Atherton bikes, what’s the latest news.

How could it possibly be a good idea to spend a million quid on R&D for very niche, expensive MTBs?

How could it possibly be a good idea to spend a million quid on R&D for very niche, expensive MTBs?

If they want to do r&d inhouse, Ti 3D printers don’t come up on eBay that often?

I took that to mean “why spend a million quid as you’ll never sell enough of them to make it back again”.

I could be wrong of course. 😉

After you’ve designed a bike and perfected the prototype there’s a cost to putting something into production – warehousing, tooling, staff, materials etc can far exceed the costs of just putting a few bikes together especially if you want to go big.

I took that to mean “why spend a million quid as you’ll never sell enough of them to make it back again”.

I could be wrong of course. 😉

Pretty much that yes.

Seems like a very big gamble to me, considering the lack of public enthusiasm for the bikes so far.

tomhoward
Full Member

If they want to do r&d inhouse, Ti 3D printers don’t come up on eBay that often?

I don’t know if it’s the same kit but Renishaw came to one of our events with assorted 3d printed toys, including one of the Empire bikes. Best day at work ever, it was genuinely my job to ride it round the conference centre doing skids for half an hour, in a suit. (later in the day, it was my job to help kids assemble balsa-wood-and-rubber-band planes, and then fire them around the room)

Anyway. I asked what the real world cost was, and he said basically, it’s machine time (because any time they’re printing a bike, they’re not printing a satellite or a bit of jet engine or similar), and setup. The machines themselves are expensive but the cost of a full load of titanium feedstock was, well, more than the sums of money in this thread.

It looks to me like they needed to raise match funding to get grant money out of the government. Nowt wrong with that, there’s plenty of businesses running on money given to them when they aren’t viable. It’s not a loan so spend it till it runs out and as for more. Aim is probably get given more money or sell out.

What I don’t get is how it’s ever going to be profitable knowing the bill of materials costs of doing a frame like this. Robot appeared to do it by not paying their 3D printing invoices according to they liquidation statement with a crazy number owed to I think HIETA.

First the print is expensive even if you own the printer. I know Renishaw are selling off older machines for cheaps but material cost per print is a lot. Then you have to do loads of post machining. Then buy all the other parts and assemble.

That said when you can buy a taiwan made sub 50 minimum order full sus frame for $250 which people lap up for £2000 in the shops, maybe it’s possible. It’s a money game, you just need more.

Maybe they will just buy some Asia frames and rebrand or sell kids bikes who knows. I don’t understand where this is going.

Neil SuperstarComponents

they are also looking at kids bikes and ebikes, which is where, I think, the sales will come from.

Definitely ebikes as they are building an ebike trail at Dyfi

Kids bikes sounds good, does that mean a carbon kids bike at Halfords pricing?

They need to get Matt Walker riding their bikes, he’s a local lad to where they used to live

Hold on a moment those 3d printers cost lots in parts lasers don’t last forever the Uni place in Sheffield has machines from arcan? From the tour I did of the Uni one year the cost of the machine is 0.5 million and they were alluding that half a mil was gone from the day it lands on the workshop floor it’s very hard to recover the costs without courting the aerospace and medical people where the money is

From the press gubbins of Robot some / one the staff worked for Hieta which means it could have been a loss leader to drum up business as some of these things often can be.

As someone on another thread pointed out however a company called Bastion is doing OK selling 20k road bikes doing the same construction , even when they look like a giant cad ex from the 90s.

They need to get Matt Walker riding their bikes

Only if they could spin that as “R&D” somehow.

Robot appeared to do it by not paying their 3D printing invoices according to they liquidation statement with a crazy number owed to I think HIETA.

The irony of @superstarcomponents talking about owing people money!

Still trolling and sniping a decade on I see. Munrobiker.

Dangerously close to libel there

Neil SuperstarComponents

Only if they could spin that as “R&D” somehow.

Suspect they probably could! My understanding is that the definition of what constitutes R&D for funding purposes can be pretty broad.

Plenty of co’s out there making high end road bikes with custom geom at £3-20k for people with random shape bodies and big budget.

This investment will give them enough to expand portfolio in a car co kind of way:

Kids bikes – High margin Taiwan cat
Mid range – High margin Taiwan cat
High end customs – Robot

They could go full Hope and start pushing UK carbon production for their non custom / mid range bikes.

My problem with Uk manufacturing / business is very few think long term. If they are able to scale up and say over 20yrs the cost of carbon production / 3D printing significantly decreases alongside manufacturing automation… Who is to say they can’t be knocking out custom bikes like Nike are custom trainers.

All most UK investors think about is 3yr plan which is bull. It takes time and resource to build a decent co.

Granted it’s a long shot but even if they fail the IP and R&D is still there for someone to pick up. People in the Uk will get jobs on the back of it and if they will contribute to Nat Ins payments regardless.

I hope they do well regardless if I’m in their target market or not.

Maybe they will just buy some Asia frames and rebrand or sell kids bikes who knows. I don’t understand where this is going.

Don’t know if you registered for the investment opportunity but the info that you got if you did explained it all if you delved into the details. They want to get a full range of bikes for kids and families at the regular price points to bring in the money and make the company viable. The bikes they currently do will then be the high-end range that the more discerning customer goes for, a bit like Trek do with their normal bike and the Project 1 offering. I don’t think they want to get too mass market though, just a good range of bikes that have a bit of brand kudos. If they can get to the stage where their kid’s bikes have a similar following to IslaBikes, where they hold their value well and are a cut above the regular stuff, then they’ll do well on that side.

The tax reliefs should help – you should get 30% back as an income tax refund under EIS and then if the business does fail, you can set the loss against your income. Net cost would be 42p for every £1 invested if you’re a 40% taxpayer.

steelbike
Free Member

Hold on a moment those 3d printers cost lots in parts lasers don’t last forever the Uni place in Sheffield has machines from arcan? From the tour I did of the Uni one year the cost of the machine is 0.5 million and they were alluding that half a mil was gone from the day it lands on the workshop floor it’s very hard to recover the costs without courting the aerospace and medical people where the money is

The volume they’d have to be producing to actually make printing inhouse viable would be huge. I think realistically the only reason they would want their own printers, is so that they can sell the machine time to more profitable industries tbh.

I guess the key question there is, is there surplus or shortage of titanium additive manufacturing in industry just now? Is it getting harder to be a customer and better to be a producer?

But at the end of the day, if it makes good business sense to buy massively expensive hardware and then sell the capacity outwards, it probably makes sense to stop making bikes, and focus on making rocketships.

Are you ignoring the two World Cup wins last year on purpose, or have you forgotten?

Sorry. Just saw this. Yes forgotten. But then again it was Rachel racing at her normal high level. You’d have say the bike certainly wasn’t holding her back didn’t push anyone forward though and a lot of brands scored higher.

They are lovely, I appreciate the manufacturing process, I like the Athertons as racers/people. Won’t buy one as I can’t afford one.

Possibly the issue for some potential customers, is how do you justify to youself/the wife that your bike needs replacing because geometry has moved on, when you bought a custom geo frame? Its the very pinnacle of admitting that you just followed internet trends and hae no clue what you are on about.

What are they doing differently to robot bikes, why did robot bikes go under, why will Atherton bikes succeed when robot bikes didn’t.

greeny30
Free Member

What are they doing differently to robot bikes, why did robot bikes go under, why will Atherton bikes succeed when robot bikes didn’t.

You know it’s just a continuation of Robot, with some extra people involved and a different name?

why will Atherton bikes succeed when robot bikes didn’t.

If they do, it’ll be because they diversify into cheaper, metal bikes sourced from Asia.

But it’s a big if.

It worries me that inexperienced people, who know nothing about marketing, manufacture, running a business, have sunk their well earned cash into this. I hope they diversified their protfolio and have moeny elsewhere because Robot was a solution to a non problem for 99% of bike purchasers.
The 1% who crave custom bikes and will pay 3 times as much, already have a saturated market to pick from.

The 1% who crave custom bikes and will pay 3 times as much, already have a saturated market to pick from.

Is that true? I’m not sure there are many people looking for custom geo, but I can only think of Nicolai off the top of my head. Do Stanton?

Atherton frames are about the same price as an off the peg frame from the premium brands, certainly not 3 times as much.

Carbon Wasp in Leeds can do you a full custom carbon frame, sky is the limit on price but about £3k if you take their design and plug your numbers in.

Only premium brands I can think of that ‘might’ do a custom full suss (if you paid them a LOT, and were prepared to wait, if they agreed) would be BTR, Starling, Curtis etc but they’re all steel, so not really in the same market, tech wise, and it’s not something they offer as standard.

Deleted. Misread a post, and responded with nonsense! Sorry!

But it’s more like 0.01% of MTBers who might want custom geometry on a carbon FS frame.

There’s just not a viable business focusing on that, IMHO.

Perhaps if they could find a way of popping out the standard geo frames on par with most other brands (not just the super-spendy brands like Yeti and SC), they’d be a better proposition.

chakaping

Only if they could spin that as “R&D” somehow.

I’d say testing prototypes in race conditions easily fits that brief.

But it’s more like 0.01% of MTBers who might want custom geometry on a carbon FS frame.

There’s just not a viable business focusing on that, IMHO.

Exactly, I think thats why Robot went absolutley nowhere. Dinky tech, but no market.

when I saw robot bikes at fort bill a few years ago they were talking 6k for a frame.

when I saw robot bikes at fort bill a few years ago they were talking 6k for a frame.

IIRC Athertons are £3400 a frame. A Yeti SB165 frame is £3800, SWorks enduro is £4K

It looks nice, it has a decent enough suspension design and construct, it’ll work well and will be niche, cost wise, well we live in the world now of 3.5k frames, you go and buy a spesh enduro or a santa cruz cc or whatever and it’s over 3k.

They’ll more than likely sell well, but they do need to take advantage of the current selling buzz, so hopefully someone in the company has set up the C2W stuff to allow those who have 6k or whatever budgets to get in on that, same with folk after some type of financing deal, if you want to sell frames at 3.5k and 6k builds, you need to make it appealing.

They’ll more than likely sell well, but they do need to take advantage of the current selling buzz, so hopefully someone in the company has set up the C2W stuff to allow those who have 6k or whatever budgets to get in on that, same with folk after some type of financing deal, if you want to sell frames at 3.5k and 6k builds, you need to make it appealing.

Not convinced they will you know. They need a bit more ‘presence’ to sell big numbers of units like SC and Specialized. The 0% or even 9.9% finance will play a massive factor too.

weeksy

Not convinced they will you know. They need a bit more ‘presence’ to sell big numbers of units like SC and Specialized. The 0% or even 9.9% finance will play a massive factor too.

Some of their recent social media talks about how they kept a low profile, as their capacity was full from delivering race bikes and the first 50 customer orders ,I think the fundraising is with a view to ramping up the numbers

But it’s more like 0.01% of MTBers who might want custom geometry on a carbon FS frame.

which says more about your knowledge of how wealthy ( and I mean seriously wealthy) folk spend their money…I did a stint in between roles installing garage furniture for v rich folk who have a showy car , it was the sort of cupboards and tool chests that you see in BMW garages and the Aston Martin factory. The company I worked for were literally struggling to keep up with demand for the amount of folk who had the £10-50k to spend on metal cabinets for their garages… we were even being flown out to Europe to install colour co-ordinated stuff to match ferraris and lambos…it was insane

the bikes and kit these folk have is just madness, I saw plenty of £10K road bikes that had been bought on a whim, and ridden maybe once or twice. These folk don’t think twice about dropping a few £k on bikes that they’ll ride maybe once or twice, and there are thousands of these people in just the UK alone.

different world

Nickc – I said 0.01%, which is one-in-10,000.

Do you reckon more than that are in the super-rich category which you describe?

Was going to say: went to one place in Nottinghamshire, and was amazed to see a bike shops worth of SC bikes in his double garage (was a separate building with a flat on the second floor) and speaking to the bloke, he was a bike nerd, but couldn’t decide which bike he really liked, so he’d bought one of each, in each colour…

Chapaking you said 0.1 of the MTB crowd…these are just regular wealthy folk, they’ll see something like this and they’ll want it “just” because it’s the most expensive.

if I was going into the bike market, it’s where I’d be going. Sod producing mass made with teeny% on each frame, aim for top dollar

Typical single laser AM machines are £500-^£600k, but that’s just the start, then you need to think about sieving stations (£50), powder blenders (>£70k), powder storage (full climate controlled room), argon use (££££££ dependent on the machine), build plate skimming, wireEDM to get parts off the plate, heat treatment ovens for stress relieving, grit blasters, etc , etc.

Ti powder for laser machines typically costs between €140 and €220/kg and you typically need over 100kg of it to fill a build chamber. You’ll get back most of what you don’t use, but can lose kgs of powder through the filters.

Assuming staff time, machine amortisation over 3 years, service contract, post-processing (heat-treatment, blasting, grinding), etc – you’re probably looking at about €5-6k per build for about 3-5kg of parts (a single bikes worth, maybe a little more) and assuming only 2-3 builds per week. You’ve then got the super expensive carbon tubes, the design work, the data prep work and assembly/inspection.

It’s hard to see how you can make any money unless you already own the machine. If you did, then materials, maintenance and labour could be under £1500.

It’s also worth saying that only an idiot would have only one machine when their business relied on it. These things can go wonky and can take a while to diagnose and repair.

Sadly I also think the market is moving away from Robot/Atherton. I’d say that the majority of people who would think about dropping £6000-£8000 on a MTB are more likely to consider an ebike at the moment.

I wouldn’t, but then I’d struggle to justify much over £2500, so clearly am not the target audience.

With road bikes I can see a much better justification for custom sizing because it’s a far more mature field and bikes vary much less in geometry. But with MTBs things have changed so much in the last decade, and suspension travel, riding style and terrain all have big effects on preferred geometry for a given size of rider.

That’s what would put me off a custom frame – and I think I’m more clued up than most about geometry. And without going custom I don’t see enough benefit of this expensive manufacturing technique.