Seen a couple of possibilities for my new bike but both a little more than I wanted to pay, so when can we expect reductions before the ’19 bikes hit the shops? At the moment I am suffering from the ‘will they sell out of my size before the sales ‘ quandary!

When they only have XL and small left 😉

September ish usually, discounts come and go, but the big lumpy ones won’t arrive until they’re the ‘old’ model.

It’s very much a “how long is a piece of string” question.  Giant are already on sale –

https://www.giant-bicycles.com/gb/sale

Some brands may have less stock they need to move and may not go to sale or may offer smaller discounts.  Conversely you may see bigger discounts if it’s a really sticky model, colour or size.

It was August last year , or at least for it was for what I was looking at / ended up buying.

A lot are already on sale, I’ve seen Whytes with up to 20% and Trek/Giant/Specialized already discounted. Some shops are running voucher codes for money off full price bikes, Tweeks are doing 15% off 2018 bikes at the minute, so there are already deals to be had.

I wonder how the ‘general market feel’ will effect bike sales – ie: highstreet being at record lows of consumer spend.

Do we think the bike industry is effected the same? Will this encourage more sales (like we’ve been seeing on the high street – sales every other month lasting for a month at a time) or will it force retailers to lengthen product lifetimes, reuse old stock, etc.

Edit, as above – I think Canyon are already having a sale at the lower end of their range. Nothing too interesting in there yet last I looked.

Sunset flogging some discounted 2018 Oranges and presumably other brands too.

Just picked up a Merida eOne-Sixty, most places are still RRP in UK so got it from Spain with 33% off. Very much brand dependent, in this case there hasn’t been a huge amount of stock around so I’m surprised they are already on sale.

The distributors seem to have been a lot more conservative in recent years, people I know who bought new (current year) bikes recently had to wait anything from a few weeks to a few months because it would be on the next shipment, not pulled from stock. No-one wants to be sitting on a pile of bikes to discount at the end of the season.

all ours are now

The distributors seem to have been a lot more conservative in recent years, people I know who bought new (current year) bikes recently had to wait anything from a few weeks to a few months because it would be on the next shipment, not pulled from stock. No-one wants to be sitting on a pile of bikes to discount at the end of the season.

+1

Seems like in the good old days (2004-2008 ish) when the economy was booming and mountain biking growing exponentially (both in popularity and suspension travel)  distributors would fill warehouses with stock for the summer and then be in a race to sell it off in the autumn before it became last years stock and even harder to shift as bikes really were getting substantially better with each model (with a few exceptions mainstream 2018 bikes still share their geometry with the better bikes of 10 years ago).

Nowadays with Canyon, Bird, etc you’re probably going to get as much of a bargain any time of the year, and there isn’t any real reason for a dealer to discount a 2018 spesh when in reality the 2019 will be at most a colour change and 5mm here and there.

Depends on the model – if it’s an in demand one with low stocks, they’ll keep prices at RRP.

What bike is it you’re after?

Some 5010s and Branstons on sale now due to new models.

any gravel bikes bargains knocking around?

Some 5010s and Branstons on sale now due to new models.

well, that leaves me in a bit of a pickle…

Planet X – on one knocking out some good deals on gravel bikes.

will they sell out of my size before the sales

Yup

Looking around the distributors the last few weeks they only have weird sizes in stock. Anyone asking near RRP for a 2018 bike is a chancer