it shocked me.
Anyway, i never buy expensive clothing*, it doesn't last any longer because life-span is determined by crashes rather than wear.
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*except shoes and waterproofs as the quality differences can be quite stark.

I'd take Decathlon prices to be fair. Everything else is just marked up to pay for brand advertising, lack of scale or large profit margins...

+1 Decathlon stuff does the job for fair cost...

As a specky four eyes I find the prices for a lot of the cycling specific glasses out there pretty excessive, but there are always alternatives to the premium brands...

I rode for a team last year and got a lot of stuff (not just clothes) at 'cost' price. A little eye-opener for me at the margins on these things! No doubt those in the industry won't be surprised but it shocked me.

Yawn, that margin has to cover rent, staffing costs, and everything else involved in running a business. Nothing is ever RRP online anyway and you do realise that just about every high street retailer is on its knees and actually needs to sell it at RRP just to a) survive and b) have enough money to actually buy some stock the following season.

The markup on cycle kit is no different to just about any other consumer good. 2x markup in retail is pretty much standard.

Never mind the if the cost of clothing is overpriced, what about the bikes. I just do not buy the whole R&D development research costs a fortune story. Essentially you have about 5 or 6 tubes of alloy (usually) welded together by low priced Tiwanese labour a bit of paint, shipping and I expect thats sea freight not air.

What do the bike companys actually develop?

Suspension.....
nope fox, marzocchi, rockshox.... the bike company buys huge volumes at huge discounts

Ok must be sweet shifting transmissions..
no again that will be Shimano or Sram...no R&D there then

Wheels, no bought them in too...

Cranks....no. Brakes... no, so what R&D is getting done??????

So is this ranting unfounded, unreasonable?

Compare the price of a Santacruz Nomad SPX at Stiff cycles £4199

http://www.stif.co.uk/mtb/product/santa-cruz-nomad-spx-am-bike-2012/8672

Or a brand new GASGAS trials bike (yes with an engine and gearbox)
£4399
http://www.gasgasuk.com/

Are we getting value for money? I think not.

NCB - that's a 7/10 rant that.

[quote=NorthCountryBoy ]
Are we getting value for money? I think not.
You don't need to buy a Nomad. Other brands are available to suit your budget.

I think a lot of sports products, biking included, at a price the market will bear. Technical clothing particular Gortex has gone through the roof price wise, bike jackets hasn't hit the highs of sailing or ski wear but is still pretty heady. As per druidh's rule I don't own any Gortex bike or ski stuff. Sailing I do as its essential and kit yor wear 24 hours a day for days on end.

Never mind the if the cost of clothing is overpriced, what about the bikes. I just do not buy the whole R&D development research costs a fortune story. Essentially you have about 5 or 6 tubes of alloy (usually) welded together by low priced Tiwanese labour a bit of paint, shipping and I expect thats sea freight not air.

What do the bike companys actually develop?

Suspension.....
nope fox, marzocchi, rockshox.... the bike company buys huge volumes at huge discounts

Ok must be sweet shifting transmissions..
no again that will be Shimano or Sram...no R&D there then

Wheels, no bought them in too...

Cranks....no. Brakes... no, so what R&D is getting done??????

So is this ranting unfounded, unreasonable?

I made a frame out of 6 bits of tube once, the rear end fell off. I found that 9 worked better. That's R+D that is )

Cheers druidh just used it as an example of something that may be over priced for what it actually is.

For me there has to be value for money for every budget, why pay more?
I hate the "its what the market will bare" answer as the market will pay more than a product is worth if they dont realize that there getting fleeced.

Mostly all good value. Most of my riding kit lasts years, I have Sombreo & RaceFace shorts that are 5 years old. A Camelback that is the same. As a society we are obsessed with cost not value, looking for the cheapest option and assuming anything more expensive is a rip off.

I have had stuff that falls apart or tried cheaper stuff on that doesn't fit right. So I'm happy to pay more, in the end it lasts long enough to make it super cheap in the end.

Compared to things like Dealer Fit car options and Apples Memory rip off it's nothing.

Anyway, clothing prices..

£60 for a lycra SS jersey is expensive £-for-materials. But that's probably the real cost of a small number of units (MOQ per run) paying a creative guy to think up interesting designs, have a website and some kind of living as a side-project. So if you get a rare, interesting top for your £60 and that makes you feel good, it's good vfm.

Rapha etc.. really good quality kit + brand image that costs some £ to create = high rrp.
Tesco / aldi stuff can do a fair enough job in terms of function for the £.

Different types of vfm I suppose, take your pick. Overpriced will be like aldi kit at rapha prices to some extent and it'll not be around long.

Aldis stuff is a bit steep, lidl is about right

£55 for an Endura LS260 jersey = bargain, it's pretty much the only thing I wear between October and April, just add a compression tank top for the cooler days and LS base layer for sub zero outings.

£20 for a decathlon jersey = no so much a bargain, fit seems very odd, does anyone have a chest that wide and shoulders that narrow?

£160 for Northwave SPD winter shoes = bargain, like the Endura top they come out in October and don't go away untill the ground dries out.

£25 decathlon shorts + liner = not so good, the arse falls down

£45 endura humvees = bargain, fit's perfect and seem to be lasting.

All clothing made by 'Altura'.

It falls appart like cheap-crap, 'cept it's not so cheap. IME

anything that fits.

i'm an averagely scrawny cyclist, but if i want to buy clothes that doesn't flap around in the wind like a circus marquee then i've got to spend silly money.

there are plenty of decent jackets etc. around £60, but they're all cut for fatties.

if anything i want LESS material, my jackets should be cheaper, surely?

Have you looked in the kids or women's section?

the price of baggy shorts galls me. £50-60 for the fashion brands (Fox, Sombrio, Royal, Troy Lee, etc.) and they're not really made to last the rigours of mountain biking - zips break, pockets get holes in them, bum wears through, stitching unravels. I have a pair of Scott shorts that were £30 that are about 6 years old and worn a lot and they've outlasted other shorts which might last a year and have cost £50.

I tend to buy my cycling clothes in the sale because I think RRP is ALWAYS overpriced.

All cycling kit is vastly overpriced, clothes less so than bike parts.

Never pay RRP for anything.

That's me, that is. Nothing more galling than seeing something half price in the sales a few weeks after you've paid full (overpriced) whack for it.

Some clothing companies profit margins must be absolutely [b]mahoooosive!![/b]. Its pretty much all mass-produced in Chinese sweatshops, by bonded serfs, for buttons.

Have you looked in the kids or women's section?

no, i'm 6'1" - with long arms.

and i'm going to side with NorthernCountryBoy and his 7/10 rant.

What do the bike companys actually develop?

what have we seen 'developed' in the last 10 years?

1 more gear - pointless.

15mm axles - pointless.

a new-looking specialized enduro every 5 minutes - pointless.

tapered head tubes - pointless.

re-styled cranks/brake levers from shimano every 5 minutes - pointless.

post-mount forks/frames - pointless.

but we're all paying for these 'developments' - through higher prices, even on products without the features.

I find fox stuff perfect personally. It's comfortable, washes well, lasts well and doesn't cost too much. Dakine stuff has been OK too.
I've had kit from Endura, Altura and Royal fall to pieces on me so I won't be buying any of that again.

Helmets, tyres, rapha, assos

Waterproof jackets, decent ones are extortionate.
But if you're going to ride when the weather is foal, you just have to shell out, no matter how much you bridle at the price.

Aldi and decathlon stuff is a shoe in, but can fall at the last hurdle when it comes to ultimate quality.

I'd rather not handicap myself with really cheap stuff, but it usually does the job.

In the mane, I reckon you can'ter beat the cheaper stuff for value.

Loosely related to biking, but I read somewhere RedBull is not that profitable - their marketing expenses are huge, to keep up with the 'brand image' of being involved in extreme sports.

Wonder how much the sky jump would have cost? Sponsoring F1 team? Redbull Rampage?

mind you, tyres? - i just bought a pair of 'smorgasboards' for £30 - they're ace.

helmets? - i just bought a new giro skidlid for £30 - bargain.

Aren't Rapha/Assos supposed to do free repairs for the lifetime of the product? Anyone tried testing that on kit they've used mountain biking?

Rapha repaired my 6yr old softshell jacket FOC a few months ago. Only used it MTBing a couple of times but it's done thousands of miles on the road bike in all weathers. And it's still going strong now.

Also, I need a facepalm pic for that post that northcountryboy wrote...
Ah, here we go.

[img] [/img]

brakes' comment shows that it's only particular models, not types of products that you can say are overpriced.

the price of baggy shorts galls me. £50-60 for the fashion brands (Fox, Sombrio, Royal, Troy Lee, etc.) and they're not really made to last the rigours of mountain biking - zips break, pockets get holes in them, bum wears through, stitching unravels. I have a pair of Scott shorts that were £30 that are about 6 years old and worn a lot and they've outlasted other shorts which might last a year and have cost £50.

The Scott shorts are great VFM, the Fox/Sombrio etc aren't.
So the good stuff is out there. As somebody else said on the previous page people often confuse 'cost' and 'value' too.

kit that lasts, fits well and makes riding more enjoyable is worth paying for.

I also have a lot of cheap stuff, i sometimes use it to commute in.

Mavic Stratos baggies. £80 odd for a pair of lightweight unlined shorts with fa in the way of 'features' or usable pockets. Snap fasteners which rip out of the material after a few uses, and have to be replaced with buttons. £50ish for the matching liner/chamois which looks like a fetishists dream.

Unfortunately the nicest cut and material in a summer short I've used, but c'mon -£130 at retail???

the price of baggy shorts galls me. £50-60 for the fashion brands (Fox, Sombrio, Royal, Troy Lee, etc.)

what have we seen 'developed' in the last 10 years?
1 more gear - pointless.
15mm axles - pointless.

Win Win in my book.

People whinge on about this sort of stuff but in the most it's rather good.

Following on from Mikewsmith:

what have we seen 'developed' in the last 10 years?

a new-looking specialized enduro every 5 minutes - pointless.

tapered head tubes - pointless.

re-styled cranks/brake levers from shimano every 5 minutes - pointless.

post-mount forks/frames - pointless.

It wasn't all that long ago that people were saying 9-speed was a stupid idea...

And so it goes, people understand the price of everything and the value of nothing.

For example: You can purchase a cheap down gillet (that is not that cheap really) or you can pay a bit more and purchase a british one from PHD with a lifetime guarantee, support British manufacturing and own a better quality product.

Unfortunately people buy on price mostly ... and look what its done to the world.

Marketing doesn't help, however, one tip: take some trouble to seek out companies without massive marketing spend and you just might find a gem: USE,Exposure,Hope,Turner,Middleburn,PHD,Chris King,Osprey, Finisterre, Meindl... None of these companies are particularly "cheap" but all make products where you know they're worth the money. And not by coincidence all have good support too.

Crazylegs cheers for double face palm genuine LOL for that! 🙂

I agree that some of the new things introduced are a genuine improvment.
15mm through axle, yes better than a 9mm open drop out designed for a road bike in 1922.

Post mount callipers, yes please, but arnt most frames still IS mount with a horrible bolt on adaptor?

This is most of my original basis for my wee rant. The suppliers are doing a lot of development, brakes, forks, extra chain rings on the steel cassette to remove an alloy granny ring I was not convinced about. Rapid rise rear mechs? Flippy floppy combined brake & shifters aghhh!

But thats not the bike companys, its all bought in from suppliers competing with one another for buisness.

To rone. I agree in buying quality, have a couple of decent (expensive) bikes, but when I bought them I considered them to be good value compared to what else was offered.

There is good stuff available for less money, but its a very fine line between cheap and cheerfull and cheap and nasty.

pinetree - Member

Nobody's forcing you to buy one

no, but specialized still have to cover the cost, pushing up the cost/price of ALL their products.

It (tapered headtubes) allows riders to run bigger forks (160mm+) without them having to tolerate massive flex, or use stupidly big stems and stupid looking frames

so it's nothing more than a cosmetic improvement over 1.5" - which looks fine anyway? (1.5 stems on big forks don't look out of place) and is as old as the hills?

Every generation, they (shimano cranks/brake levers) get lighter and stiffer. Some may dispute this, but again, nobody's forcing you to buy them!

but they are forcing me to pay for them, with the increased cost-base for every shimano product.

IS mounts are such a pain in the tits

no, they're ace - you can take a caliper off, and bolt it back on again with everything in the same position, you only have to adjust it once.

Yes you can use adapters for I.S. to Post, which is fine, but many people (myself included) like the idea of just bolting a caliper straight on, and it taking virtually no time to set up.

and potentially knackering the thread in your fork/frame rather than a cheap adapter? - a lower leg fork service isn't hard to do, but it's a lot easier if you take the caliper off. regularly tightening/loosening an aluminium/magnesium thread is a very good way to end up with a small, sad, pile of stripped threads.

post-mount offers an arguable improvement (i see none), for a potentially very awkward drawback.

It wasn't all that long ago that people were saying 9-speed was a stupid idea...

it is - every extra gear that gets squeezed in makes the system harder to to index, and more sensitive to dirt and friction.

perhaps i haven't made myself quite clear, there have been many, excellent, welcome, engineering advances made in the world of mountain bikes. Years ago, there were real problems to fix; like brakes that didn't work, suspension that used bit of rubber, geometry not out of place on a road bike. Aluminium tubes that were too skinny, so flexed and cracked.

etc. - early mountain bikes were rubbish.

there's also a lot of pointlessness - seemingly dreamt up by worried designers/engineers who have a mortgage to pay.

i suggest that all the big problems have been fixed, and that most-if-not-all changes i see are largely/entirely cosmetic.

there are also some proper bargains to be had. excellent products that somehow manage to work perfectly, without the latest 'developments'...

the overreliance on %age margin rather than actual margin

Pair of shorts, costs £10 to make
add 50% to allow for factory margin
double it to allow for manufacturer margin and costs
double it again to allow for retailer (shop) margin and costs

£10 shorts now cost £60 retail, manufacturer makes, say, a fiver, retailer makes a tenner.

so, if a slightly better short costs just £15 to make, the %age margin multiplier has a disordinate effect, the retail price is now 90 quid, costs are not much higher, but the [b]actual[/b] margin has shot through the roof

I still don't see what's wrong with square-taper bottom brackets and 8-speed, though I have embraced 140mm forks and disc brakes (albeit BB7s).

Before I fitted Magura Thors to it, my main bike cost me less to put together than my car is worth. That's saying something given that the car is a Y-reg Fiesta with 111,000 miles on the clock...

OK kids, here's one for ya.

What should things cost?

Actually, the only thing I don't seem to be able to get at a price I'm happy to pay is durable 110mm BCD middle chainrings.

Everything else I keep low-tech and buy on eBay, from Germany or lightly used... whatever's cheapest.

Threads like these always bring out the cheaper = better crowd, don't they? Has anyone actually tried making a pair of shorts, or a set of gloves? Like, from scratch? I'd happily pay lots of money not to have to do it...

The question shouldn't be "what items of clothing are overpriced" but "what items of bike clothing are generally not available at lower prices?"

I'm drawing a blank to be honest. Capes? Spatterdashes? SPD brogues?

@ahwiles - your posts above make for refreshing and realistic reading , its nice to see some people are not clones who buy what they are told they "need" but i doubt your opinions are widely shared on here unfortunately !

...early mountain bikes were rubbish

I guess it's a whole different discussion, but it depends how 'early' you mean. The '94-95 FSR platform that JMC used to ride is still a viable XC platform for 80-90% of UK riding.

For my money, the single biggest thing to improve over the last 20 years is braking, first with V-brakes then disc brakes. Much else has become unnecessarily complex for the vast majority of riders, and many things have become less reliable.

Yes, of course there's also been a suspension revolution in the same timeframe, but again, it's arguable that so much suspension is overkill for the sort of riding that many people do. And no, I'm not talking about trail centres.