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.
I've never tried it, so speaking from ignorance, but my friends back in California (who were growers) say that the initial claims about medical cannabis were over stated, to say they least. I'm not saying it has no medical benefits, just people realized it wasn't a cure all for everything so the fad kinda faded.
Add to that many of the craft breweries end up renting manufacturing capacity from big players when they need to scale…
That sounds the same as the ski world. And then when they scale to fast and can't pay their bills, they end up being owned by the larger player like Line.
In the road bike market brands that specialize on the steel and aluminum market can be successful, see Standert: https://standert.deI know a couple of people...
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.
Standert is a micro brand who is able to source product J.I.T. from a country that they are seperated from by a line draw on a map, in a tarrif free relationship from a single source vendor using stock tubing and machine parts.
Those bikes are neat and priced ok in Europe, but under the current political situation in the USA it’s pretty much impossible for them to do bussiness.
In the USA You can call up Paul at Rock Lobster or FTW and have them build you a custom frame using the exact same Dedacai tubes and machine parts and fork if you want them in Santa Cruz or Bellows Falls for less than the (stock) made in italy frames that are imported to Berlin and then shipped across the Atlantic.
Standert is a micro brand who is able to source product J.I.T. from a country that they are seperated from by a line draw on a...
Standert is a micro brand who is able to source product J.I.T. from a country that they are seperated from by a line draw on a map, in a tarrif free relationship from a single source vendor using stock tubing and machine parts.
Those bikes are neat and priced ok in Europe, but under the current political situation in the USA it’s pretty much impossible for them to do bussiness.
In the USA You can call up Paul at Rock Lobster or FTW and have them build you a custom frame using the exact same Dedacai tubes and machine parts and fork if you want them in Santa Cruz or Bellows Falls for less than the (stock) made in italy frames that are imported to Berlin and then shipped across the Atlantic.
and? who cares about americans and their self inflicted problems?
I know I haven't been able to contribute as much so I thought I'd "open source" the little newswire I use to stay on top of what is happening in the outdoor business world. This is a fully automated wire that is the aggregation of a number of different sources & queries. I am not writing any of it.
I know I haven't been able to contribute as much so I thought I'd "open source" the little newswire I use to stay on top of...
I know I haven't been able to contribute as much so I thought I'd "open source" the little newswire I use to stay on top of what is happening in the outdoor business world. This is a fully automated wire that is the aggregation of a number of different sources & queries. I am not writing any of it.
standert was an example of how to make a brand work that only does metal frames. of course it’s not feasible to copy that in the usa when you a) tariff the ressources needed to oblivion AND b) fuck up any business relationship you had with your very neighbors north and south. fix your politics and you fix your (bike) problems…
First off, it’s weed:beer::emtb:MtbSecond, people are moronic about taxes. $40 product with $10 tax = $50 the gubbermint will destroy us all!$50 product with $0 tax. Nice...
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!
standert was an example of how to make a brand work that only does metal frames. of course it’s not feasible to copy that in the...
standert was an example of how to make a brand work that only does metal frames. of course it’s not feasible to copy that in the usa when you a) tariff the ressources needed to oblivion AND b) fuck up any business relationship you had with your very neighbors north and south. fix your politics and you fix your (bike) problems…
You're saying like Europe doesn't have any tariffs...
Lots of people confusing their position on the USA with bikeconomics. Standert has always been most feasible in the EU, even in Australia they’re expensive with shipping and tax.
Yes, tariffs are dumb and stuff is more expensive, but if you can call Walt, Steve Rex, Paul Sadoff, Cam Falconer, etc etc and go custom (plus choose your vibe) why would you not? It’s a different level of quality to production line frames too.
the point about the micro brand and JIT is that Standert doesn’t really carry stock or debt in the way other brands do, and road bikes need a cheap carbon fork, maybe a headset. For MTB’s the shock and fork is a reasonable percentage of the unit price and needs to be bought up front.
Saying ‘fix your politics and fix your bike problems’ works if you’re advocating for political means to be used for wholesale change of a neocapital-colonial system…
the problem with your problems is that they seldom stay an isolated american problem but quickly turn into the world‘s problem…
the price increases due to YOUR tariffs usually end up in price increases for everyone in the world because the american snowflakes can’t be burdened with carrying those costs all alone so everyone in the world gets to carry some of these prices hikes
and i haven’t even touched your iran problem that makes EVERYTHING more expensive. so please, pretty please fix your shit in a timely manner, will you?
Um... I'm not from the US neither did I comment anything related to the topic in a pro-US way (so the ya'll regime doesn't really apply to me), but saying @sethimus does anything politely on this forum is a bit optimistic, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with someone saying something against some (admittedly very problematic) political situations, but beating the dead horse over and over again and doing it in a very crass manner gets annoying, at least to me. And based on the average number of downvotes his posts usually get it doesn't look like I'm the only one.
Um... I'm not from the US neither did I comment anything related to the topic in a pro-US way (so the ya'll regime doesn't really apply...
Um... I'm not from the US neither did I comment anything related to the topic in a pro-US way (so the ya'll regime doesn't really apply to me), but saying @sethimus does anything politely on this forum is a bit optimistic, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with someone saying something against some (admittedly very problematic) political situations, but beating the dead horse over and over again and doing it in a very crass manner gets annoying, at least to me. And based on the average number of downvotes his posts usually get it doesn't look like I'm the only one.
Apologies, I think I responded to your post but was kind of addressing everyone - but honestly I think this kind of apathy is exactly why the horse is not dead and needs even more beating......And it does directly effect the whole economy so can't be ignored. I'm just saying Sethimus put it way more politely than I would 😁
You guys are welcome to keep debating this stuff, but I'd prefer it didn't happen here. I recognize that politics impacts the bike industry, and discussing those impacts objectively is absolutely fair game. But turning this thread into a debate over how terrible one politician or another is on the world stage isn't really where I hoped the conversation would go. There's plenty of room for that elsewhere.
You guys are welcome to keep debating this stuff, but I'd prefer it didn't happen here. I recognize that politics impacts the bike industry, and discussing...
You guys are welcome to keep debating this stuff, but I'd prefer it didn't happen here. I recognize that politics impacts the bike industry, and discussing those impacts objectively is absolutely fair game. But turning this thread into a debate over how terrible one politician or another is on the world stage isn't really where I hoped the conversation would go. There's plenty of room for that elsewhere.
💯💯💯
The politics bullshit is getting thick here. I involve myself with bicycles specifically as something that is fun vs. all the divisive bullshit in the world today.
If we want something to talk about, my newswire probably has something.
From this week...
-Shimano raises its outlook as inventories clear
-Bosch is moving its mobility unit to a wholly owned subsidiary starting in about 1 year. CEO Christian Fischer cited growing pressure from Asian competitors
-Garmin's fitness segment is crushing; 33% operating margin produced $231M of operating income
-Bids for Lapierre were due yesterday by noon.
-Another China brand enters worldtour level sponsor...TotalEnergies dropped Cube for Pardus (never heard of them) for a 3 year deal.
-VF Corp beat Q2 guidance, reaffirmed the FY guidance but inventories rose 7 y/y
I get that spinning off Bosch's mobility unit into its own subsidiary will allow for //insert business lingo here// but is there any possibility this is also to insulate the main Bosch company if the business fails? I don't think they necessarily will fail, I wonder if this setup allows the Mobility company to run a higher debt load for research/development/marketing and not take down all of Bosch if things don't work out.
You guys are welcome to keep debating this stuff, but I'd prefer it didn't happen here. I recognize that politics impacts the bike industry, and discussing...
You guys are welcome to keep debating this stuff, but I'd prefer it didn't happen here. I recognize that politics impacts the bike industry, and discussing those impacts objectively is absolutely fair game. But turning this thread into a debate over how terrible one politician or another is on the world stage isn't really where I hoped the conversation would go. There's plenty of room for that elsewhere.
💯💯💯The politics bullshit is getting thick here. I involve myself with bicycles specifically as something that is fun vs. all the divisive bullshit in the world...
💯💯💯
The politics bullshit is getting thick here. I involve myself with bicycles specifically as something that is fun vs. all the divisive bullshit in the world today.
Carry the political discussion someplace else.
Global/international economic discussions cannot be apolitical in our current systems.
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.
I've never tried it, so speaking from ignorance, but my friends back in California (who were growers) say that the initial claims about medical cannabis were over stated, to say they least. I'm not saying it has no medical benefits, just people realized it wasn't a cure all for everything so the fad kinda faded.
That sounds the same as the ski world. And then when they scale to fast and can't pay their bills, they end up being owned by the larger player like Line.
Standert is a micro brand who is able to source product J.I.T. from a country that they are seperated from by a line draw on a map, in a tarrif free relationship from a single source vendor using stock tubing and machine parts.
Those bikes are neat and priced ok in Europe, but under the current political situation in the USA it’s pretty much impossible for them to do bussiness.
In the USA You can call up Paul at Rock Lobster or FTW and have them build you a custom frame using the exact same Dedacai tubes and machine parts and fork if you want them in Santa Cruz or Bellows Falls for less than the (stock) made in italy frames that are imported to Berlin and then shipped across the Atlantic.
and? who cares about americans and their self inflicted problems?
More people than care about Switzerland.
I know I haven't been able to contribute as much so I thought I'd "open source" the little newswire I use to stay on top of what is happening in the outdoor business world. This is a fully automated wire that is the aggregation of a number of different sources & queries. I am not writing any of it.
--> https://jeffbrines.com/newswire/
If anyone has any ideas on how to improve it or additional coverage they'd like to see let me know. Trying to keep it super simple, though.
Thanks for this!
standert was an example of how to make a brand work that only does metal frames. of course it’s not feasible to copy that in the usa when you a) tariff the ressources needed to oblivion AND b) fuck up any business relationship you had with your very neighbors north and south. fix your politics and you fix your (bike) problems…
Except that $40 product without the tax is $40..
You're saying like Europe doesn't have any tariffs...
to oblivion?
Lots of people confusing their position on the USA with bikeconomics. Standert has always been most feasible in the EU, even in Australia they’re expensive with shipping and tax.
Yes, tariffs are dumb and stuff is more expensive, but if you can call Walt, Steve Rex, Paul Sadoff, Cam Falconer, etc etc and go custom (plus choose your vibe) why would you not? It’s a different level of quality to production line frames too.
the point about the micro brand and JIT is that Standert doesn’t really carry stock or debt in the way other brands do, and road bikes need a cheap carbon fork, maybe a headset. For MTB’s the shock and fork is a reasonable percentage of the unit price and needs to be bought up front.
Saying ‘fix your politics and fix your bike problems’ works if you’re advocating for political means to be used for wholesale change of a neocapital-colonial system…
the problem with your problems is that they seldom stay an isolated american problem but quickly turn into the world‘s problem…
the price increases due to YOUR tariffs usually end up in price increases for everyone in the world because the american snowflakes can’t be burdened with carrying those costs all alone so everyone in the world gets to carry some of these prices hikes
and i haven’t even touched your iran problem that makes EVERYTHING more expensive. so please, pretty please fix your shit in a timely manner, will you?
sincerely the rest of the world…
@sspomer are there any stats on most down voted and most blocked users on the forum?
Without derailling this thread any more, @sethimus is putting it VERY politely what the rest of the world thinks of ya'lls regime over there
Um... I'm not from the US neither did I comment anything related to the topic in a pro-US way (so the ya'll regime doesn't really apply to me), but saying @sethimus does anything politely on this forum is a bit optimistic, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with someone saying something against some (admittedly very problematic) political situations, but beating the dead horse over and over again and doing it in a very crass manner gets annoying, at least to me. And based on the average number of downvotes his posts usually get it doesn't look like I'm the only one.
Y'all need to stop feeding Colin Robinson.
If there is such a ranking I've probably won it
Apologies, I think I responded to your post but was kind of addressing everyone - but honestly I think this kind of apathy is exactly why the horse is not dead and needs even more beating......And it does directly effect the whole economy so can't be ignored. I'm just saying Sethimus put it way more politely than I would 😁
You guys are welcome to keep debating this stuff, but I'd prefer it didn't happen here. I recognize that politics impacts the bike industry, and discussing those impacts objectively is absolutely fair game. But turning this thread into a debate over how terrible one politician or another is on the world stage isn't really where I hoped the conversation would go. There's plenty of room for that elsewhere.
💯💯💯
The politics bullshit is getting thick here. I involve myself with bicycles specifically as something that is fun vs. all the divisive bullshit in the world today.
Carry the political discussion someplace else.
Ironically today during the Vendor Partner of the Year call at REI - cannondale won the partner for the Action Sports division (1 of 4 divisions).
Hope that’s something beyond politics we can chew on.
If we want something to talk about, my newswire probably has something.
From this week...
-Shimano raises its outlook as inventories clear
-Bosch is moving its mobility unit to a wholly owned subsidiary starting in about 1 year. CEO Christian Fischer cited growing pressure from Asian competitors
-Garmin's fitness segment is crushing; 33% operating margin produced $231M of operating income
-Bids for Lapierre were due yesterday by noon.
-Another China brand enters worldtour level sponsor...TotalEnergies dropped Cube for Pardus (never heard of them) for a 3 year deal.
-VF Corp beat Q2 guidance, reaffirmed the FY guidance but inventories rose 7 y/y
Fox Factory reports next week btw.
Each one of those headlines link to something if someone wants to jump in https://jeffbrines.com/newswire/
I get that spinning off Bosch's mobility unit into its own subsidiary will allow for //insert business lingo here// but is there any possibility this is also to insulate the main Bosch company if the business fails? I don't think they necessarily will fail, I wonder if this setup allows the Mobility company to run a higher debt load for research/development/marketing and not take down all of Bosch if things don't work out.
Global/international economic discussions cannot be apolitical in our current systems.
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