Maybe their are not too many frame brands, but combined with the number of other brands that appear on a bike and the number of SKUs...
Maybe their are not too many frame brands, but combined with the number of other brands that appear on a bike and the number of SKUs per frame I think it's crowded. Trek has 14 ebikes each with ~3 trims, plus 20 regular bikes with 5+ trims (not including kids bikes, and not differentiating between aluminum/carbon as different 'bikes', just different trims). That seems wild to me. Plus, the differentiator between each trim is someone else's products/sale for the most part (other than carbon/alu frames; i.e. the main difference between the entry level and top end bikes are SRAM/Shimano product plus a few low-er margin/cost in-house parts). With how similar groupsets are getting these days (except weight, all AXS stuff is pretty much the same) I'm surprised someone hasn't switched to selling just one low-mid tier trim per model. E.g. if the thing that sells most is GX AXS level price, just sell one trail bike with that groupset, decent aluminum wheels and suspension, and good tires. Even better if there is adjustable geometry so you can get away with fewer frame sizes (e.g. headset flip chips for +/-10mm reach, then only stock three sizes across 90mm of reach).
In Canada, a car company like Volkswagen sells essentially ~10 different cars, each with 3-5 'trim' levels. I know some of that is all sub-contracted out and some trim add-ons are from another 'brand' (like speakers from Bose) but at the end of the day it's still a majority 'Volkswagen' product changing from lowest to highest trim.
For what it's worth, cars and bikes aren't too dissimilar in the amount of engineering the car company does. The engine (and sometimes the gearbox) is usually their design, the complete body including stamping the panels is theirs and the suspension design is theirs as well. This in essence defines the car platform. All of the above is something that is shared, bought and sold between companies as well, but nitpicking. Obviously they do assembly of everything too, so there's a large part.
The thing I'm getting at is that for a lot of things these car brands specify things and then have suppliers (Tier 1) design and manufacture assembly parts that then get shipped to the assembly line to be put together into a complete car. These suppliers have their own suppliers and so on (Tier 2 and Tier 3 is completely normal).
As for how widespread this is, I doubt any major car brand is doing much with brakes, I think both discs and calipers are mostly bought. Same for suspension components. Same for most of the interior. Hell, Brose (yes, the ebike motor Brose) is known for assembling the complete door cards including the interior, door handles, allt he latches, central locking actuators, window lifters, switches and speakers. Those Bose speakers? I bet they are a marketing and maybe an engineering project and definitely not manufactured and delivered by Bose. There are also very few companies around the world doing lights, bout headlights, taillights and interior lighting (Hella being one of them for example)
The main difference between bikes and cars is that the volumes enable car brands to spec each and every part to be custom if needed and specific to a certain car while the complete bike industry shares the same set of forks and brakes. And as you noted, it says Volkswagen on it and you have to dig quite deep to find a logo that is not from them. But you will find things like Bosch, Continental, Denso, Alpine (yes, headunits even when they're built into the dash), etc.
Disagree - the weed industry is in the shits right now too. At least in California, it is. Someone must be doing well considering the sheer number...
Disagree - the weed industry is in the shits right now too. At least in California, it is.
Someone must be doing well considering the sheer number of new $100K plus cars I see, even in the (at least what used to be) very blue collar neighborhood we're in.
The boom in craft breweries happened a decade or more ago and (from the local perspective at least) a lot of them were angling for a buyout by a macro, or simply lucked into one, and now the macros have all the craft brands they need and command the shelf space and the market is saturated. Independent breweries struggle in such a market. There appear to be a few parallels.
The other problem is that the biggest chain of bottle shops here (by far) is Dan Murphy's, and half of the "craft" beers on its shelves (or half of most of what it sells, really - beer, wine, liqueurs...) are contract manufactured under a range of labels that exist as "companies" only in Dan Murphy's stores. They're dressed up to look craft but are far from it. It's a double whammy.
And the difference between craft beer and toilet paper is that every brand of toilet paper tastes the same.
I guess it depends on what you mean by premium. I'm not talking about cool-guy frames like frameworks, raaw, etc. Instead I'm talking about for a...
I guess it depends on what you mean by premium. I'm not talking about cool-guy frames like frameworks, raaw, etc. Instead I'm talking about for a company like Cannondale, under Pon, presumably a "big" brand. Stuff like Stumpjumper, Levo, Ripmo, Vala, Spectral, etc. You really think MOST of the people buying those are choosing the alloy versions not because it's cheaper? Why can't you buy an alloy Nomad then? Why are the alloy options so limited across the industry? All those brands have "established history of building long term durability not the cheapest option available" too. Keep in mind Specialized probably sells more alloy levos than frameworks + raaw combined.
I think that to you guys it probably looks like there's a bigger gap in the market for Cannondale to go after with that strategy than actually exists. I get that there ARE people out there that actually prefer alloy to carbon, cost no object, but I think that's a very small minority. I'm pretty sure we know what happens when you put a CAAD 14 on a shop floor next to a carbon RS7 that's over 1kg lighter and $500 less, or alloy RS5 that's $1000 less with the same 105 groupset... and I'm pretty sure Cannondale knows what'll happen to their margins. I wonder, how did x-lab sign up so many dealers so fast?
Again, this really goes back to there being too many brands. The market is crowded AF.
In the road bike market brands that specialize on the steel and aluminum market can be successful, see Standert: https://standert.de
I know a couple of people that love CAAD road frames and were not happy with the offers from Cannondale and switched to Standert. With the new CAAD14, I think Cannondale tries to get these folks back.
For what it's worth, cars and bikes aren't too dissimilar in the amount of engineering the car company does. The engine (and sometimes the gearbox) is usually their design, the complete body including stamping the panels is theirs and the suspension design is theirs as well. This in essence defines the car platform. All of the above is something that is shared, bought and sold between companies as well, but nitpicking. Obviously they do assembly of everything too, so there's a large part.
The thing I'm getting at is that for a lot of things these car brands specify things and then have suppliers (Tier 1) design and manufacture assembly parts that then get shipped to the assembly line to be put together into a complete car. These suppliers have their own suppliers and so on (Tier 2 and Tier 3 is completely normal).
As for how widespread this is, I doubt any major car brand is doing much with brakes, I think both discs and calipers are mostly bought. Same for suspension components. Same for most of the interior. Hell, Brose (yes, the ebike motor Brose) is known for assembling the complete door cards including the interior, door handles, allt he latches, central locking actuators, window lifters, switches and speakers. Those Bose speakers? I bet they are a marketing and maybe an engineering project and definitely not manufactured and delivered by Bose. There are also very few companies around the world doing lights, bout headlights, taillights and interior lighting (Hella being one of them for example)
The main difference between bikes and cars is that the volumes enable car brands to spec each and every part to be custom if needed and specific to a certain car while the complete bike industry shares the same set of forks and brakes. And as you noted, it says Volkswagen on it and you have to dig quite deep to find a logo that is not from them. But you will find things like Bosch, Continental, Denso, Alpine (yes, headunits even when they're built into the dash), etc.
First off, it’s weed:beer::emtb:Mtb
Second, people are moronic about taxes.
$40 product with $10 tax = $50 the gubbermint will destroy us all!
$50 product with $0 tax. Nice deal I’ll take it.
The boom in craft breweries happened a decade or more ago and (from the local perspective at least) a lot of them were angling for a buyout by a macro, or simply lucked into one, and now the macros have all the craft brands they need and command the shelf space and the market is saturated. Independent breweries struggle in such a market. There appear to be a few parallels.
The other problem is that the biggest chain of bottle shops here (by far) is Dan Murphy's, and half of the "craft" beers on its shelves (or half of most of what it sells, really - beer, wine, liqueurs...) are contract manufactured under a range of labels that exist as "companies" only in Dan Murphy's stores. They're dressed up to look craft but are far from it. It's a double whammy.
And the difference between craft beer and toilet paper is that every brand of toilet paper tastes the same.
Add to that many of the craft breweries end up renting manufacturing capacity from big players when they need to scale…
In the road bike market brands that specialize on the steel and aluminum market can be successful, see Standert: https://standert.de
I know a couple of people that love CAAD road frames and were not happy with the offers from Cannondale and switched to Standert. With the new CAAD14, I think Cannondale tries to get these folks back.
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