State of the industry: a running thread

[al-onestare]

If you are an enthusiast who loves bikes. Keeps your best bike for a few years , rides it all summer long and then sells it at 50% of its value at 3 years the whole thing is pretty cheap when you compare it to sitting in a pub 3 nights a week like many do.

 

[bikeworkshop]

Bear in mind most big brands offering £5000 bikes mostly sell bikes under a grand - so our neighbouring cannondale dealer hangs a couple of superexpensive bikes in the window, and the average customer wanting to spend £500 buys an £800 bike with similar graphics.
What this means is the top end stuff gets massively overexposed. The dealers have to make the effort sell the bikes most people actually want, but the flashy bikes hook them into the brand.
We hear time and time again:
"Oooh specialized, that's a good bike isn't it?" It's definitely working.

 

[minor_LEGEND]

Maybe it is also time to start changing ourselves. We all find the joke about the "N+1" bikes funny. But a more realistic formula would be "Min (1, 1-N)", that is, the less bicycles you can get away with, the better, but at least 1 as the world is a better place when everyone has a bike. Hoarding 40 unused bikes and snapping deals in the used market is maybe not the best way to allow for affordable bikes for newcomers. And I am very guilty of this...

There is certainly no shortage of bikes on the 2nd hand market. I find it frightening how much scrap metal is listed on FB marketplace & ebay etc. Most of it is not going to be bought at the prices being asked, that is for certain.

 

[Russell]

I find it frightening how much scrap metal is listed on Retrobike. Most of it is not going to be bought at the prices being asked, that is for certain.

FTFY

 

[d8mok]

Wife aggressive - magic calculator has to come out sometimes to justify it

 

[ChromeChainstay]

14spd (28spd) bike's are going to be magical. can't wait campagnolo (ekar)

 

[Titiritero]

Anchoring bias

This is the main reason for the 15k bikes (or the 100k cars). If the magazine (or shop, podcast, youtuber, etc.) tests a 10k bike, automatically our brain re-adjust expectations and the 2k bike is "budget", "affordable" or whatever. There is also the reputational part of course, "if brand XYZ can make a 10k bike, I'm sure the 2k bike will be great too!".

I think that is the main issue when people say today's bikes are expensive. As @clubby mentions, bikes back then were similarly expensive. Today we get much more bike for the same money (mostly because now everything comes from China while before a good chunk was made locally or in countries like Japan or Taiwan where people get a fair pay and labour rights, so basically workers and the environment pay the differrence).

But what has changed are the expectations. XT was top of the range, the stuff racers used, totally aspirational, most of my friends had 200 GS bikes, I spent all my childhood money to get Deore LX!! Now XT is the standard, the benchmark. If you go to SLX, or 105 on road, you are being "budget conscious". What happens to all the other 8 gruppos down the line!? For cycling "experts", it seems there should be just 3 groups, XTR for racers, XT for everybody else, and Tourney for BSOs...

I don't agree that bikes back then changed a lot y-o-y though. Excluding the suspension ones, that were starting to be developed and obviously designs were changing by the day, everything else was pretty much the same. Many brands would have a couple of frame quality levels, and then mount whatever Shimano had at each price point. The following year they would get a new colour, or at most the usual trickle down from Shimano (Deore LX is now Exage, DX becomes LX, and so on... There was the Hardrock, Hardrock sport, Hardrock comp, Hardrock whatever,...

This graph from the LinkedIN article is very telling. Bike numbers go up or down, but the number of participants remain constant. We, the already convinced, are the ones moving the industry. If there is internal cable routing, press fit BBs, or whatever standard you don't like, it is because enough of us are buying it (or not and then threaded BBs come back ;-)).

 

[greencat]

Just for fun, I’ve had a look through my early MBUKs (1990) and it was just the same back then. Loads of pics of Klein Attitudes at £1999 (£5000 in today’s money) for a fully rigid aluminium bike. Bullseye cranks £220 (£550). Deore XT triple crankset £140 (£350). Bike test was £650 (£1600) budget.

Only thing that’s changed is us!

I totally agree about the marketing of x% improvement, but no one is forced to buy it.
Road bikes are the worst for it, as there’s so little to fundamental change, anything has to be highlighted.
In the early days entire frame designs changed every year, now at least frames are around for 3-4 years before being updated. In part, I think we can thank carbon for that, as companies don’t want to change moulds every year.
If you need a new bike there’s never been a better time. 20+ years of all these incremental improvements has made a massive difference. You used to only get suspension aftermarket, now you can get a decent fork on beginners bikes.
I’ve just changed my hardtail after 7 years. It had an entry level Yari fork. The new one has a Lyrik, which is a model up but not one of the top end ones. Even though the old fork was well maintained and serviced the new fork is so much better. There’s a three generation gap between the forks. I doubt I’d have noticed a single generation but three, yes.

Agreed. We've just bring some age related wisdom tinged with rose tinted nostalgia. Past stuff looks ace and good value, new stuff crap and bad value.

I had nothing to spend my cash on except bike stuff bitd. I went through several sets of £20+ pedals before finding a pair that wouldn't wear out after a couple of months (because I was riding hard, the technology not that well developed and my maintenance skills...erm...improving). Finally, I landed on XTs - and I've still got those pedals. Cages trashed, but bearings still fine.

Fast forward to now, and I have lots more calls on my cash - and I still think £30/40 should get me top of the range pedals. Even though inflation tells me otherwise.

 

[clubby]

I don't agree that bikes back then changed a lot y-o-y though. Excluding the suspension ones, that were starting to be developed and obviously designs were changing by the day, everything else was pretty much the same.

Here’s my first three bikes.

1986 Raleigh Maverick. Lugged and brazed frame. 1” headset, caliper brakes, 3x5 gears, freewheel cassette, thumbshifters, short stem, bullmoose bars. Clunker geometry.


1990 Muddy Fox Cro Mega. Welded Cro-moly frame. 1.25” header. Canti’s. 3x7 freehub cassette. STI shifters. Biopace rings. Long stem, narrow flat bars. Norba geometry.

1991 Dynatech Odyssey. Steel tubes bonded into lugs. 1.125” headset. Annoying 130mm spaced rear end. Chainrings were round again, had 4 teeth less per ring and different bolt spacing. Similar geometry to muddy fox.

In between the first two bikes, U brakes had came and (mainly) gone again.

We did have a few stable years from 92-96 then risers came back, v brakes started to replace canti’s on new bikes and suspension platforms changed every year or two. Geometry also started to change as necessitated by suspension travel getting longer.

Meanwhile, members of the RSF complained they didn’t need all those fancy bikes in their day. Like I said, some things never change.

Fast forward to now, and I have lots more calls on my cash - and I still think £30/40 should get me top of the range pedals. Even though inflation tells me otherwise.

My first SPD pedals in 1992 cost £100. They were bombproof and weighed about as much as a bomb. I still have them. Today you can get a set that’ll last just as long for £30.

 

[Titiritero]

Here’s my first three bikes.
...

Ok, you have a point. I was not being objective by focusing on "my times", that is, early to mid 90's, when, outside the diameter of the seatpost, nearly everything else was already settled down: headsets should be 1 1/8", rear spacing 135mm, 7 speeds at the back (or 8 for the ultra-rich), etc. There were a few outliers, but that's what they were, outliers.

I remember studying the Trek catalogues, and you just had the 800 series in cheap Tange MTB, or the higher 900 series in True Temper. Other than that, the further up in numbers, the better the Shimano bits and little else. Life was easy, you knew 950 is more than 930 so it must be better, and also you could overstretch your budget to the next frame level and could improve the components later on to match the top of that category...