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Rose halting sales ...
 

[Closed] Rose halting sales of bikes to UK

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tHiS iSN't tHe BrExit I vOtED fOR!


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:20 am
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In before the "yeah, but a deal hasn't been done yet" guys.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:23 am
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Best of luck Neil.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:26 am
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They can’t. New bikes must have the brakes the UK way round.

https://www.cyclinguk.org/cyclists-library/regulations/safety-regulations

Unless assembled by the customer. No reason the brakes can't be part of tha assembly process.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:30 am
 pdw
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Can anyone explain what "dumping protection reasons" might mean?


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:34 am
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Unless the next step is BMW and the likes stopping RHD cars for the same reasons!!!!

Japan uses RHD (and moto-style brakes on bikes). It's a major market for Euro car makers so they'll make RHD just for that.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:35 am
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Unless assembled by the customer. No reason the brakes can’t be part of tha assembly process.

Shimano brake levers must be split from the hoses and bled afterwards. If they're supplied to the UK, the suppliers will need to do that so they are ready to fit.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:39 am
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I bought my road bike in the UK and my MTB is YT so came set up with euro brakes. I'm very used to rear braking with my right hand when MTBing now but I have rented a couple of bikes and found it very easy to just remember to squeeze the other lever instead. I guess if you've been doing it one way for decades it's harder but for me it comes naturally.

That is a poor excuse by Rose though, it's definitely brexit related instead and they just don't want to say it.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:43 am
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Can anyone explain what “dumping protection reasons” might mean?

Am guessing, but do groupset manufacturers not try to prevent companies masquerading as a 'bike manufacturer' but then selling off cheap groupsets e.g. 'dumping' cheap groupsets on the market and lowering the perceived value?

As such, if Rose were only selling frames and forks to the UK, then within the (post-EU) UK market they might not be seen as a manufacturer, and therefore might be seen as breaching Shimano/SRAM's 'dumping protection' measures if they are only selling parts and not complete bikes?


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:44 am
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Wierd, I was told that the UK was th largest MTB market in eurpoe by a long way. i dunno if that is still true but it seems daft to dump a whole market.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:45 am
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Wierd, I was told that the UK was th largest MTB market in eurpoe by a long way. i dunno if that is still true but it seems daft to dump a whole market.

Not by a long way


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 10:58 am
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it seems daft to dump a whole market

What if you don't have a big presence in that market and selling into it costs more money than you are willing to spend? Not making a profit is the daftest thing a company can do.

Unless assembled by the customer. No reason the brakes can’t be part of tha assembly process.

Hold that thought, and add road bikes.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:00 am
 pdw
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As such, if Rose were only selling frames and forks to the UK, then within the (post-EU) UK market they might not be seen as a manufacturer, and therefore might be seen as breaching Shimano/SRAM’s ‘dumping protection’ measures if they are only selling parts and not complete bikes?

That seems plausible, although I'm a bit surprised that it's an issue if they're only selling retail components. Pretty sure that all Shimano stuff I've had from Rose has been in retail packaging.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:04 am
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Hold that thought, and add road bikes

Or anything internally routed


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:04 am
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If I'm Rose this is an easy decision to make...

1) Faff and added complexity with internal routing of swapping as they seem to be batch building standard builds now rather than doing the custom thing. Perfectly reasonable considering the level of demand for bikes over the last 6 months.

2)  Leadtime on some bikes that they can take orders on is probably into 2021 now, so Brexit complicates fulfilling them, there could well be duties etc that will have to be paid buy the consumer, which may not have been stated at time of ordering.

3) Health and Safety - what rules will apply?  Are they opening themselves up to a nightmare?


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:10 am
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Aye road bikes is an issue on the brakes. The thing to remember for all things post brexit is that its made us a soft target for cuts. Rose sell good value bikes. They're not rinsing them out at some massive margin. So as soon as things get a bit difficult they're going to look for the easy ways to improve their business and streamline operations.

We were never likely to get a trade deal which kept the borders open between us and the EU, and now the Gov. seems determined to squash out the last flicker of hope that could happen we sit here, 3 1/2 months to go with no idea how or indeed how well trade will function between us and EU countries. So yeah, if I was Rose or in fact any EU based bike company right now I'd not be selling anything I couldn't deliver before the end of the year, and I would be questioning the value of continuing after when there's massive lead times on key components now, which will likely create shortages in 2021. Just like Rose sometime in the not too distant future we'll have to shutdown our EU sales for at least some period of transition to allow for the changes in VAT and duty that will happen. Straddling the change would be a royal PITA so we'll probably stop and then restart once the outlook is clear. Not what I want to do but probably the best option I have.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:20 am
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tetrode

That is a poor excuse by Rose though, it’s definitely brexit related instead and they just don’t want to say it.

Why would they not want to say it? It's not like pointing out that Brexit is a disaster is somehow taboo.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:21 am
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That seems plausible, although I’m a bit surprised that it’s an issue if they’re only selling retail components. Pretty sure that all Shimano stuff I’ve had from Rose has been in retail packaging.

Supply agreements generally prohibit selling outside the EU. Thats a relatively small window now where we're still in the EU zone, so not really a big deal to shut it down a couple of months before you'd probably need to.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:21 am
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weird, im fine with the brakes either way on the bars or the steering wheel on either side of the car

but running all the hoses through the frame is pure mental (TTing roadies excepted)


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:28 am
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no problems after a few minutes of settling in

Hard to remove years of instinct in just a few hours. No issues at all on a 4 day riding holiday until I entered a corner with a little too much speed and couldn't understand why the bike wasn't slowing down. Fortunately I'd grabbed a handful of the back brake and not the front, and I made it around the bend - just - but there was more than one kind of skid mark on the road.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:29 am
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I'm pretty sure of you believe in Brexit hard enough Rose will absolutely continue to send you bikes no problem. They need us more than we need them. Never forget that.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:47 am
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Not by a long way

Well not MTB but joint 2nd largest bicycle market in europe. https://issuu.com/conebi/docs/20170713_european_bicyle_industry_a

Germany 21%, France 16%, Uk 16%


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:51 am
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There's no reason road bikes should be an issue. Use the Shimano J-Kit hoses and all the swapping is done easily enough. In fact, I wish Shimano would just ship all brakes on all bikes with those hoses.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 11:54 am
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Aside from that one post, I can't find anything whatsoever to back this up. The bit about 'dumping protection' sound ridiculous to me, yet everyone appears fixated on the whole brake issue.

Good ol' social media.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:08 pm
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it seems daft to dump a whole market

We're probably just not worth the effort. Obvs Ben from Bird and Neil from Superstar have a far better grasp of things than me, but this will be one small tale of woe of many coming.

They're very politely avoiding the Brexit word, and it seems to be more than one thing, but can you blame them? - it's mid-Sept 2020, the transition period ends in 107 days, not a long time in business, how long until their expected delivery dates start bumping into a period when they don't even know if they can export bikes to the UK?

Add in their new production methods, it's a shame, but to further increase profits / cut costs they seem to be moving away from paying "expensive" Bike Mechanics to build bikes all day, to using 'Production Operatives' to do the same simple task over and over. They seemingly can't factor in two brake leaver configurations into that, they can't ship the brakes the wrong way because of UK laws and the chance of being sued if someone hurts themselves and they can't circumvent that buy selling them in bits for home assembly because of the Dumping protection rules.

I'm sure if they had the sales in the UK that YT get, they'd make more of an accommodation for us, but they don't.

This won't make much of a ripple in the UK, a few thousand people will hear, maybe a few hundred care, but more things like this will start to be heard - obvs the Gov will blame them, blame the EU, blame the ****ing weather who knows.

Sadly (perhaps) we don't, at this point, seem to be befitting from it either. Small, insignificant almost thing today - Nissan have revealed a new Z-car concept, some car nutters have been waiting months for it - the kicker, they're not bringing it to Europe, EU emissions regs just don't allow for a low-volume 400bhp V6 twin-turbo Coupe. "Ah, but we're leaving the EU this year" say the petrol heads - but even though it's a Japanese car (which is a RHD market) they've said no to the UK, because we're just not worth the effort of making UK legal, even if our emissions regulations (whatever they may be next year) allow it.

We're going to have to get used to being the small country we are, because even though we're 7th in the world by GDP, we're all alone and everyone else is in some kind of union with other nations.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:08 pm
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Well not MTB but joint 2nd largest bicycle market in europe. https://issuu.com/conebi/docs/20170713_european_bicyle_industry_a

Germany 21%, France 16%, Uk 16%

That's the problem - I don't know how far you have to go down that list until you get to a non-EU European country, but in Business terms, it's not Germany 21% France 16% UK 16% etc - it's EU 84% - UK 16%.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:15 pm
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It seems like some quite large markets drive / ride of the left. Smells more like Brexit.
Australia
Bermuda
Channel Islands
Cyprus<
Hong Kong
India<
Indonesia
Ireland
Isle of Man<
Jamaica<
Japan
Kenya
Macau
Malaysia
Malta
Nepal
New Zealand
****stan
Singapore
South Africa
Thailand
United Kingdom


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:15 pm
 pdw
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Hard to remove years of instinct in just a few hours.

Agreed. It's fine until instinct needs to take over. For me it was when the front wheel started to slide approaching a corner, so I instinctively applied a little less front and a little more back. Didn't seem to fix the problem, so I instinctively did it some more. Fortunately it was a soft landing.

Same reason that accidentally putting a car in reverse rather than 1st can end so badly. Your brain doesn't understand the problem, so presses the pedal that's supposed to make you go forwards harder. I know someone who wrote off two cars and put holes in both ends of their garage this way.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:22 pm
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Meh, not a great loss is it? Don't think I have ever seen a Rose bike out on the trails and it isn't somewhere I would look when shopping for a new bike.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:26 pm
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No me niether, I'm just navel gazing.
16% of my market disspearing would bother me. As others noted brexit might be the real reason though I don't know why they wouldn't say it.
Obvs they have their reasons so it must work for them.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:34 pm
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It’s not like pointing out that Brexit is a disaster is somehow taboo.

Er... when the dust settles, and they can see what the situation is, it could well be worth Rose changing their production to supply the UK market. Like it or not, to even point out that Brexit might be involved even in short term business plans is heard as "down with Britain" by some many potential customers in the UK. Selling now, for supply to UK customers early next year, could well be seen as a complicated and unbound distraction if you're struggling to keep up with demand in your "home market", where costs and delivery logistics are a known entity... pointing that out to people in the UK you may be trying to sell to again next year, some of whom take great personal offence whenever the complications of Brexit are brought up (dunno why, ask them), might not be good marketing sense.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:37 pm
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Meh, not a great loss is it? Don’t think I have ever seen a Rose bike out on the trails and it isn’t somewhere I would look when shopping for a new bike.

They offered something different, it's the reason I would have gone back.

By the sounds of it, even if they did keep shipping to Britain, you would no longer be able to custom specify component sizes/gear ranges/tyre choice/saddle choice etc. which was the main USP for me (that, plus still offering reasonable value, lightweight, endurance/sportive geometry rim brake models, a rapidly shrinking niche it seems).


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:42 pm
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Meh, not a great loss is it? Don’t think I have ever seen a Rose bike out on the trails and it isn’t somewhere I would look when shopping for a new bike.

Not to me personally, they've never really appeared on my 'radar', but it's more important an indication of things to come.

I mean, what's left for Businesses / Economists / Remainers left to hope for? The Lords kick out Boris' latest dickhead move, we get a new 11th hour deal? Does anyone even know what the new deal is?

From our businesses point of view, we support thousands of people who's data is held by Microsoft, we don't really know if they'll be able to access it on 01/01/21 or indeed they'll continue to be able to trade with Microsoft - most users use 365, there's no UK-US trade deal, and without a UK-EU trade deal we'll be a bit stuck. MS do have an office in the UK, but there's currently no Microsoft UK Plc to buy licenses from.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:55 pm
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Not making a profit is the daftest thing a company can do

Try telling that to wiggle 😉


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 12:56 pm
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Having owned the strangely named Uncle Jimbo for a few years now, I find it quite sad that it's come to this. I bought mine following a demo with Fin and bloody loved it versus a few of the more obvious names. That said, they havent really come through with a lot of MTB product for a while and the fact the chance to fully spec your bike - which was a huge draw for me - has gone, makes it slightly less appealing and doesnt help their market share here behind Canyon, YT etc.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 1:10 pm
 csb
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@superstarcomponents interesting points you make. You must be seeing potential growth in your UK customer base though, given our choices to buy from EU are seemingly reducing?


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 1:26 pm
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Hope Canyon don't go the same way (doubt it as I think they recently started selling to the US), the German brands are where it's at for road bikes for the lanky.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 2:23 pm
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As others have said - Brexit must be a factor here, and maybe they've decided to stop for a while and see what the final arrangement looks like..


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 2:42 pm
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My brand new Orca came with a warning sticker saying brakes were Euro set up, however on inspection they were UK orientation. I assume the shop swapped them over for me and didn't remove the sticker,


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 2:43 pm
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Not really surprised tbh. The brexit thing is making people look at their business.

It's affecting things the other way too. There were always a few UK firms that didn't refund the VAT on orders outside the UK. More and more are now doing it as they adjust their systems.
A guy I know in the US was waiting for the Sonder Signal Steel. When he contacted them they said they were in the midst of updateing their systems and they would be trousering the VAT in order to serve you better. He told them to jog on. He really wanted a Signal too.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 3:35 pm
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16% of my market disspearing would bother me. As others noted brexit might be the real reason though I don’t know why they wouldn’t say it.

True enough but given the number of rose bikes about that 16% of the market may well be 0.0001% of their sales. Just because we buy 16%of the EU's bikes doesn't mean rose sell more than 10 a year here. (look for an orange in Germany for instance)

It's entirely plausible that costs associated with the 1 minute extra QC it takes on every bike to make sure they ship with correct setup according to the destination dwarfs their UK turnover, especially if they're moving away from semi custom builds.

Of course it could also be brexit but there's no reason to disbelieve the reason they've given unless you want it to be something else.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 4:07 pm
 mos
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So the majority of the world rides motorbikes with the front brake on the right but a push bike with the front brake on the left and we're the odd ones for having them on the same side?


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 4:40 pm
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Of course it could also be brexit but there’s no reason to disbelieve the reason they’ve given unless

You believe that brexit is a toxic subject that no business in it's right mind would mention.

Ftfy


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 4:43 pm
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we’re the odd ones for having them on the same side?

Tbf, we don't put the rear brake attached to the left pedal.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 4:45 pm
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Intense are another that has virtually pulled out of the UK, all stock has been sent to Spain.


 
Posted : 16/09/2020 7:25 pm
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