Unhappy Sick Bicycles Customers. BEWARE!

They offer a lifetime, NQA warranty? Well I never

A No Questions Answered warranty?

Designed is such a strong word, especially seeing as the one in Hannah’s article appears to be trying to mimic a brompton at the shock mounts, I’m guessing there wasn’t an extensive r&d process with prototypes or days spent optimizing it in FEA.

Wouldn’t surprise me if xcad just put anything they owned the rights to on aliexpress. And wouldn’t surprise me if sick were incompetent enough to not make sure they owned to rights to the design (or maybe it’s something more like the Marino situation).

sick were incompetent enough to not make sure they owned to rights to the design

Of course they did. But the rights belong to sick, and they’re not allowed to be called sick anymore because that’s someone else, so as the rights belong to sick that same someone else now owns the rights…

I’ve just read the PB article and this thread.

I don’t think they malicious or bad guys. But they seem massively naive and pretty incompetent

Tim: It’s cool to make cool things. We built small amounts of profit into the titanium frames, which was then swallowed up, again, out of naivety. VAT, import fees, postage, handling, packaging, the courier’s handling and packaging, all of this stuff. That’s not part of the problem. We were learning to build the business and it was something we hadn’t considered.

Really!!?? I know sod all about business – but surely an import led manufacturing business this would be quite important?

I actually ended up feeling a bit sorry for them (not as sorry as for those who have lost money etc.). They sound like a pair of dafties completely out of their depth.

The scariest bit about that quote is

That’s not part of the problem

It really really is, that at this point they still don’t see underpricing as a massive problem just goes to illustrate they’re complete morons.

I’m not going to name drop, but some guy from a f*cking huge company drove, we met in Chichester. I sat down and I pulled out my folder of problems. They went, “Is this it? This is the problem that you have? This is business.”

Sounds like Brant! The 101 bike guru of ‘designed in the UK, manufacturerd aboard’.

we met in Chichester
Sounds like Brant!

I can’t believe he’s ever been that far south 🙂

It really really is, that at this point they still don’t see underpricing as a massive problem just goes to illustrate they’re complete morons.

It does give credence to the theory that the reason for continuing to offer more pre orders is down to needing funds to pay for the last batch.

In any sensible business plan you’d do a kickstarter to build the brand and sell the first batch with minimal risk. Then go to the bank with a business plan, get a loan and start doing production runs and selling at full price with an actually profit margin.

Being on kickstarter and only offering pre orders every few weeks/months does not in hindsight look like a business that had a healthy cashflow.

sorry, 48 staff, across sites in the UK, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovakia.

@spengle
That’s pretty interesting, and I’d have said that many staff makes you actually quite the opposite of “small in the grand scheme of things”. I work in the bike industry too and know of some very high profile companies (that sell a lot of bikes) who do not have that many people working for ’em.

Is that 48 within Spengle, or 48 within SPC Technologies? Presuming SPC Technologies (company name given on your Impressum) does some kind of plastics/carbon fibre work for industries other than bike..?

I fully understand if there’s stuff you can’t/don’t want to post publicly – Feel free to ignore me!

I can’t believe he’s ever been that far south

I reckon his ears would go pop if he strayed that far away from the land of flat caps and whippets.

Sounds like Brant! The 101 bike guru of ‘designed in the UK, manufacturerd aboard’.

Amazing he hasn’t tried to turn this into some kind of massive marketing ploy, giving out consolation prizes for the unlucky losers.

Amazing he hasn’t tried to turn this into some kind of massive marketing ploy, giving out consolation prizes for the unlucky losers.

I’ve had a few chats with Jordan in the last year. Nothing for a while. Nothing formal. And I don’t think I’ve ever been to Chichester.

I reckon his ears would go pop if he strayed that far away from the land of flat caps and whippets.

I did get a job offer from Wiggle once, but that was never going to work.

Being as @spengle have come out of this looking rather great on here, how about they P-up? Come on…..it’s a lovey place (usually) and worth the money 🙂

https://singletrackworld.com/subscribe/

And you get a P, which is like a verified twitter tick or something.

I did get a job offer from Wiggle once, but that was never going to work.

When they were still in Portsmouth I’m guessing?

You seem like a nice bloke, you definitely didn’t deserve the purgatory that is Pompey!

So this one looks like the Have Blue? Which looked pretty cool. 650b geometronish thing

“https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/new-design-titanium-carbon-mtb-suspension_60688266270.html?spm=a2700.details.maylikehoz.5.2d6456e5XchZ6C”

And this would be a DFA maybe?

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Custom-titanium-full-suspension-bicycle-frame_60750072359.html

Might be worth trying to stay on top of these, partly for people who wanted the bikes and got screwed but also, might tempt folk like me 😉 I just messaged them to see if this is stock they have or if they’re just images of bikes they’ve made, as window dressing, since they do full custom.

(also now wondering if I could get them to make me a new front triangle for my Remedy, with the same back, frame pivots etc but about 50mm longer and 3 degrees slacker 😉 )

I must say, Spengle come out of this looking rather excellent. A professional approach and a sense of humour, too.

Agreed.

And while they are happy to work with sick bikes again, I’ll bet they don’t give them a credit account 😂👍

Might be worth trying to stay on top of these, partly for people who wanted the bikes and got screwed but also, might tempt folk like me

But isn’t it one of those Alibaba frames that’s creased in the STW article?

This whole thing is like a case study in how not to run a startup.

They did a brilliant job at marketing and initial PR, and they found a nice little niche that could have been profitable had they not massively cocked it all up.

There is some weird stuff in the PB article – for instance they claim that the Paypal disputes procedure is slowing down refunds; this is completely false. This only happens when you refuse the refund in the first place (for example, I’ve only ever had it go that far in my business when I had evidence from a courier that the customer has signed and received an item, yet they were claiming they hadn’t – I wasn’t prepared to refund them when they were blatantly lying, so let Paypal sort it out). So, presumably, they’re letting the Paypal dispute runs its course with each case, rather than refunding, because they don’t have sufficient cashflow to refund instantly.

JP

I remember Evil ‘set the record straight’ a few years ago in similar fashion “it’s not our fault, it’s those dodgy manufactures”

Yeah.. I spent some time at that factory around that time. Spoke to the engineers there. 2 sides to every story. Factories make what brands ask for, you work with them and share responsibility.

Customers aren’t going to want a startup to fail if they’re doing something new and exciting they’ve paid money for a preorder, quite the opposite.

FTFY.

they’re complete morons

The evidence supports this.

Having a read of one of the other Sick threads and the topic of the ‘Industry Flounce’ was brought up.

I remember a few years back when the guy who first started bringing Transition Bikes into the UK had a full-on meltdown and flounce. Ah, they were the days.

This Jordan fella seems to think he is carving a path but this ‘Edge Lord’ attitude, leading to petulance once called out and dribbling into woe-is-me after reality comes knocking has been done many times before and by better.

The t-shirts they sell are quite good though.

Ahhh Graham! To be fair he was one of the first people to bring mountain bikes into the UK full stop. Marin I think in the early 80’s?

But yes, he was easily wound up on here and a lot of people pushed buttons. Back in the full on TJ bullying era as well

Yes interesting T-shirts.

Nah the Transition UK guy was called Jamie.

I believe he had his backside kicked by Kyle (the Transition owner) after Jamie decided to contact someone’s boss to whinge about comments made about Jamie’s pricing policy.

As somebody in the early stages of building bikes there’s a lot to learn here and not anything I want to reproduce.
P.S. I dont sell T-shirts

That t-shirt just screams ‘Jerry of the day’.

They should start with an ‘Import It’ t-shirt first then the ‘Send It’ one…

They should start with an ‘Import It’ t-shirt first then the ‘Send It’ one…

Judging from what the Peruvian frame builder has said, I think you’d need to begin with a ‘Pay For It’ one…..

Anyone got a link to the Marino side of the story or was this just someone e-mailing him?

Member
As somebody in the early stages of building bikes there’s a lot to learn here and not anything I want to reproduce.
P.S. I dont sell T-shirts

I think it’s the perfect business model for you to follow.
I’ll come in as a second director, and then we can fund our lavish, jewel-encrusted stem, tat’ covered lifestyle with all our ill gotten gains 😉

Anyone got a link to the Marino side of the story or was this just someone e-mailing him?

Ive seen comments and screenshots on Steel Is Real Facebook group and I think the Singletrack Mag one too but can’t see much now.  Here is one

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10161577537400398&id=734615397&set=p.10161577537400398&source=47&ref=content_filter

Ive seen comments and screenshots on Steel Is Real Facebook group and I think the Singletrack Mag one too but can’t see much now. Here is one

The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.

There’s a screenshot on p15 of the thread. Wonder if the Sick boys have magically found him some money on condition he takes the post down?

@pinetree SPC is the mother company, we have manufacturing and engineering entities in Austria and Slovakia, but all ultimately part of the same group.

We’ve invested pretty heavily in our technical capabilities including a carbon plotter and assorted machinery, we can produce other items as well (Drone wings?) but our core is the wheel range <— yes I did say range….

Being as @spengle have come out of this looking rather great on here, how about they P-up? Come on…..it’s a lovey place (usually) and worth the money 🙂

done

the team here are 4 months into a review, so maybe you can read about us, without it being written by us 🙂

And while they are happy to work with sick bikes again, I’ll bet they don’t give them a credit account 😂👍

We are Swiss, we’ve got the finance side of things on lock!

We are Swiss, we’ve got the finance side of things on lock!

Touché!

Came across all of this business a few days ago when I saw one of their frames for sale on eBay. The whole thing is shocking.

Their Facebook page lists their business address as a tattoo parlour over near Brighton. If it was me waiting for a two grand refund, I’d be inclined to go and hold their tattoo equipment to ransom.

If it was me waiting for a two grand refund, I’d be inclined to go and hold their tattoo equipment to ransom their testicles

Ftfy

done

Bloody hell, there’s folk on here have been freeloading for years you know and there you go, putting them all to shame