It seems that they are becoming more and more popular as a manufacturer across Europe, yet for me they are a bit like one of the newer Korean car brands, or even some of the longer-standing Japanese car brands: probably highly functional, but without much soul. I have no real problem with them (or other, similar manufacturers), except that – from a profoundly subjective point of view – they just have nothing appealing about them. No heritage. No beauty. No… je ne sais quoi.

Anyone else find it hard to get excited about certain bikes based on who made them? Or are you all pure pragmatists, who only care about whether or not a bike does what it promises?

If I am not alone in feeling a bit meh, what brands inspire apathy in you?

Lol

No heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merida_Bikes

They’ve been kicking around since late eighties early 90s even made specialised bikes and own or owned a big chunk of them. Made some nice xc machines and road bikes. Always been popular in that Europe place more than uk.

Aren’t they one of the biggest manufacturers out there?

Yeah it’s not the default stw cotic…

I own a 140. Love it. Had it for 5 years.

I’ll have another.

Our LBS is a dealer. Friends locally still won’t consider one despite reviews.

People pour scorn on it because up until recently they hadn’t heard of the brand. One friend used to refer to the bike as “an Aldi bike” whilst riding his specialized.

Funny as his specialized is/was probably made by merida what with them owning 49% of the brand????

Lots of heritage there back to the 70s. Definitely big in other markets. Friend lives in NZ, very popular there.

Anyways, I’m happy with my mass produced bike. Safe in the knowledge I get a good specced bike at a good price point that remains a niche brand in this land.

Great bikes, plenty of history but not a brand I would buy due to the ongoing partnership with Bahrain.

Do you even bike much 😉

I’ll admit, just now is the first time I’ve looked at their website. Their bikes don’t appeal, or excite – they’re a bit like Cube in that way, they might have a couple of really nice bikes but the majority of their range just sort of blend into each other with nothing really standing out.

For example, the biggest 29er they do is a 120mm bike, which at £3300 has a revelation RC with the moco damper. No 29er enduro bike, let alone a mid travel trail bike?!

Thumbs dowan, not good enough to ride on top of an Audi/Merc, T5 bumper adornment or STW kitchen ornament.

FFS do they even do road or gravel bikes 😉

I vote Cube as next worse/worserer!

They’re just boring and I’m not sure they’re actually that good value.

I’d probably buy one of their road bikes if the price was right but their mtb’s just look dull.

Anything you see/hear/read on STW is unrepresentative of the UK MTB market, regardless of what folk on here think. It’s not all bearded men in sheds.

unless I ride it I can’t form an opinion.

I looked at one, as above in a crowded market of very good bikes they look a bit dull. Especially compared to the spec brand they bought.

Marketing is a funny old thing and specialized really get it.

You mean made by a man in a shed with a selection of hammers, a tenuous engineering connection, dressed in Victorian cloths, wearing a leather apron, costing twelvety thousand pounds.

“take meh money”

@trail_rat  was that comment aimed at me?

@Winston, perhaps egocentrically, I assumed it was a light-hearted jibe at the fact that I am not riding right now due to my accident. If I am right, then @trail_rat is right, because all I can actually do about bikes right now is keep upgrading my road bike, and talk bollocks about brands that don’t appeal to me. 🙂

sorry! I  forgot you had a bad smash. Me being egotistical not you (obvs)

Heal quickly.

@SaxonRider

We like your bollocks though mate!

Erm, that might sound a little odd.

i own a Merida E900 and can say im very happy with it up to now, it handles great and its taken an lot of abuse without issue and i happen to think its quite pretty too 🙂

For example, the biggest 29er they do is a 120mm bike, which at £3300 has a revelation RC with the moco damper. No 29er enduro bike, let alone a mid travel trail bike?!

Or maybe they realise that there’s not actually that much demand for 29er enduro bikes?.

Massive company, been about for years, good bikes. OP obviously still on the sedatives. 😊

No matter what they do, I can’t get excited by Trek MTBs. I’ve ridden plenty, I know they are very good bikes, win lots of awards, do well in race series and are reasonable value, but they just leave me cold.

Oddly, I really like their road stuff, despite all the shenanigans of previously with the Texan etc, and own one.

Folk are weird.

They started with building Raleighs, and like Raleigh did in their heyday, they build bikes from the bottom of the market grey porridge to as good as you can get.

They are honest bikes in that you get exactly what you pay for.

At the top end you’re not paying the cool tax of the other more revered brand names – which they (or Giant) probably made anyway.

(I don’t have one.)

Yep, got to agree with the Merida branding just leaving me cold.

Meanwhile, I love my Trek Superfly, even though they’re every bit as generic and ‘bland’, but it was the right price and spec for bike-to-work and that was enough to get me on board, which was when I realised how fast and fun it was. Get me on board a Merida and I’d probably see through the branding pretty fast as well.

Meanwhile on the road I ride a Rose, similarly ‘bland’ brand image but I bought for the custom spec, and having now ridden one for a couple of years I’m ‘hooked’ on the brand and would probably make my next road bike a Rose as well.

Sort of the reverse of how branding is supposed to work, buy for functional reasons, enjoy owning, become brand fanboi.

So in conclusion if anyone at Merida wants to give me a CX bike I’ll probably become a die-hard Merida owner for life (hint hint?)

For example, the biggest 29er they do is a 120mm bike, which at £3300 has a revelation RC with the moco damper. No 29er enduro bike, let alone a mid travel trail bike?!

“They don’t make the bike I’ve decided I need. Their whole range must therefore be worthless!”

🙄

probably highly functional, but without much soul.

This is how I’ve come to feel about bikes from Spesh, Trek & Giant as well, having owned a few more characterful bikes in recent years.

However… character is partly in the design but more significantly in the ride, and you can’t tell how bikes are going to make you feel by looking at them.

Some of the Meridas are supposed to ride really well, just from reviews I’ve read.

maybe they realise that there’s not actually that much demand for 29er enduro bikes?

I don’t have any sales figures, but from the new bikes I see out on the trails I’d say 29er enduro bikes are one of the most-popular market segments in MTB.

They don’t make the bike I’ve decided I need. Their whole range must therefore be worthless!”

I was illustrating that they’re not exactly “with the times” in terms of mountain bikes.

I’ve not seen any marketing or adverts from them for any of their bikes, In my opinion they come across as a bike company who make some mountain bikes as part of their range, and not as a mountain bike company.

Serious question: do merida have any sort of mtb race team?

I don’t have any sales figures, but from the new bikes I see out on the trails I’d say 29er enduro bikes are one of the most-popular market segments in MTB.

Mibbe it’s a geographical thing, as I don’t know anyone up here locally that has one. I wouldn’t even class enduro bikes as a big part of the overall sales of a bike shop, never mind a wheel size specific one.

I’m impressed with your instant ability to tell wheel sizes our on the trails though! 😂

I’d love to see some truly blind testing of bikes. Remove all the logos and put people on bikes they’ve never seen the shape of before, then find out which they like the best.

I’m sure the subconscious knowledge of a brand and price affects perception hugely.

How many 29er Enduro bikes are sold for less than £400? Again, this forum isn’t representative of the MTB buying public.

You’ve probably hit the nail on the head there- they don’t do a lot of marketing, they don’t sponsor lads to go lark about in a quarry or have a race team. So thee’s no strong brand image to make you love or hate them.

My lbs sells them, pretty much every 3rd or 4th bike I see about town is a merida.

I have one, it’s a drop barred commuter, hence I feel no love for it, but it’s been solid for 3 years now.

Serious question: do merida have any sort of mtb race team?

They sponsored Hermida & Rodriguez who won their category in the cape epic this year, but I’m not sure the multi-van merida team is still going – but they certainly used to have an XC profile (olympic gold medal I think?).

I guess Bahrain-Merida get their sponsorship cash now.

How many 29er Enduro bikes are sold for less than £400? Again, this forum isn’t representative of the MTB buying public.

This forum isn’t even representative of the enthusiast MTB community, which is what we were talking about by implication.

It is representative of the grumpy, pedantic old arse who used to MTB community though.

I’m impressed with your instant ability to tell wheel sizes our on the trails though!

I like to talk to people.

Touchy! 😊

Really didn’t know much about them. Not in the market for a new bike but wouldn’t really have been on my list if I was

Impressed at how big they are

Biking is both my hobby and my main form of transport. I generally want a bike that I’m ‘proud’ of, or pleased with. So I end up being quite fickle. I’ll admit that cheaper bike would fulfil much of my use, but it wouldn’t please me as much (like having a nice car instead of just a car)

tomhoward
No matter what they do, I can’t get excited by Trek MTBs

Wild! answers the actual question, rather than “You know nothing about Merida! How dare you have an opinion SaxonRider!”
I don’t like Vitus. They have a whiff of own band CRCValue about them. This could be wrong, but.. well, I’m sure you’ll tell me how blimmin flip great your Vitus is if so 😆

Ben – even back in the late 1990s/early 2000s the two big bike manufacturers were Giant and Merida-Specialized.

There are many Taiwanese companies producing “generic” frames that appear in the catalogues of smaller bespoke manufacturers.

My understanding (happy to be corrected if I’m wrong) is that there are three major frame builders in Taiwan – Giant, Merida, and another whose name I don’t know. I think all three do a lot of contract work for other brands, so there’s a very good chance that a lot of the bike snobs are actually riding a frame that was build by one of those three factories. Merida are shareholders in Specialized, so I assume they keep that as their premium brand and the Merida brand are the affordable bikes. Clearly they know how to build high-end frames, but if you’re building to a budget, you can’t use the cutting edge materials and technology.

Giant are now seen as a much more premium brand, but 20 years ago they were mediocre but affordable. It wasn’t until they launched the first Anthem, Trance, and Reign that they had a suspension design that could compete with the Spesh FSR (maybe that’s more of a marketing thing, but the pre-Maestro Giants were generally mediocre IME.)

Let’s face it, a bike is just some pipes welded together and any high-end bike can be reverse engineered fairly easily, so companies like Merida can build good bikes if they want to. It’s just a matter of whether that’s their business model.

hols2

Giant are now seen as a much more premium brand, but 20 years ago they were mediocre but affordable. It wasn’t until they launched the first Anthem, Trance, and Reign that they had a suspension design that could compete with the Spesh FSR

A suspension design “inspired” by their work with Dave Weagle, allegedly