[Closed] £6250 for a mountain bike?

Surely this is nothing new? High end has always been just that.

I remember bikes in the early nineties carbon and titanium hard tails at £3k plus - that was 20+ years ago!

is this the new carbon spesh demo?

$10 000 i heard

With road bikes at well over that price, something with suspension front and back seems quite good value really

When did bikes become so precious?

Since over-paid middle aged mincers, with large disposable incomes and unlimited credit, decided they wanted one. Basically. Have you seen Llandegla car park on a Saturday? 😉

Capitalism innit? They charge what the market will stand. If they're flogging them at that price, that's because they know there's a demand for them.

I'd love to know what the profit margin is on, say, a Santa Cruz Nomad, or an Intense Carbine frame. I bet its [b]HUUUUUUUUUUUGE[/b]

With road bikes at well over that price, something with suspension front and back seems quite good value really

That money gets you an all singing all dancing MX bike that would happily sit on the start gate at a GP and have a chance of winning.

First super lightweight Klein Adroit's were in excess of £3k they came out around 91/92. Mid way through the 90's it was easily possible without difficulty to spend in excess £1.5k on a high end rigid frame. So when thinking about how far mtbs/ing have progressed in terms of technology and design over that period I don't think £6k for the top end is that out of order. In fact I'm pretty certain if you set your mind to it one could easily build a bike that cost in excess of £10K.

If you want light, stiff and strong then it'll cost big. If there's a market for that then why wouldn't you make it?

They don't really intend to sell them. If a mug/ rich person wants one, great, but they're generally just showpieces to demonstrate the awesomeness of the brand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirational_brand

Don't wish to sound like a socialist with a chip on my shoulder, but couldn't agree more with binners!

Evolution will push the price of bikes up to a point, as will increasing costs of raw materials, shipping etc. But the biggest factor determining RRP's of bikes, bearing in mind that this is a hobby/passtime not something that is necessary to live with, is simply "how much someone is willing to pay for it". An as binners says, get yourself up to Llandegla on a weekend, and clearly you'll see lots of people who are very cash rich, and probably quite time poor, who are prepared to spend several times what you or I would decree is a "decent" amount for a bike.

You can still get an exceptionally good MTB these days for less than £1k if you're savvy and not a brand snob, and certainly £2k can buy you more than you'd ever need unless you're on the cutting edge of competition.

That money gets you an all singing all dancing MX bike that would happily sit on the start gate at a GP and have a chance of winning.

It really wouldn't.

Since over-paid middle aged mincers, with large disposable incomes

There are also plenty of middle income mincers with medium amounts of disposable income. Why would being well paid and affluent make you any more of a target for ridicule?

I like to think of myself as not being a mincer and having a wife with a well paid job. Should I also be castigated for having an expensive bike?

I was taken aback [s]last year[/s] in 2009 when bikes hit £5k but this surely is a joke.

FTFY, keep up! 2013 S-Works are over £7k!

[i]Should I also be castigated for having an expensive bike? [/i]

Well, in your case, there's such a wealth of material that we can leave the bike out of it 🙂

Sorry geetee - I can expand my ridicule to encompass those on middle incomes if you like? Are the poor off limits? Or can I have a pop at them too? 😀

For what its worth, If I had the cash I'd spaff it on a XTR kitted Carbon Nomad without batting an eyelid. Alas....

£1,000,000 for a Veyron, what a rip off! You could get like 50 top end Mondeos for that!

There's always going to be someone happy to pay top dollar, so there's always going to be companies selling things at that price. I can't think of a market in which this doesn't apply.

Besides, sounds cheap to me, you could buy the top end model of every major brand for less than the price of this toilet.

[img] [/img]

It really wouldn't.

Yeah it would £6450 is list price.

Though works bikes are full of trick bits (they like an upgrade even more than MTB'rs), your bog stock bike will run with them quite happily in the right hands.

[url] http://www.kestrelhonda.co.uk/bikelist.aspx?OBJ_ID=2329487 ][/url]

Should I also be castigated for having an expensive bike?

Well, in your case, there's such a wealth of material that we can leave the bike out of it

Good job I'm sat on the loo. Just pissed myself laughing at that!

Binners knock yourself out. Don't stop with the poor either. Those bloody immigrants should be next.

[i]But the biggest factor determining [b]the price of anything[/b][s]RRP's of bikes, bearing in mind that this is a hobby/passtime not something that is necessary to live with, [/s]is simply "how much someone is willing to pay for it".[/i]

I like to think of myself as not being a mincer and having a wife with a well paid job. Should I also be castigated for having an expensive bike?

Always love it when these threads come up. Apparently if you've got yourself into a situation where you can afford to buy the best bit of kit, whether your riding ability warrants it or not, in the view of the STW socialist massive you are a ‘mug’. To be honest it generally smacks of nothing more than jealousy.

If you're seriously considering buying a £6k bike, then changes are you have a £50k Audi sitting in the drive.

Yes, it's a lot of money to drop on a bike (to [i]most[/i] people).

All relative, innit?

That money gets you an all singing all dancing MX bike that would happily sit on the start gate at a GP and have a chance of winning.

It'd get you an off the shelf bike. Built in far bigger numbers than any mountainbike.

http://www.honda.co.uk/motorcycles/offroad/#!/crf450r/

You could buy a £6k bike 10 years ago, why is this news?

Infact throw any combination of Fox Fit kashima coated forks, a carbon frame, carbon finishing kit, XTR and some nice wheels together and it'd be over £6k. Comparably, have you seen what you can get for £400-£500 these days, damped forks, disk brakes, 3x10 gears etc, you can even get all-mountain suspension bikes that actualy work for under a grand, a few years ago the giant VT was hailed for bringing loads of suspension tot he mass market for £1400 when the cheepest spesh was £2k!

I'd love to know what the profit margin is on, say, a Santa Cruz Nomad, or an Intense Carbine frame. I bet its HUUUUUUUUUUUGE

Stiff just dropped £900 off SC TRc (medium & XL no large)...now [u]only[/u] £1799 (frame only), I'd use as ammo that to suggest the margin is quite large..

What annoys me is that £500 a couple of years ago would buy you a nicely spec'd hardtail, now a on a £1000 HT you get rubbish forks!

Back in 2005 I went for a 'money is almost no object do it all bike' I ended up with an SX trail, which cost about £2650 iirc. I'm still riding it.

Prices have indeed gone mental.

I paid a similar amount for my bike two years ago. Transition Covert, custom paint job, Hammerschmidt, Chris Kings, Kashima 36's, Saints, bling hoses, etc etc etc.

Soon added up, but then I am middle aged and my bike is precious.

I got it on the *cycle to work scheme* though, so cost me about 50% of that 🙂

*I run our c2w scheme*

I reckon anyone who says wouldn't buy the very best kit that they could afford is either a liar, or a bit odd

Its just supply and demand innit? As the popularity of cycling has increased, demand for bikes has, thus prices. You certainly don't see discounted bikes, frames of kit like you did a few years back.

If the manufacturers/retailers can shift kit at full RRP, then they will. If they then sell out the stuff they're listing at full RRP, then the RRP is going to get bumped up the subsequent year

I got in enough trouble when I spent £1500 on a Pitch Pro...apparently you can buy nearly three handbags for that sort of money.

You can buy a Team GB Olympic track bike for about £20k......

I am pretty sure the margins aren't huge. Retailers will make very little from a carbon nomad on retail over the cost from the distributor. It will be in the region of 50% if they're very lucky and wouldn't surprise me if it's 30% in some instances. Distributors will be making something similar but carry a huge risk with having to hold the stock and therefore the risk. The manufacturer needs to make something similar as gross margin. So your value chain suddenly added around 100% to the cost of manufacture. This Is why so may retailers have integrated and taken on the distribution of strong brands and why some manufacturers are now selling direct.

Bear in mind that your gross margin has to pay off all your overheads. If your netting 10% as a retailer in the end you're doing well.

Back in 2005 I went for a 'money is almost no object do it all bike' I ended up with an SX trail, which cost about £2650 iirc. I'm still riding i

is that in jest? my stiffee cost £3K in 2002.. oooerr

edit - that wasn't willy waving - just a point that a lot of bikes cost far more in times gone past.

My current new bike (when its finished) will be over 10k. And thats a fully rigid bike, which makes the demo carbon a bargin.

When it comes to these prices bear in mind import duties, VAT etc
I speak as a middle aged man who could build his SC Blur TRc up for around 3k GBP due to a complete lack of import duties or sales taxes where I live.

Geetee - I was asking as I'm interested in what the comparable margins would be on, say, a Carbon Nomad, compared to say a £700 hardtail. I suppose you're margins would be lower on the £700 hardtail, as you'd be expecting to shift a fair few of them.

How many Carbon Nomads would Santa Cruz import per year? Didn't they sell out of them when the RRP was £2,500

Questions, questions?

You could say the same thing about cars. Some people will spend 500k on their car. If they want it and can afford it, so what.

Who cares, spending £6k on a bike to one person might be the same as spending £600 on a bike to another, we all have different ideas of value. If manufacturers want to create a few exotic range-toppers then good luck to them (whether it's genuinely for development with a follow-on trickle-down effect or just for one-upmanship doesn't bother me).
Next we'll be worrying about why some cars cost more than £20k...

Geetee - I was asking as I'm interested in what the comparable margins would be on, say, a Carbon Nomad, compared to say a £700 hardtail. I suppose you're margins would be lower on the £700 hardtail, as you'd be expecting to shift a fair few of them.

Just out of interest, the cost price between the lowest spec Porsche Boxter and the most expensive 911 you can buy is £8k. So a 911 GT3 RS has got a hell of a mark up...

luckily however, the second-hand market is bouyant with the upgrade addicts selling off last year's "must-haves".

🙂

the cost price between the lowest spec Porsche Boxter and the most expensive 911 you can buy is £8k.

I wouldn't pay more than a grand for a bike, even that is pushing it. 2nd hand tried and tested stuff is the way to go. £6250 is ridiculous, could get a good few bike holidays out of that and have just as much fun on a cheaper bike.

I like my sub £200, eBay parts built singlespeeds. Perhaps it's because I'm a frugal Yorkshireman. More likely it's because no amount of money spent on a bike will have as big an effect as getting fitter. That said, if you can afford one and want one then the quality of parts available to me in a couple of years on eBay. 😀

What I was trying to say was that it costs 8k more to build an all singing all dancing carbon braked 911 than it does to build a poverty spec Boxter

is that in jest? my stiffee cost £3K in 2002.. oooerr

Actually on reflection, I did get a 25% mates rate discount. So yeah it wouldn't really have been that cheap.

Flange - but what about the extra development work on the engine to produce higher revs etc. I would imagine there is still a greater margin on the higher value product but its probably not as small as that when all is taken into account.

Out of interest does anyone know if any bike companies are listed? Easy way to find out margin at the manufacturing end.

Back in 2005 I went for a 'money is almost no object do it all bike' I ended up with an SX trail, which cost about £2650 iirc.

Rubbish! A 2005 S-Works was £4000. I had a Titus Racer-X, which was nearly £2k for an aluminium frame! The whole bike with XTR, Fox forks, King wheels etc was still 5lbs heavier than my current Top Fuel! Prefer the latter.

£6250 is ridiculous, could get a good few bike holidays out of that and have just as much fun on a cheaper bike.

I'd rather have the nice bike, lasts longer than a holiday or two.

Yup, it's a lot of money but I paid £3000 and something for an Alpine 160 when I was less well-off then I am now. If I don't waste money on coffees, stuff for the house, clothes, Amazon, etc. then why not if it is the one to rule them all and I will love it?

_tom_

You're sort-of missing the point. If you had £6k to spare on a bike, you would still have a few biking holidays every year (not camping.... staying in 5* accom).

£6k seems a lot of money if you don't have it in the first place.

flange - what spec will your bike be ?

So we are doing this thread again.

1, The "average" person in the street thinks ALL of us spend too much on bikes.
2, Some of us think the others spend too much on bikes

I think thats usually the summary.

Flange - but what about the extra development work on the engine to produce higher revs etc. I would imagine there is still a greater margin on the higher value product but its probably not as small as that when all is taken into account.

That's unit price. Without question there's a development cost involved but for production price there's £8k difference between the two.

Porsche buy the Cayenne from VW (who make it) as a complete package - even down to the documents/owners manual and regardless of spec its £22k per unit. So thats quite some margin and the development was spread across the two (three cars use the same platform - Toureg, Q7 and Cayenne). Whats the most expensive Cayenne you can buy? £130k? Thats not a bad margin....

flange - what spec will your bike be ?

There's a thread somewhere on here with pictures (I need to get some more) but a short list

Niner Air carbon F&F
Enve Wheels on king
Tune cranks
Clegg brakes
K-edge Di2 groupset
Enve finishing kit

I bought a Klein Attitude back in 92 and if memory serves it cost £3k back then and that replaced a Marin Team Titainium which frame alone cost £1.5k..

“those were the days my friend I thought they’d never end, lal la la"

Well I think these types of bikes are cheap at £6.5k.
I had a long hard look at a Santa Cruz Tallboy 29er Carbon t’other week and it was Art disguised as a bike, £5k mind…

Ooooh, sounds nice. Picture please, or a thread link.

You wont want to scratch that when it built up.

[url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/part-of-my-new-build-has-turned-up-im-a-bit-excited ]Niner Build thread[/url]

Yeah, I'm a bit worried about riding it to be honest. That'll wear off after the first crash...

I agree with tinsy on this one as I would have a KTM sixdays for example over a tallboy xtr for example.
Plus motorbikes don,t depreciate as much and are way more fun racing around on!
It s all subjective but would like to add that stw as a whole spend an accumalative fortune which in turn probably keeps a fair bit of the industry happy as larry. Santa cruz pro,s more like than bike staff members!

I agree with tinsy on this one as I would have a KTM sixdays for example over a tallboy xtr for example.

All relative though isn't it. I've got a motorbike worth more than my Niner build and I get far more enjoyment riding my pushbikes than I do scaring myself on the motorbike. To the point where i'm going to sell the motorbike - just doesn't do it for me anymore.

I bet if you went on a golfing forum, or a sailing forum or any other hobby type place you'd find similar or greater amounts being spent. On the PB forum there's a bloke who's bought two ex-GP bikes. I bet they weren't cheap

Binners I don't know for sure what the margins are exactly but I do know that some of the big ticket items you can buy don't carry the kind of margin you'd expect. The haven carbon wheels for instance only give around 40% gross margin.

The places where the bike shops make their biggest margins is on consumables and accessories like tubes, saddle bags, spares, clothing and shoes. Stuff that you just buy.

Also the price isn't just a reflection of what people will pay. It's a reflection of efficiency in the value chain. If you compare what Bant did with the On One brand initially with someone like Cotic then while the Soul is accepted as a higher quality product the fact it costs three times more than the equivalent On One is as much about the efficiency of Brants model as it is the quality of the soul.

That's unit price. Without question there's a development cost involved but for production price there's £8k difference between the two.

Porsche buy the Cayenne from VW (who make it) as a complete package - even down to the documents/owners manual and regardless of spec its £22k per unit. So thats quite some margin and the development was spread across the two (three cars use the same platform - Toureg, Q7 and Cayenne). Whats the most expensive Cayenne you can buy? £130k? Thats not a bad margin....

Interesting on the cost per unit. Profit margin pre tax for the entire VW group for this financial year is c.4.2% but unfortunately they don't break it down per car, presumably as it would be too complicated and a massive list given the number of brands they own.

It was my riding buddy pointing out that an XTR rear mech was tagged at £199 in Alpine Bikes this week that caught my eye..., bloody hell, hope mine stays intact.

You're sort-of missing the point. If you had £6k to spare on a bike, you would still have a few biking holidays every year (not camping.... staying in 5* accom).

I have a £6500 MTB and a £4000 road bike. I drive a 10 year old Golf and haven't been on a holiday of any sorts since 2009. I'd not change that! Priorities innit.

The perception of margin is very, very wrong. Margin is the profit made after tax and on high end is generally 20-25% after tax.

with custom gear that gets reduced further.

I know of a £550 ax lightness stem where the profit after tax was 15p

That also excludes the phone call to order it which cost 30p!

The low end is where the big margins are.

cycle king and all the other stack em high sell em cheap stores will be making 50-60% on bikes sold.

My name's Tinman and I'm a bike snob.

Feels better now we've got that out of the way.

Why would anyone want to pay over £6k for a bike. Why not if that's what they choose to spend their money on.

My carbon fibre road bike is probably worth the best part of £5k and doesn't have suspension, disc brakes etc. In fact the wheels alone cost nearly the same as my Cove Stiffee did to build in 2006.

The fact is I'm still 'relatively' young, have a good job and no kids.

Yes I could buy something cheaper and yes the weak link in the whole thing is the useless chuffer that sits on the bike but I still love my bikes and to honest I'm not going to buy a cheaper bike just because I'm not that fast. On that basis very few people would be eligible to buy a Porsche.

I think this was well over £3K in 1990ish
Lotus Sport carbon frame
hydraulic rim brakes
not sure what forks it came with
[IMG] [/IMG]

What would be interesting to know is by how much mnaufacturers/distributors push up the price of roadbikes for the next model year to benefit from the inevitable Wiggo effect. Maybe they'll just let it slip by with nothing more than the odd special team GB edition.

I know of a £550 ax lightness stem where the profit after tax was 15p

Get one of those in Matty-boy!

Its a fair point about the cycle-king/CRC's of the world (and you'll be able to be more accurate on this than me Matt), but my understanding is that local shops can't buy some of the shimano stuff in at trade that CRC and the like can bang out at retail. But you pays your money - my other halfs Rock Lobster came with a set of OEM Reba's with the serial number filed off. The rear mechs you get from CRC come in a bag rather than a box and so on.

At the end of the day though, its all very well having bikes worth 5-10k but if you don't get to ride them, whats the point? I reckon I've ridden my Storck less than ten times since I bought it and the Niner will pretty much only be raced on and I'll keep my other bike for training. Its those with 10k bikes and can ride every day that I envy the most.

You've got to chuckle....people who ride £2,000 push bikes having a pop at people who ride £6,000 push bikes 🙂

It's only money. It's sole purpose is to exchange labour into something you want or need. If you want to exchange a few weeks/months salary for a bike, then why not?

Although, I would draw a line under someone who earns £15k a year and buys a £6k bike on credit, then rides it once a month at a trail centre, whilst crippled by the loan repayments. It's still their choice, it's hard to make an argument for justification.

My cove cost about £5k or £6k, but that was because I got a bit carried away. i didn't set out intending to spend that much.

Out of interest does anyone know if any bike companies are listed? Easy way to find out margin at the manufacturing end.

Giant (who make frames for lots of other manufacturers) are listed on the Taiwanese exchange - ISIN TW0009921007 and 9921 TT is their Bloomberg code. Don't know about researching margins from their public listing docs though.

Get one of those in Matty-boy!

I have a full range of sizes and colours in my top drawer, just in case i change frames.

i decided to stock up before they increased the prices!

I have a full range of sizes and colours in my top drawer, just in case i change frames.

Why have I never seen these?

Peterfile makes a good point - go and tell a non cycling fan member of your office / workplace that you spent £1000 on a push bike and see the look on their face.

Its all in the eye of the beholder, to me £2000 is quite cheap for a decent full sus but don't get people spending £50 on a t-shirt.

but that was because I got a bit carried away. i didn't set out intending to spend that much.

Can we have that etched in stone tablets somewhere? 😀

Yeah it would £6450 is list price.

Though works bikes are full of trick bits (they like an upgrade even more than MTB'rs), your bog stock bike will run with them quite happily in the right hands.

6.5k will buy an off the shelf the machine but it wouldn't even scratch the surface when it comes to GP machines. 6.5k will pay for fork upgrades at a push and no GP rider would do much on a stock machine I assure you. They don't compare.

The margin on a £700 hardtail is probably a lot higher percentage-wise than that on a high end bike.

It really annoys me when people complain about what margin bike shops/distributors/manufacturers make without knowing the facts. Nobody works in the bike trade to get rich from it!

[b]Binners, I've just read this back and seen how it looks. This is not directed at you, I'm just beginning to get a bit fed up with people complaining how much things cost[/b]

If we're going to get into the subject of, take a look at some other industries.
For example, my partner worked for a few years at an optometrists who specialized in very exclusive brands: Cartier, Chanel, Gucci, Rayban and Versace, to name but a few- Seriously, Oakley costs buttons compared to that lot. Think of these as equivalent to the very high end mass production brands in the bike industry (SC, Yeti, Ibis, Turner etc...)
The shop would buy in a set of these top name specs for something like £120 (i forget the exact figure, but it's there or thereabouts) and sell them for between £400-£500. That's a margin of between 70 & 76% (bear in mind that that's average- some went a lot higher than that!)

Now compare that to your retailer who's selling a top end carbon bike at an average margin of around 30% (bearing in mind he'll probably have had to discount it because "i've seen it online for this...")
Admittedly, 30% of a top end bike is quite a lot of money, but these are sales which don't come along very often. And out of that 30% (maybe 1k on a top end bike, but probably less than that) he's got to pay his staff, heat and light his shop, buy in a good selection of stock (because nobody likes going into a threadbare shop) and take home a wage for himself (which from my experience, is generally never a good one!)
That 30% doesn't really go that far now, does it?

The same could be said for distributors, who buy and sell for probably the same margin. Admittedly, they don't have to go to the same lengths as the bike shop, but they (as I believe someone mentioned earlier) have to hold a [b]LOT[/b] of stock to keep your LBS well supplied, as and when they need it. The money for that has to come from somewhere!

Imagine then that the Manufacturer is working around a similar margin (I have no evidence for this, as I do not know what they sell at, but to go back to an earlier point- nobody makes millions in the bike trade!)
They produce their bikes as efficiently as they can, aiming to improve standards as much as possible without pushing their costs disproportionately. They then set an RRP taking into consideration the expected costs mentioned above, and ensuring that there's enough margin for all involved to make a living out of.

So overall, your bike probably cost around 90% more than it cost to make. Yes it seems a lot, but bear in mind that money're got to be split between so many people to allow the bike industry to keep going.
Now if we go back to the optometrists operating on a 70-75% margin, and presume that the same margins apply down the supply chain (manufacturer, distributer, retailer) your top name glasses cost somewhere in the region of 210-225% more than they cost to make. Now [b]there's[/b] a margin that's set purely because some people are willing to pay it.

You don't have to spend £500 on glasses, you could get a perfectly good pair for less then £100. The same way that you don't have to spend £6500 on a mountain bike when you could get a decent one for less than £1k. However if you want the best, that's what it costs. And you can rest assured knowing that no-one's gotten rich off your purchase with your hard earned dosh!

Aaaand breathe...

onceinalifetime - Member
I agree with tinsy on this one as I would have a KTM sixdays for example over a tallboy xtr for example.

No, No, No, dont agree with me, thats not what I meant!

I meant that it has quite a lot more cost involved in making it, it has lots and lots of tech involved and an engine for a start, titanium valves, exhaust system, radiatiors, injection moulded plastics, all that a high end MTB has plus,plus plus. To my mind it makes even a creme de la creme MTB expensive.

I don't think its an issue if someone would like to or does buy a top end bike as suggested if you can why not.

FWIW, I wouldn't be interested in the 6.5k crosser either*, I have this.
(* Though if anyone wants to know what to get me for my birthday).

[img] ?t=1343229234[/img]

If you're seriously considering buying a £6k bike, then changes are you have a £50k Audi sitting in the drive.

If I had it spare, I would love to spend £6k+ on a bike, but no way I would be happy spending £10k on a car. Each to their own, or not 😆

If you're seriously considering buying a £6k bike, then changes are you have a £50k Audi sitting in the drive.

Maybe. But I have plenty of riding buddies who will spend thousands on their bikes quite happily but haven't spent more than 50 quid on their house in 5 years or paid more than 500 quid for a car.

If spending vast sums of money on a push bikes is what you want to do then so be it. I couldn't care less whether you're a seasoned pro or a full on 'all the gear, no idea' sort. Who am I to point fingers?

Net margin, so after all costs, tax etc has been taken out, for Giant Bicycles as a whole is 7.9%. So for your £6,000 bike Giant will make £474*.

Incredibly broad brush approach as specific margin will vary markedly across the range and various bike frames they manufacture for others.

What I was trying to say was that it costs 8k more to build an all singing all dancing carbon braked 911 than it does to build a poverty spec Boxter

This is incorrect.

pinetree - Easy tiger! I was asking a genuine question. Not having a pop at anyone. I was just interested to know how the margins compared, bearing in mind volume of sales etc.

this is incorrect

I've heard this from a very good source too

This is incorrect.

No its not