Decathlon EDR CF ULTRA - does anyone recognise this as an open-mould?

[contraptions]

https://www.decathlon.mt/p/348765-543901-endurance-road-bike-shimano-105-di2-edr-cf-ultra-light-blue.html


This ticks all the boxes for me but I just don't want all the parts that come with the bike!
27.2
Non-dropped stays
Very light 870g medium
Big clearance
High stack
Press fit

[toxin]

There is simly no way decathlon is open mold. Open molds pretty much all come from china. That's too expensive for Decathlon. Their production comes from Vietnam, Cambodia and the like.

[kbernstein]

Do Vietnam and Cambodia even have large scale carbon facilities yet?
Even if it comes from China, there is no way decathlon does open mold. Their budget and quantities are just too large for open mold. They have their own designers and molds

[toxin]

I don't know enough to know if there's anything endemic, but big time manufacturesrs who started out in China have gone hard on facilities in the south after seeing the writing on the wall for local labour costs. Van Rysel RCR is made in Vietnam, DT Swiss rims that were recalled recently were coming out of Vietnam, Bross has some facilities south of China (I forget where), XDS in Cambodia. China Cycling Joe has said how a lot of production is moving south and that's where the next big carbon fiber capital will be.

[contraptions]

Let me broaden the question then.  Anything out there that's (very) similar?

I'd be very surprised if this was a truly clean-sheet design.

[toxin]

i dont follow the logic. afaik, open mould means you buy a CAD file that's turned into a mould, or you buy a mould, or you rent a mould, and you run your frame production. Idk how many frames can come out of a mould before it needs to get scrapped.
Either way, i assume that mould tooling is in China, and that if frames are made in cheaper countries than China, the moulds must travel from China to Vietnam and the likes.
Following Apple's industrialization of China where they spent dozens of billions every year for a decade in tooling & training, the tooling is harder to do than the production of gizmos using the tools.
Also, if i can afford a long teng frame that costs $400, and if Factor pays c.$500 for their frames out of China, i'm pretty sure Decathlon can afford to have their (fancy) frames come out of China as well.

The way I understand open mold is that a factory designs a frame and sells those frames to customers who can have the layups, painit, logos, etc. adjusted to their specifications. The factory may commission a third party to design the frame, maybe even a machine shop to manufacture the molds, but all the tooling is their design and property. That's pretty much how China Cycling Joe describes it as well.

Frankly, the way you describe sounds a bit bizarre to me.

[rockerplates.de]

Decathlon has smart managers, they would not go with open moulds, as other companies could drop prices.
Bigger companies usually just change the little things, chinese open mould designers never do correct or sloppy..., they check for little details, listen to customers..
Changing an excisting mould is somewhat cheaper...but if quantity comes in it does not make sense to use open moulds...as they are made for small to smaller quantities distributors or dealerships.
the frame made of an open mould is available to anybody and tool costs are spread on all sold frames...

[jfcb]

An open mould is a mould that is not proprietary to a single brand offered by a manufacturer to anyone (minium order quantity taken into account of course). Basically you buy frames and you don't have to handle anything related to the mould itself since it's owned by the OEM. As a buyer you can always make a contract that they supplier needs to guarantee to have X units of frames produced for you over Y amount of time to guarantee your product continuity.
For closed moulds, the design and moulds are owned by the brand (sidenote: the carbon lay-up is often arranged by the OEM with some feedback loops based on prototypes and the brands have no idea about the exact recipe). There are multiple ways those brands pay for that mould, i.e. pay everything upfront, pay overtime, pay the first frames with an extra fee to pay-off the mould.... many procurement options are feasible. 
Another option is that a brand buys an open mould and makes it proprietary. Less common: a brand might sell his design/mould after moving to a new design/product.

Back to topic: With the volumes Decathlon sells, the moulds are paid off very fast and as mentioned above, it doesn't make sense for their business to risk open moulds.