Bicycling magazine article on counterfeiting in the cycle industry

[RS VR6]

So I wonder how the big companies decide how much to charge for their frames?

Foes sells their aluminum frames for 2400. How much R&D do they do? All Foes frames are aluminum. My Mach 5 frame back in 2010 was 2k. Canfield sells their EPO frame for 1500. I wonder how much engineering went into the EPO? Evil sells their carbon Following for 2500.  These are small guys with very little employees. Specialized employs hundreds and sells their S-Works Stumpjumper HT frames for 4K (with the overpriced RS-1).

Can anybody shed some light on how prices are determined?

[cmh]

Good luck getting an answer on that. A whole bunch of stuff goes into the price of anything - manufacturing, R&D, marketing, materials, labor costs, etc, etc, and then you've gotta make some profit on top of that. Just because Foes frames are aluminum I wouldn't think they're automatically cheap... the Evil Following, jeez, just looking at all the pivots and stuff near the BB I'm surprised it's not more. $4k for the Stumpy S-Works does seem like a hell of a lot of money, even with a $2k fork that's been revalved with their Brain stuff, but hey, if someone is willing to pay it, they can charge it. I think with all things, the high end stuff often commands a higher price simply because it is high end. I mean, look at folks willing to pay hundreds of dollars for "premium" home audio cables - especially when those cables are carrying a digital signal, rendering all that fancy construction completely moot?

[cmh]

The reaction I'm seeing here is pretty negative on the article, as though the article says that all Chinese bikes are bad. I actually read the article and I've got to say, I think it was pretty well done. Considering my opinion of that magazine, that's pretty high praise. VeloNews did a very similar article, also focusing on fakes.

The key that I think folks are missing is they're warning folks about counterfeits of big name brands. The stuff we're talking about on this site isn't counterfeits, it's stuff that other companies are paying to put their names on. Look at the CS-041 - Peter posted photos of someone who "won first prize", and it turns out to be the U23 winner of the UCI MTB World Cup race in Nove Mesto in 2015. That's as high-level as racing gets, and it was a rebranded 041 that was ridden to that win. Peter obscured the brand name on the bike, but a little bit of web searching uncovered it. This is a company that is big enough to sponsor a world cup race team and thinks the 041 is good enough to put their name in it - that's a far, far cry from the counterfeit bikes they're talking about in the Bicycling article.

Counterfeits are dishonestly sold as a high end bike that they're not, made as cheap as possible to maximize profit. Frames like the 041 manufactured to be sold by companies who want you to think they did all the design and manufacturing. I'd say that's a pretty huge difference.

[RS VR6]

Don't forget the pro tour teams that the big brand companies sponsor. A lot of what you get on the bikes are due to the feedback from the pro riders. Cervelo almost put themselves into a hole that they couldn't get themselves out of with their "Test Team" in 2009. All of that gets passed onto the consumer.

The Chiner companies don't have any of that. They just make parts. The savings get passed onto the consumer. Sure a lot of it is reverse engineered...and I don't think I want an open mold frame that isn't. 

Companies like Evil and Canfield are small operations and use Taiwan or China to make their frames. They don't have hundreds of employees to support or sponsor a big pro team to provide feedback on their designs.

[xcbarny]

I had a pretty long reply typed up but I don't want to start/fuel a flame war. Chiners are great, but they're cheap because they don't do anything innovative. They just copy what's already out there. The 057 (and several other bikes) have geometry lifted straight from the Scott Scale. The new 29+ bike is a dead ripoff of the Trek Stache. Let someone figure out the cool new things, then copy it as cheaply as possible and you've got a winner, plain and simple. If Trek stopped their R&D efforts on carbon in the early 90s, the Chiners we'd be buying today would be round carbon tubes bonded to aluminum lugs. 

Also notice the wide variation in suspension design for the name brand full suspension bikes, vs what's available for the Chiners. They take the basic four-bar suspension design that you can copy without problems, and call it a day. No Maestro suspension, no VPP, none of the truly revolutionary suspension designs available from the big names. Does it work? Sure does, there are a bunch of happy Chiner FS owners on this very forum.

Agreed. What the Chinese do well is copy someone else's idea, and make it for cheaper. I'm wary of going with a chinese frame that it too light, because no engineering will have been done on it to actually see if its strong enough in the right places.

But what got me interested in a Chiner, was seeing all these brands selling very gereric looking Carbon frames with a hefty price tag, when a very similar frame could be got for a fraction of the price, so long as you're willing to go through the hassle of dealing with the supplier/ chinese trader yourself.

I do however have a great deal of respect for bike companies coming up with the new innovative designs. This does seem to be more obvious with rear suspension design. Personally, I wouldn't be interested in a chiner duelly, as I think there's too many variables that need to be done correctly for it to ride well.

Obviously it's a bit harder for the chinese to copy a duelly frame. Whether that's down to Patent infringement or something else I don't know, but it does seem that they're only able to produce a faux bar linkage frames.

[xcbarny]

So I wonder how the big companies decide how much to charge for their frames?

Foes sells their aluminum frames for 2400. How much R&D do they do? All Foes frames are aluminum. My Mach 5 frame back in 2010 was 2k. Canfield sells their EPO frame for 1500. I wonder how much engineering went into the EPO? Evil sells their carbon Following for 2500.  These are small guys with very little employees. Specialized employs hundreds and sells their S-Works Stumpjumper HT frames for 4K (with the overpriced RS-1).

Can anybody shed some light on how prices are determined?

I think it's mostly down to what people will actually pay for the product.

The mid - level bikes all generally seem to be fairly well priced, even specialized, since its such a competitive market, and since this is the price level where they'll sell most bikes, they need to be competitive and priced well.

However, with SWorks, I feel that they are constantly trying to push the envelope of what people will pay. Here in Australia, you can get the entry level Carbon Epic for $3600, but the Sworks is well over $10000. There is no way that it could be worth $6400 more, yet people still buy them (often the type of person that has more money than sense).

[cmh]

However, with SWorks, I feel that they are constantly trying to push the envelope of what people will pay. Here in Australia, you can get the entry level Carbon Epic for $3600, but the Sworks is well over $10000. There is no way that it could be worth $6400 more, yet people still buy them (often the type of person that has more money than sense).

Hey, if they can get people to pay $10k and they use that money to keep making better bikes, I'm all for it.

It sure does seem strange that for an additional $900 over what I paid for my complete, rideable Epic Elite World Cup, I can get an S-Works frame, fork, seatpost, and headset. Having demo'd the $10k S-Works and now riding the Epic Elite, I sure don't think I notice the difference.

Of course, if I hit the lottery, I'd probably rush out and buy one just because ...