Can we also add that Nick is man enough to come on here and read/react to what people say? That surely has to be good! There aren’t many in the bike industry brave enough to do so, in my opinion! (I know certainly of Brant, Nick, Ian from Scott, the folks from Superstar as examples)

By the way, Nick, any news on the stolen Charge from the Mule folks?

One brand that seems to nestle in this “chummy, cuddle up to our customers” kind of marketing philosophy is Alpkit, but I think out of all the competition they pull it off the best. Backing simply well thought out products with quality production values at sensible pricing.

ITS A BICYCLE FOR FUG SAKE. 😐

WISH SANTA CRUZ WOULD GET IT AND UNDERSTAND THAT. FFS, YOURSKATE BOARDS ARE A PLANK WITH TWO SETS OF ROLLERS ON. GET OVER YOURSELVES.

(rant over)

Hmm, website’s not that bad. Nice clear pics of the products, good info that’s what counts for me.
I must admit I was suckered in by Charge’s lovely frame graphics when they first appeared. Test rode a Duster and unfortunately hated it. As a previous poster said “solid”, which isn’t what you really want from a steel frame! They still look fab though.

YOURSKATE BOARDS ARE A PLANK WITH TWO SETS OF ROLLERS ON

Maybe back in the 70s mate!

I’ve got a Charge Tap as my commuter and have to say that it’s a belting bike. Totally fit for purpose, nice frame, good enough groupset and a sensible price. Do I fit into Charge’s target market…as a soon to be 40-year-old with mortgage, wife and two kids to support probably not. But then I chose the bike because it suited my needs best. Great bikes and I would be happy to buy from them again

Just wait until you “BS haters” see the Charge ad in the next Singletrack..

They advertise. Every company advertises and tries to apply a unique angle. So what? UK company building bikes in difficult times, leave em alone I say!

I’ll tell you what is BS – folk who think that a company can launch in the absurdly snobbish world of cycling without some of this full on advertising.

Name a company that doesn’t use it’s unique selling point in it’s advertising and i’ll give them about 6 months – maybe less in the current climate.

get over it – if i’m going to have to see adverts – and i reckon there will be more, not less – in some ways it seems better that those adverts at least look nice, are funny, or have something useful to tell me about as well as the product.

Who’d have thought it, a business trying to market its products?!

Have to say though, I actually like the attention to detail and aesthetics of the Charge bikes. I really like the look of the Duster frame for example, and I don’t see why an MTB isn’t allowed to look contemporary/cool.

Would be nice if dusters could take slightly longer forks though, as that seems to be ‘the trend’.

i can’t comment on their website as i have no need to look at it but at a recent roller race there were a couple of girls there who were apparently sponsored by charge bikes, only they put in rubbish times on the rollers and it was suggested that they were only sponsored because they were a bit of eye candy.
top work. we need to get back to heady days of dolly birds draping themselves across cars/bikes. marketing at it’s best.

Seems like some people think any company who attempts any kind of marketing is inherently evil and is trying to rip people off. This is both ridiculous and naive. Try actually running a company without marketing and advertising – you’ll either fail miserably or be running things from your bedroom for the rest of your life. Get real.

Please don’t “leave us alone”, I like to hear the thoughts of the enthusiasts, fans and cynics alike . Charge’s main objective is to produce simple, reliable, quality, good value product. There is in fact purposely a complete lack “BS” in the design of the product. I try to market the brand in the most unique way that I can, with the objective being to get the attention of the consumer.

The fact that this thread is here talking about the brand means that the marketing has worked.

Mr Smith… here the report from the Charge Girl you mention that went to that roller race: CLICK do you think I should sack her?

chargebikes- I’ve got one of your brown spoon jobbies (havent had chance to fit it yet). Just a quick question (without prejudice either way etc)…how long do the seat covers last? Its a wierd hard-material. I’m used to fabric uns you see!

“Mr Smith… here the report from the Charge Girl you mention that went to that roller race: CLICK do you think I should sack her?”

if she’s not generating enough income for the business then yes, but if you have to ask strangers on an internet forum about basic business decisions then maybe you should sack yourself?

This isnt going to go all superstarcomponents is it? 8)

Right… I’m sacked. Handing my laptop back to myself and the keys to Charge HQ… see ya.

And there was me thinking that Charge make decent kit at reasonable prices. If they get more people to buy their stuff through a bit of pncey marketing, what’s the problem?

“Right… I’m sacked. Handing my laptop back to myself and the keys to Charge HQ… see ya. “

they can’t just get rid of you like that. not without a notice period or severance pay.

I have looked at the website briefly. It doesn’t bother me. Style-wise it reminds me of Surly’s site, but is much better at using the internet. Most of Surly’s stuff on their website could have gone in a paper newsletter and catalogue without any bother.

And I may be wrong, but I don’t think Charge would object to being compared with Surly as a maker of rather good basic bicycles with a keen eye for what is cool.

Now, do me a favour and make an Xtracycle-compatible frame for less than the Big Dummy, styled on the Plug Grinder. Ta

🙂

Erm…..what’s all the fuss about. Looks like a nice website to me. Would I buy their products – if I was after what they offered, it was in my budget and fit my requirements better than the competitions then yes, of course I would buy there stuff. i do like the bike graphics.

Only issue with ‘fiddly’ sites (like the Charge one) is that they take a while to load up. I don’t want to look at windows saying X% loading…..as I’ll probably click on something else as soon as it loads anyway. Could be as I am on quite a slow connectin though, although most websites are quite quick.

I’d forgive them any amount of BS on their website, as the frames are most definitely not BS, huge mud clearance, solid, great shape and tough paintwork (which is handy when the grpahics look that good).

Re: Longer forks. I think thats what makes the duster a bit unique, the angles and 4″ fork make it great on the climbs, but the huge tyre clearance means you can run fat tubeless tyres and throw it down the hills. Its just a slightly different blend of climbing/descending that i really like.

TBH if they had 18yr old girls baby oiled up in bikini’s allover their website then I’d probably start buying Charge’s stuff. A sort of pron-subscription service.

But instead you are forced to buy endless pairs of Knog gloves?

🙂

Their ads have disappeared from STW now.

Do you think this was because…

1. The interest stimulated by this thread generated loads more clicks on them, and they quickly filled the quota they had paid for.

2. They realised you’d rumbled their marketing BS and pulled the ads, as a consequence of which the ST staff won’t get any dinner.

Why oh why did i say anything! I wish i’d kept my mouth shut and yes i was bored. I think charge bikes have come out of it pretty good, as makers of good frames/ bits and like i said in my original post i was out to be proved wrong. My only concern with companies that follow fashion is that it soon changes and they can often be left pigeon-holed or unfashionable and stuck in the sh1t, Burberry is a good example.

To the people at Charge, i am available for BS gorilla marketing campaigns on STW

Mr S Monkey

I have included the oxford dictionary definition of the word you both (stonemonkey and snoop) used so as you can put it into context for me to understand more clearly as your posts do not make it clear what you are actually trying to say when you use the word BS.

Either you think we are deceiving you in some way or we are talking nonsense, neither of which you go any further to comment on.

I see the word lifestyle thrown in for good measure too. To be clear about the use of the word lifestyle and it’s meaning i again quote the good old Oxford and come up with the none too unfamiliar “the way in which one lives.”

Add BS and lifestyle together and we have “a nonsense way in which one lives” to quote you correctly, or “the way in which one lives that deceives.” So perhaps you could both tell me where your facts come from for you to be able to say that howies deceives and is nonsense.

let me know

all the best

the oxford dictionary definition of BS is below.

BS
vulgar slang

• noun nonsense.

• verb (bullshi__ed, bullshi__ing) talk nonsense in an attempt to deceive.

This thread caught my eye.

I dont think theres a brand out there right now that i like more than Charge at the moment.I visited the site last week and we talked about it at work.i liked the vids,profiles,parts,frames.. and graphics.the saddles have got to be one of the best things in mtb over the past year or so.cheap,good looking and comfortable.If the big players in saddle production got their act together and pulled this one off they

h

m putting 2+2 together and thinking that with Charge coming out of the bournemouth area and you coming from that area.. you have a lot to do with it.dont let the forum get to you.the fact is,charge has the whole thing going on right now and its all so fresh and unique that it`ll do as well,if not better than the other similar brands that we have seen over the years.

one question ive often wondered.. since “santa” dropped off my mrd expert over 24 years ago.. why havent we seen anything with brazing and chroming that good since?! its shocking! loved that bike.the last time i saw you race was a VERY wet day at cumbernauld with geth and the rest of them.. you were signing on the dodgy old tour bus. the weather was so bad,nobody looked happy.. well, there was a few.the few that witnessed geth down the 2nd straight.unreal.

ugh repost!..

This thread caught my eye.

I dont think theres a brand out there right now that i like more than Charge at the moment.I visited the site last week and we talked about it at work.i liked the vids,profiles,parts,frames.. and graphics.the saddles have got to be one of the best things in mtb over the past year or so.cheap,good looking and comfortable.If the big players in saddle production got their act together and pulled this one off they would have been onto a winner.. but they didnt.

moving on.. :O)

Tim ,i

p

ll do as well,if not better than the other similar brands that we have seen over the years.

one question ive often wondered.. since “santa” dropped off my mrd expert over 24 years ago.. why havent we seen anything with brazing and chroming that good since?! its shocking! loved that bike.the last time i saw you race was a VERY wet day at cumbernauld with geth and the rest of them.. you were signing on the dodgy old tour bus. the weather was so bad,nobody looked happy.. well, there was a few.the few that witnessed geth down the 2nd straight.unreal.

lol. this new forum and my computer is the pits. whats going on with it? ::goes to bed::

I like charge stuff too. the difference between charge and Howies is that as rightly pointed out earlier on howies are definately trying to promote a specific lifestyle choice, and their products are certainly over-priced unlike Charge’s which seem pretty reasonable.

Howies promote this “organic” and “environmentally harmonious” rubbish which in essence is pretty snobby. I recently ordered one of their t-shirts, a slightly humerous one that says “Museli” in a metallica-style font. the tshirt was 25 quid, which for me is top whack. The postage, i was dissappointed to discover, was 5 pounds. I wanted the t-shirt so i stumped up the extra fiver. When i got the package (delivered by royal mail) i noticed it was pretty heavy and also quite solid-feeling. That’s because they’d bundled a 150 page winter 2008 catalogue with it! Now, call me cynical but isn’t that a bit off? i am paying for that to be delivered after all. I am paying for them to force-feed me with their marketing. what makes it worse is that the booklet is full of tripe about “living off the land” and “bring back the hippies”. Here’s an example:

This winter catalogue is all about living off the land
we asked a local forrager (thanks yan)to come with us
to reconnect us with the land
to show us the things we had forgotten
to show us the things we had never learnt
what was interesting was to see everyone go from “i am not
eating that” to “wow, that’s amazing”
to see how much food that is all around us that
we don’t even understand is food.
[Blah Blah Blah and i could go on…………]

And on the next page is a photo of a blonde girl in a Howies jacket on the beach cutting a loaf of bread. I kid you not:

You see that just p*sses me off. and i’ve paid for that catalogue. and so has the environment!

Charge, as long as you don’t start doing things like this you’ll be fine.

Well, all in, i guess it’s each to their own, but i must say i preferred charge when they were a little less fasionable…such is the way of things.
This does not though change the fact that they make good kit at a good price hence, the surge of charge products on the street.
One point i shall make is, the paint on some of the bikes i’ve seen from new, has’nt lasted well at all, perhaps something to look into guys?

But as said, it’s good to see them doing well, and they sponser Abi, so …..(you get the idea)

Tim

you ask me where my “facts” come from about Howies and i am afraid i dont have any facts only opinions, i had and still do in many ways, a great respect for Howies but have felt that since the Timberland takeover some of the essance of what made Howies unique and great has been lost and a somewhat more corporate ethos has emerged. I just got this feeling through the catalogues and to a lesser extent the website. Many of my thoughts echo that of bomberman, the packaging and catalogues seem to conflict with Howies save the world imagery as you say

“The howies® spring 2009 catalogue is done.

It’s all about footprints. “

I think it has just gone a bit too far in the live of the land, beautiful people doing something exciting in San Francisco south africa sort of thing. Many of the people i see wearing Howies nowadays get out their audi/ bmw they have just driven 1 mile down the road to buy there organic veg.

Why base much of your production in Thailand , China etc. I have no knowledge of your factory standards. Do you release such infomation as i have never found it readily available?

I also find other contradictions ,
Why do you transport merino half the way across the world are there no other more enviromentally suitable materials that could be used? How about a study of the Carbon footprints of merino vs synthetic base layers over there lifetimes.

What was the reason for reducing the number of independant retail outlets nationwide?

Do you deny that you pride yourself on marketing prowess?

But i admit my first post was reactionary, ill thought out and did not really accurately get across my true feelings. I am well aware that all companies need to market their products, the commitments that were made during the early days of howies and the need to sell to a larger parent company. I never thought it would generate such a response. If anything i hope this thread has given both Howies and Charge the chance to take a step back and look at the direction you are travelling in, If your heading the way you want, all is well.

I dont want to come across as a miserable bastard or an eco warrior , i am neither, just someone who is fed up with the ardent consumerism of the enviromently friendly.

One final thing please justify to me privatley at least the cost of your “Hand me Down Products”

I am now going to hide under a rock and never post anything on this bloody forum again.

Mike

bomber, you have an interesting aproach to a discussion. Lets clear a few things up about having a reasoned bit of banter. Keep to the facts. I was at the photo shoot where the blonde girl was cutting bread for us all to eat. That was after we all went and foraged for food from the shore, mussels etc. Why is that so offensive to you? It really happened we all went and helped find our own food for our own lunch and it was great, we didn’t go down the supermarket, or drive anywhere to do lunch. But of course there weren’t any ovens on the beach to make our own bread at the time, everyhting else we ate was foraged, including the soup, is bringing your won water cheating?. So we bought a few handmade loaves with us, big deal.

I will include the link to the talks done at the howies do lectures. These talks are put on by us where we invite some of our customers to come and spend 4 days with us in Wales and listen to these invited guests tell us their stories. One being Andrew Whitely, the man who bakes the bread and also Yun who was the chap who taught us about foraging. He was a great teacher to us on the shoot and cooked for us all. These are real people doing things that make a real difference in actual fact. I cannot in any way agree with your “environmentally harmonious rubbish” comment being essentially snobbish as you state, since when has caring or harmony been snobbish?

Regarding you being force fed your marketing, have you returned your catalog by freepost with the address provided by us for you to do so, we certainly do not want you to keep it if you dont want it which we clearly state, but we provide the catalogues just in case you do want to keep, no problems if not, just send it back.

Your comments about howies being overpriced i find interesting, taking responsibility for a products life from beginning to end costs more, simple fact. In fact it’s just about impossible to do but we have to try so if you are going to make these comments about things please try to read about how we make our products, sometimes these stories are in the catalogues and sometimes they are online, the problem seems to me that you dont believe them. Can understand that it costs more to make a product that has less environmental impact than a like product that makes more of an impact? i would hope that would be clear.

As for your comment “all that tripe about living off the land.” well there are a fair few howies folks who do just that in one way or another, to greater and lesser degrees. Some have allotments, some have vegetable patches, some hunt for fowl and rabbit and others forage. Where your food comes from matters to some and that’s the way they choose to live their lives, to others who dont then that of course is their choice but we do care about these things which we talk about and we put our money where our mouths are, we invest a portion of our profits in community projects and try to tell little stories about them to our friends and supporters of the brand through our catalogues and on our website and in our community, to folks who do get it.

The link to the do lectures is below and it’s where you will find the talks by Yun the forager, and is anything but a hippie. Also you will find the talk on bread matters by Andrew Whitley, a brilliant talking point and very clever mushtie.

Or you could check out Alastair Macintosh’s talk, a man whose activity and will changed the Land Laws in Scotland. Either way there’s plenty of talks on there that are not lifestyle BS but life inspiring stories told by people who are doing real things to make a difference and bring about changes that we can all learn from, not lifestyle BS.

http://www.dolectures.com/speakers/

mike, thanks for taking the time to write that out and you raise some good points. David and i were talking today about merino and it causes us a great deal of concern about transportation etc, we are working on it and that’s why we bring to the forefront our own faults, we are contantly trying to change things for the better.

Factory standards are as much of an issue here in the UK with illegal immigration no healthcare, poor wages etc In the latest catalogue we have a small piece on our factory in portugal and we are currently doing a piece on China too.

Regarding the merino synthetic issue you point out a test, what will be rolling out from howies in the future is a system where we will be able to be clear about where and how all our products have been made. Patagonia are getting close to this too.

Regarding timberland and audis etc. I have responded to this on several forums as it seems to bug a lot of folks. The simple facts are that David and Clare would have had to shut howies doors if they had not sold, this is common knowledge and is in the media archives, they had enough of remortgaging and it’s terrible effect on stability of a family and rather than everyone losing their jobs a buyer was sought, fortunately for us and timberland howies still gets to keep them both, they are in every day and on hand in every way, working their asses off. We have no money thrown at us and we have to stand on our own feet. fighting weight.

I have no more problem with an audi driver buying his organic veg as i have with anyone else i dont know well enough to make a comment about let alone worry if he or she’s wearing our brand, generalisations are too easy to make, and make the mind lazy.

We just want to make nice clobber as responsibly as we can, and we will constantly try to improve wherever and whenever we can. With the help of our saltiest supporters who are as passionate about living a just life as we are. simple. but of course bloody complicated.

all the best

tim

Read the threads on the HMD project on the howies brainfood site. It costs a lot of money to make a product in the UK with the best materials, it’s all covered there for all to see.

So you make nice clothes with as little environmental impact as possible. well done, but why all the fuss? what has food got to do with clothing? if i wanted hand-forraged crab i wouldn’t come to you. I’d go talk to an underpaid chinese immigrant who risked his life at the turn of the tide so that people like you can rave on about how down to grass roots your dinner is, man.

I do “get” what you are trying to do, i just don’t subscribe to it. i live in the real world. and a bunch of models on a beach catching seafood won’t get me to subscribe to it. Personally i find your company’s ideals to be a little patronising and so i won’t be attending any of your “howies do” lectures either. in fact you’re response has ticked me off a bit TBH.

These are real people doing things that make a real difference in actual fact

But do they have enough money to buy that Howies Long Way Home jacket? it IS £200…. if they have to forrage for food on a beach, will they risk getting their sixty pound Scrumper Jumper dirty? or is it that they just do it to be cool: not to put food on the table. it dosen’t make sense.

Regarding you being force fed your marketing, have you returned your catalog by freepost with the address provided by us for you to do so, we certainly do not want you to keep it if you dont want it which we clearly state

And where in the winter 2008 catalogue does it say to send it back? all i can find is the pull-out card in the middle asking if i would like a new catalogue every season, and if i can provide the email addresses of three people who you can contact and ask if they would like a catalogue too. It’s a freepost address on the card, but nowhere in the catalogue does it say i can send it back free of charge.

You guys seem to be living in your own marketing bubble

the sad thing is that i quite like your clothes. it’s just all the other BS that surrounds them that i don’t agree with. you should base your reputation on the quality of your clothes: after all you ARE a clothing company. why pretend you can save the world?

The new Charge ad on this site is awesome. The rider slays that muddy trail to death.