Author Topic: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!  (Read 561 times)

Manfrotto

Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« on: June 22, 2024, 06:19:05 PM »
Finalised my part purchases for a build. Only needed to buy a seat and tyres locally. The savings are immense. There's something very wrong and out of control when for the price of a new bicycle, you could have got a 890cc Yamaha. It ain't our problem retailers, importers etc cannot get their suppliers to manage their costs.




jonathanf2

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2024, 08:57:25 PM »
I think Hambini jokingly said BMC stands for Bikes Made in China!  ;D

I'm not pro or fast enough to buy a top end bike anyways. I'd rather spend that saved money on a nice vacation.

Stoemper

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2024, 04:04:00 AM »
For the price of my build I could have bought a new bikefrom canyon or trek just with maybe 105di2 instead of ultegra. I mainly do it because it’s fun to be honest. Which makes sense since they need to give x years or gurantee and now that’s on me myself and i

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2024, 08:14:37 AM »
Finalised my part purchases for a build. Only needed to buy a seat and tyres locally. The savings are immense. There's something very wrong and out of control when for the price of a new bicycle, you could have got a 890cc Yamaha. It ain't our problem retailers, importers etc cannot get their suppliers to manage their costs.

I agree this seems out of whack. The two highest cost items on the bike are the groupset and frame, to me everything else is almost down to commodity pricing. I can see the argument that frame makers are relying on--they spend money for the research in design, materials testing, and prototyping and should recoup some of those costs. Which is why open frames are so nice--we don't need the most cutting edge, only the tried and true. But the groupset costs to me are clearly due to monopoly--Ultegra and 105 has been around for how long? Sh***o has long-term patents and simple things like the axle diameter can't be touched by other crankset makers. Or is it not the patents and that these items are truly very technically difficult to make?

toxin

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2024, 10:04:28 AM »
they're not difficult to make, electronics are cheap af to make, cheaper than mechanical

Fleckinger

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #6 on: June 23, 2024, 10:34:48 AM »
they're not difficult to make, electronics are cheap af to make, cheaper than mechanical

But we see only two electronic groupsets on the market which are not from shimano/sram/campagnolo, one of them costs almost as much as Shimano 105 di2, and the second has a lot of problems and cannot yet be considered reliable.
On the other side we see a lot of cheap and relatively reliable mechanical groupsets with low price.
Maybe production cost is lower for electronic, but it seems that overall cost with RnD not so cheap.

toxin

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #7 on: June 23, 2024, 10:55:34 AM »
Electronic shifting is a patent minefield

Takiyaki

Re: Why I bought from China - these two things cost the same!
« Reply #8 on: June 23, 2024, 12:38:55 PM »
They are only priced that much because there are people who can pay that much. Not worth getting upset about