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That's a really interesting idea! Not sure if it can be done, maybe someone else can chime in.
That used to be a common thing to do if you were close to the Canada/US border - drive south, buy a bike, ride it for a week, drive it back across the border. Easy peasy. CBS only seemed to care about alcohol and fresh veg/fruit. Not worth it these days with the CAD $ trading so poorly against USD.
It's not strictly legal, but it can be done. Worst case scenario you have to pay the import duty if they stopped you and worked out what you'd done, but chances are they wouldn't even look at you.
In theory yes and I considered doing it but it definitely would have cost me more to do that way. I wouldn't have bothered with the Walmart bike part of it though. There is no tracing for stuff like that. I'm usually in Europe several times/year for work or vacation but it wouldn't be worth it for me to do it that way unless I was already going to be in England. I was well aware that this was going to be the deal when I ordered it anyway. I'm kinda used to doing it because I buy a lot of stuff from Germany and Italy that requires import duties.
In regards to Atherton Bikes, they have had 2 rounds of croundfunding that got them through the setup process plus a investment from Piers Linney of dragons den (uk version of shark tank). The second round of funding was to help get them setup for the A series of bikes.
The new factory was also in conjunction with Welsh govenment grants to help the local area growth - this was also what Bernard Kerr has done to get his Pivot racing base (he explained this in one of the videos when he moved into the building) - plus Dan is now a member of the local council so I guess that helps them in some way
There was also some insta stories that Gee posted about a year ago where they were invited to a event run by the Saudi PIF fund so dont know if that went any further?
I think Bernard Kerr / BK Sport / Pivot Factory Racing is across the street in a separate building.
IIRC Bernard said on one of The Ride Companion podcasts that he was paying £1600 pcm for the unit.
Browsing eBay last night and pickup a new shock for a smoking deal from a seemingly random seller until I take a gander at the from address. Really hope Evil makes it because I love DW and have heard their bikes ride like nothing else!
Is that new or used? It would make sense to sell some old demo stuff as they go into the new year.
Just to put a fork in this one, I did hear from a reputable unnamed source that AB is doing just fine. So, lets chalk that up to the first "L" of the year for me! I feel my big miss here was twofold, besides the fact the flat out make a killer bike.
Equity Sale: They raised at least $4M, which is a chunk. Plus, its equity so you aren't on the clock to pay it back. This is plenty of capital to put infrastructure in place without financing terms you'd usually have to be subjected to. Hence, if they own their fancy building outright, and own their tooling & machinery, it sure is a lot easier to operate the business in the black.
Subsidies: It seems AB has done a good job taking advantage of local, regional and national subsidies. Heck, they even help UK customers figure out ways to get up to a 40% discount on their bikes. https://www.athertonbikes.com/cycle-to-work
Phew. Looks like I'll maybe one day still have the opportunity to own one of these!
Also pretty common for people to use their corporate shipping service to ship personal stuff: ie: an employee is selling off a shock and using the Evil mail service to ship it.
YT just released a "new" core line for the Izzo.
Anyone have any idea how YT is doing it? They just seem to be expanding in all facets and putting down some major outlays of capital (the YT Mills, expanding race teams, etc..). I mean, if you've got the resources, now is definitely a good time to gain some market share and grow, but I'm just not sure HOW they're doing it (I think I read something about an investor a while back in early 2020s?).
If I had to venture a theory, they're playing the quantity game at those prices. Additionally, while their lineup isn't small, they don't have that many models when you compare them to various other bike companies - not too much fluff.
One thing that stands out to me is just how long their product lifecycles are, which spreads out some of the manufacturing/engineering expenses. In my opinion the Izzo is due for a slight geometry refresh, along with maybe the addition of new features/kinematics as they deem appropriate to keep the bike "modern" - or at least in the eye of the consumer. The Izzo frame was released in April of 2020, and to my awareness, is unchanged during that time (colors and build kits aside).
I do agree trying to charge 4k for a frame is a bit too much, they're not the only ones though. SC/Yeti all do it too. That being said, Norco stuff goes on sale a lot; I picked up a last gen Optic frame for 1.2k and bought my wife the complete Fluid carbon C1 for 3k...
Regarding the Atherton race team, I believe Continental (Continental Atherton) are the title sponsor so they are probably putting in the bulk of the funding for the team.
Eh, Fox factory 36 29s with Grip 2 for 2022 were on there from a specialized reseller for $250 a pop yesterday. They clearly had taken a bunch of OEM take offs off specialized hands and they had hundreds of them. Obviously with EVIL there's other stuff at play here but plenty of companies are just realizing they need to cut 2+ season old stock loose at any price.
And to Norco's credit, at least they offer aluminum frames in their newest platforms for fiendishly reasonably prices at MSRP. You can't tell me there's $3,000 CAD in performance gains between the sight alloy frame and sight carbon frame. Unless you're balling out you're supposed to get a carbon complete or the alloy frame, clearly.
My understanding is that the marginal cost of producing a carbon frame over an alloy one is about a tenth of that.
Indeed, in 2020, Vitus dropped the alloy option for its trail and enduro frames (and shared a front triangle between them) because it meant they could halve the number of SKUs they needed to carry, which (I assume) more than offset the additional production cost of the carbon frame.
Although if anyone in the industry can tell me if I'm talking shit, that would be great...
I would say doubtful.. While using a common front triangle is a common method to bring down costs, is still is not cheap to build with carbon. Tooling costs are still a big deal and even with companies putting out a large number of frames, there is still a lot of hand work on each frame.
Quite often once a Mould/s is effectively cost recoverd, Carbon frames are cheaper to manufacture.
Quality alloy frames are not cheap nor easy to make - and these days they are heavy to assist in impact damage and cracking(carbon hasnt sufferd from this as bad) - i was told by someone at trek in queenstown, their new slash is seriously expensive to make in alloy.(is giant still Making alloy bikes for trek? and is quest still making OCLV carbon stuff for trek?
And whoever actually owns the moulds is anther issue, often it can be the Factory who effectively sell the brand the frame for lets say 5 years, then the factory can reproduce that frame for their own - This is why there is some Santa cruz 'copy' frames are available... SC isnt exactly telling the full truth about 'having their own factory'
Yes, tooling costs on a carbon frame are super high (molds are sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars), but tooling is considered a fixed cost, aka buy it once. Boozed was referring to marginal costs, which refers to the costs specific to each additional frame you build, aka raw materials and labor for that frame alone, not including tools, cost of R&D, overhead, etc.
I'm also not sure the marginal cost of an aluminum frame can be 10x that of a carbon frame. I think of carbon frames as being very labor intensive, thus the move of many carbon layup facilities from high cost Taiwan to lower labor cost areas like China, Vietnam, etc. However, aluminum welding is labor intensive and requires very high skill labor, because welding is harder than laying pre-cut carbon patterns in a mold, so maybe the labor costs are much, much higher due to the wage difference.
Honestly no idea. Would be curious to hear from some of our commenters with more inside experience.
I'm not convinced SC is doing this - if you've held any of the SC copy frames in your hands, it's clear they aren't coming out of SC molds (and I've held more DTC chinese frames in my hands than most, as it would happen, including 3 of the SC copy frames for various reasons). The frame shapes are different enough that its clear they're built as a knockoff rather than a "wait 5 years and sell the same thing with different hardware". I'm not just talking poorer tolerances, worn out mold stuff - like actually different frame shapes, etc. Maybe some of these companies are subcontracted from the SC factories to make actual SC bikes, but whatever they're putting out under their own brand? Not the same thing.
Which isn't to say this doesn't happen however. Carbonda aka Flybike made NS's XC bike and sold their own with a different linkage alongside it (as well as to CRC under the vitus name and about a dozen other small brands), in addition to making a bunch of Nukeproof's stuff which they then sold on their own (by the way, if anyone wants a brand new Nukeproof frame Flybike will sell you one direct for like 30 cents on the dollar at the moment). It's also happened with Scott bikes historically, off the top of my head, and there's some disturbingly close Specialized knockoffs that even work with 90% of specialized's OEM hardware - giving creedence to the idea they are in fact the same molds.
I bought 2 'copy' frames and all the parts from my warranty denied 'stray rock, weak frame' parts all came across no worries! - mine were really nice, especially on the inside, no rubbish finish. be aware i got these off a seller from alibaba and not aliexpress - the ones on ali can vary and can be difficult to deal via alibaba due to language barrier and shipping but i have a work colleague from China that helped me. (hes very into chinese manufacturing and really given me some insight and help getting stuff made)
We have 2 and a 3rd being built of the 'cheap chinese' Ebike frames that Rob from emtb shared videos on, they are awesome - I rode mine down some gnarly stuff at queenstown.
I've always got mine, and many of the people I'm linked up with that are doing this, have contacted manufacturers directly rather than through aliexpress/alibaba. I'm curious what platform you're on and of your experiences but I don't wanna clog this thread with something unrelated. Shoot me a PM!
Guess who's back: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7283165734422102019/
Man, I don't want to derail this thread even more than I already have today (and yesterday), but does anyone else feel like the term "Certified Pre-Owned" is a bit of a misnomer? They're clearly trying lean into the automotive market, where CPO is essentially defined term wherein the OEM has inspected the car, certified it, and is continuing to honour the warranty (and possibly extending it). Is TPC inspecting, certifying, and honouring warranties? (hint: the answer is no). I was curious about what CPO means in this case so I checked their terms of service; it means you get fuck all and you agree the most you can win in a dispute with them is $1,000. Strange.
For some reason I feel a sudden urge to buy one of those Carbonda Nukeproof frames and put NUKESPOOF on the downtube.
Stolen from RideMonkey, but looks like Light & Motion are done.
In the P&A category but Light and Motion calls it quits: https://lightandmotion.com/
Dang. I got a couple of their lights for free (used) a couple years back. Guess I better look for some spare batteries while I still can.
Re: Light and Motion. I've a mixed bag with em. Their lights do work well with good beam spreads and longevity for intended use, but their commuter series mounts were not ideal. I broke two (which is understandable as I tend to be rough with gear and use it near every day) but my wife broke hers as well. Ended up getting flashlight mounts when L&M wouldn't warranty em (over 2 years old, so not unusual) and rode em that way for awhile but we migrated back to Niterider since even though their lights and mount brackets have changed, the mount interface between the two has been the same for what, 20 years now? Not gonna say it's perfect but much like the MMX clamps from Sram, there is something to be said for not messing with something that works well enough in most all cases.
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