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It seems that they are becoming more and more popular as a manufacturer across Europe, yet for me they are a bit like one of the newer Korean car brands, or even some of the longer-standing Japanese car brands: probably highly functional, but without much soul. I have no real problem with them (or other, similar manufacturers), except that - from a profoundly subjective point of view - they just have nothing appealing about them. No heritage. No beauty. No... je ne sais quoi.
Anyone else find it hard to get excited about certain bikes based on who made them? Or are you all pure pragmatists, who only care about whether or not a bike does what it promises?
If I am not alone in feeling a bit meh, what brands inspire apathy in you?
[I might also add Giant to my list.]
They’ve been kicking around since late eighties early 90s even made specialised bikes and own or owned a big chunk of them. Made some nice xc machines and road bikes. Always been popular in that Europe place more than uk.
Aren't they one of the biggest manufacturers out there?
Yeah it's not the default stw cotic...
I own a 140. Love it. Had it for 5 years.
I'll have another.
Our LBS is a dealer. Friends locally still won't consider one despite reviews.
People pour scorn on it because up until recently they hadn't heard of the brand. One friend used to refer to the bike as "an Aldi bike" whilst riding his specialized.
Funny as his specialized is/was probably made by merida what with them owning 49% of the brand????
Lots of heritage there back to the 70s. Definitely big in other markets. Friend lives in NZ, very popular there.
Anyways, I'm happy with my mass produced bike. Safe in the knowledge I get a good specced bike at a good price point that remains a niche brand in this land.
Great bikes, plenty of history but not a brand I would buy due to the ongoing partnership with Bahrain.
Do you even bike much 😉
I'll admit, just now is the first time I've looked at their website. Their bikes don't appeal, or excite - they're a bit like Cube in that way, they might have a couple of really nice bikes but the majority of their range just sort of blend into each other with nothing really standing out.
For example, the biggest 29er they do is a 120mm bike, which at £3300 has a revelation RC with the moco damper. No 29er enduro bike, let alone a mid travel trail bike?!
Thumbs dowan, not good enough to ride on top of an Audi/Merc, T5 bumper adornment or STW kitchen ornament.
FFS do they even do road or gravel bikes 😉
I vote Cube as next worse/worserer!
They're just boring and I'm not sure they're actually that good value.
I'd probably buy one of their road bikes if the price was right but their mtb's just look dull.
Anything you see/hear/read on STW is unrepresentative of the UK MTB market, regardless of what folk on here think. It's not all bearded men in sheds.
unless I ride it I can't form an opinion.
I looked at one, as above in a crowded market of very good bikes they look a bit dull. Especially compared to the spec brand they bought.
Marketing is a funny old thing and specialized really get it.
You mean made by a man in a shed with a selection of hammers, a tenuous engineering connection, dressed in Victorian cloths, wearing a leather apron, costing twelvety thousand pounds.
"take meh money"
@Winston, perhaps egocentrically, I assumed it was a light-hearted jibe at the fact that I am not riding right now due to my accident. If I am right, then @trail_rat is right, because all I can actually do about bikes right now is keep upgrading my road bike, and talk bollocks about brands that don't appeal to me. 🙂
sorry! I forgot you had a bad smash. Me being egotistical not you (obvs)
Heal quickly.
i own a Merida E900 and can say im very happy with it up to now, it handles great and its taken an lot of abuse without issue and i happen to think its quite pretty too 🙂
For example, the biggest 29er they do is a 120mm bike, which at £3300 has a revelation RC with the moco damper. No 29er enduro bike, let alone a mid travel trail bike?!
Or maybe they realise that there's not actually that much demand for 29er enduro bikes?.
Massive company, been about for years, good bikes. OP obviously still on the sedatives. 😊
No matter what they do, I can’t get excited by Trek MTBs. I’ve ridden plenty, I know they are very good bikes, win lots of awards, do well in race series and are reasonable value, but they just leave me cold.
Oddly, I really like their road stuff, despite all the shenanigans of previously with the Texan etc, and own one.
Folk are weird.
They started with building Raleighs, and like Raleigh did in their heyday, they build bikes from the bottom of the market grey porridge to as good as you can get.
They are honest bikes in that you get exactly what you pay for.
At the top end you're not paying the cool tax of the other more revered brand names - which they (or Giant) probably made anyway.
(I don't have one.)
Yep, got to agree with the Merida branding just leaving me cold.
Meanwhile, I love my Trek Superfly, even though they're every bit as generic and 'bland', but it was the right price and spec for bike-to-work and that was enough to get me on board, which was when I realised how fast and fun it was. Get me on board a Merida and I'd probably see through the branding pretty fast as well.
Meanwhile on the road I ride a Rose, similarly 'bland' brand image but I bought for the custom spec, and having now ridden one for a couple of years I'm 'hooked' on the brand and would probably make my next road bike a Rose as well.
Sort of the reverse of how branding is supposed to work, buy for functional reasons, enjoy owning, become brand fanboi.
So in conclusion if anyone at Merida wants to give me a CX bike I'll probably become a die-hard Merida owner for life (hint hint?)
For example, the biggest 29er they do is a 120mm bike, which at £3300 has a revelation RC with the moco damper. No 29er enduro bike, let alone a mid travel trail bike?!
“They don’t make the bike I’ve decided I need. Their whole range must therefore be worthless!”
🙄
probably highly functional, but without much soul.
This is how I've come to feel about bikes from Spesh, Trek & Giant as well, having owned a few more characterful bikes in recent years.
However... character is partly in the design but more significantly in the ride, and you can't tell how bikes are going to make you feel by looking at them.
Some of the Meridas are supposed to ride really well, just from reviews I've read.
maybe they realise that there’s not actually that much demand for 29er enduro bikes?
I don't have any sales figures, but from the new bikes I see out on the trails I'd say 29er enduro bikes are one of the most-popular market segments in MTB.
They don’t make the bike I’ve decided I need. Their whole range must therefore be worthless!”
I was illustrating that they're not exactly "with the times" in terms of mountain bikes.
I've not seen any marketing or adverts from them for any of their bikes, In my opinion they come across as a bike company who make some mountain bikes as part of their range, and not as a mountain bike company.
Serious question: do merida have any sort of mtb race team?
I don’t have any sales figures, but from the new bikes I see out on the trails I’d say 29er enduro bikes are one of the most-popular market segments in MTB.
Mibbe it's a geographical thing, as I don't know anyone up here locally that has one. I wouldn't even class enduro bikes as a big part of the overall sales of a bike shop, never mind a wheel size specific one.
I'm impressed with your instant ability to tell wheel sizes our on the trails though! 😂
I'd love to see some truly blind testing of bikes. Remove all the logos and put people on bikes they've never seen the shape of before, then find out which they like the best.
I'm sure the subconscious knowledge of a brand and price affects perception hugely.
How many 29er Enduro bikes are sold for less than £400? Again, this forum isn't representative of the MTB buying public.
You've probably hit the nail on the head there- they don't do a lot of marketing, they don't sponsor lads to go lark about in a quarry or have a race team. So thee's no strong brand image to make you love or hate them.
My lbs sells them, pretty much every 3rd or 4th bike I see about town is a merida.
I have one, it's a drop barred commuter, hence I feel no love for it, but it's been solid for 3 years now.
Serious question: do merida have any sort of mtb race team?
They sponsored Hermida & Rodriguez who won their category in the cape epic this year, but I'm not sure the multi-van merida team is still going - but they certainly used to have an XC profile (olympic gold medal I think?).
I guess Bahrain-Merida get their sponsorship cash now.
How many 29er Enduro bikes are sold for less than £400? Again, this forum isn’t representative of the MTB buying public.
This forum isn't even representative of the enthusiast MTB community, which is what we were talking about by implication.
It is representative of the grumpy, pedantic old arse who used to MTB community though.
I’m impressed with your instant ability to tell wheel sizes our on the trails though!
I like to talk to people.
Touchy! 😊
Really didn't know much about them. Not in the market for a new bike but wouldn't really have been on my list if I was
Impressed at how big they are
Biking is both my hobby and my main form of transport. I generally want a bike that I'm 'proud' of, or pleased with. So I end up being quite fickle. I'll admit that cheaper bike would fulfil much of my use, but it wouldn't please me as much (like having a nice car instead of just a car)
tomhoward
No matter what they do, I can’t get excited by Trek MTBs
Wild! answers the actual question, rather than "You know nothing about Merida! How dare you have an opinion SaxonRider!"
I don't like Vitus. They have a whiff of own band CRCValue about them. This could be wrong, but.. well, I'm sure you'll tell me how blimmin flip great your Vitus is if so 😆
Ben - even back in the late 1990s/early 2000s the two big bike manufacturers were Giant and Merida-Specialized.
There are many Taiwanese companies producing "generic" frames that appear in the catalogues of smaller bespoke manufacturers.
My understanding (happy to be corrected if I'm wrong) is that there are three major frame builders in Taiwan - Giant, Merida, and another whose name I don't know. I think all three do a lot of contract work for other brands, so there's a very good chance that a lot of the bike snobs are actually riding a frame that was build by one of those three factories. Merida are shareholders in Specialized, so I assume they keep that as their premium brand and the Merida brand are the affordable bikes. Clearly they know how to build high-end frames, but if you're building to a budget, you can't use the cutting edge materials and technology.
Giant are now seen as a much more premium brand, but 20 years ago they were mediocre but affordable. It wasn't until they launched the first Anthem, Trance, and Reign that they had a suspension design that could compete with the Spesh FSR (maybe that's more of a marketing thing, but the pre-Maestro Giants were generally mediocre IME.)
Let's face it, a bike is just some pipes welded together and any high-end bike can be reverse engineered fairly easily, so companies like Merida can build good bikes if they want to. It's just a matter of whether that's their business model.
hols2
Giant are now seen as a much more premium brand, but 20 years ago they were mediocre but affordable. It wasn’t until they launched the first Anthem, Trance, and Reign that they had a suspension design that could compete with the Spesh FSR
A suspension design "inspired" by their work with Dave Weagle, allegedly
FWIW Giant don't make a 29'er Enduro bike yet either.
OP, this is like saying you don't like VW but you love Audi.
I own a merida Road bike, I enjoy riding it, it works when I need it to and they're generally quite sensible about pricing.
As I'm not too worried about masturbating over it, it therefore meets all my criteria for a road bicycle. But I can appreciate that if you're 'the sort' who places a bit more value on the less tangible aspects of a given product, brand "cachet" notions/associations of euro grand tour history (for something probably made in tiawan) then nope Merida probably isn't for you, buy a Bianchi and pretend to be all Italian if you like 😉
Interesting that you got straight to comparisons with cars, one of the other great modern aspirational/wealth signalling purchases... I'd contend OP (and I'm sure you'll disagree) that it's not bikes you particularly like, it's what people think of you based solely on what they can see of your possessions, Which is fine it's a life choice available to many of us.
Interesting that you got straight to comparisons with cars, one of the other great modern aspirational/wealth signalling purchases… I’d contend OP (and I’m sure you’ll disagree) that it’s not bikes you particularly like, it’s what people think of you based solely on what they can see of your possessions, Which is fine it’s a life choice available to many of us.
Wow, way to read too much into 'people like nice things'! People can like bikes AND care about how they look, the two aren't mutually exclusive, it's just one more factor in the buying process.
Given the finite number of variables, it's usually possible to decide on what you want in a bike, then find two or more options, one of which you will probably prefer the look of. This in no way makes you 'a sort' 😉
I have a Merida eOne-Sixty 800 and it's bloody ace. Was a bargain at £3150 and easily better than my previous Levo.
Wow, way to read too much into ‘people like nice things’! People can like bikes AND care about how they look, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s just one more factor in the buying process.
Well Yeah, OK you "Like nice things", just don't expect to go trolling with the "I'm basically a snob" line and not get a few bites.
I mean essentially the OP is saying "I don't like 'Value price point' far eastern made bikes for the same reason I don't like 'cheap' Korean cars"...
But you can't honestly proclaim that to the world and not expect at least a few of us to assume you're a bit of a "Brand Whore", which (like I said) is fine, He's a economically useful, "late-stage capitalism" needs people like the OP to perceive value in and throw money at aspirational brands and products...
Anyway, fair to moderate trollage of us "hair shirt types": 6/10
I get what the OP means. But to me, if I was in the market, I'd buy from a brand like Merida if theirs was the best/up there for whatever type of bike I was after.
They seem like practically the opposite of Sick!. Making stuff for other people then a number of decades later using their actual expertise to sell a few of their own bikes. This can only be a good thing.
IIRC they're top end road bike, the scultura, was the lightest road bike around, a couple of years ago.
A couple of mates have carbon 160s, very nice.
@hols , funny then that my Merida hardtail has coffin profile hydroformed tubes, bent seat tube and an internal cabling system that actually stops cables rattling and keeps them well away from the head tube when turning the bars. Certainly more than just a few welded tubes.
A lot of “boutique” brands could learn a lot from them.
I had a Ninety Six 26"er a few years ago and it was a great bike. Top end bike and very light for a full susser. Wouldn't have a problem owning another but as the OP says the recent designs don't inspire much or grab my attention.
I’d contend OP (and I’m sure you’ll disagree) that it’s not bikes you particularly like, it’s what people think of you based solely on what they can see of your possessions
I can honestly say that this is NOT the case, and contend that you made the Freudian leap between cars and bikes too quickly and too far.
I am talking about a completely subjective feeling SOUL; not of perceived status!
So, for example, Suzuki makes small, 'humble' cars, and I would have one in a flash. There are a few models I really like. Why? I don't know. I just perceive them as having a bit of something that other small car, Far Eastern manufacturers don't have. To me, it's a bity like saying, "I am not very interested in visiting country X, because I have no interest in the place", before actually meeting someone from country X who inspires me, and thinking "Actually, maybe I should visit."
Maybe I will have an experience of Merida that will change my mind. I'm open to it. I was only expressing a very light-hearted thought about perception. Status be damned. 🙂
EDIT: I might also add that the reason I was thinking about them at all, is that my LBS has started carrying them in the last year, and when I go in there to chat, none of the bikes has really captured my imagination.
OK I take it back, you're not a brand whore, but I think the key word you used is "perception" and you're still a marketer's dream...
None of the products you described have "soul" they have engineered characteristics, things like handling, or terrain feel or aesthetic appeal or whatever qualities designed in, but no "soul" that's either marketing cobblers or a personal projection on to inanimate objects. We're all susceptible to it on some level, but honestly a Specialized or a Yeti or Orange has no more or less of a soul than a Merida...
you’re still a marketer’s dream…
Now THAT I agree with 100%.
When I was really small, I had a Lego tow truck set with a Shell symbol on the side. Want to guess my favoured petrol station today, in spite of all the highly questionable things Shell has done? [/sheepish emoji]
I’ll admit to being a bit shallow when it comes to bikes. The looks play a big part in getting my attention in the first place. I was looking for a Jack of all trades style bike and the Silex was recommended. Thing is, it looks bloody awful. I said no to the GT grade for the same reason. I’m not fussed on brand, but I have to like the look of a bike.
I’ve ended up with a Stooge Speedball as my sensible bike though, so do not take my advice at all.
Crikey, that speedball is an ugly bastard of a bike, I'd far rather have a Silex! 🤣🤣🤣
Rode an LRS for a few years (first full suss to win xc uci stripes), bought a classic blur which i then dumped to get another lrs.
Loved my meridas.
Merida make some great bikes.
They also make some pretty bland ones! But then that's not unlike any of the other major manufacturers these days anyway...
As a company, as someone rightly pointed out, they are pretty much the antithesis of the "cool hip" companies vying for your Instagram likes (like the ill fated Sick Bikes for instance!). What Merida do is substance... From experience of riding, owning and selling Merida's, you have an issue with your Merida and IT WILL be dealt with quickly, efficiently and with a satisfactory outcome.
Merida are definitely one of, if not the most cautious companies in the bike industry, which many on here will see as their downfall, but I'd argue it's been their greatest strength. In a world of boom and bust, Merida have grown gradually but steadily in market presence year on year. Their caution is illustrated not only in their designs and their geometry at times, but also in their reluctance to jump on the latest bandwagons until they prove their staying power. So especially as Merida sells a lot more bikes in Europe than the UK, we're not likely to see any long travel 29ers any time soon (Europe is a lot more reluctant to adopt bigger wheels in long travel applications), their reach figures will remain conservative compared to most, but you can guarantee they're incredibly well made and will do what you expect them to do... So not very STW I'll agree with you, but then neither is 90% of the UK bike industry either!
As somebody who's spent years working in the bike trade too, I'd far sooner buy a Merida than a Trek/Spesh/Giant or any of the other perceived big boys in the bike industry too... The Merida guys are a nice bunch, they're not pushy and don't try to stitch their dealers up by making big promises without being able to deliver on them. By contrast you couldn't pay me to ride a Trek, knowing what I know about them as a company!
EDIT: As for the perception that they don't/haven't sponsored any racing... LOL. Well ignoring the current Bahrain/Merida road team, their dedication to sponsoring XC racing particularly in Europe (Gunn Rita Dahle has been riding Merida's probably longer than most STW forumites have been riding full stop!) has been second to none! Merida's bike range has never not had high end XC race machines in the lineup, where other brands have dropped their commitment to XC racing, Merida have always kept theirs and continued to sponsor some of the worlds finest athletes...
Crikey, that speedball is an ugly bastard of a bike, I’d far rather have a Silex!
That’s why it’s great that there is so much choice nowadays. I can have my three top tubes retro machine and somebody else can have the Silex.
My LBS sells merida, the owner is a mate of mine, so I’ve seen a fair few of their bikes over the years.
Mostly, they look good in the flesh, and the (several) I’ve ridden have ridden well, my wife has one of their cx bikes, it’s really nice.
But, i will say, the website does an excellent job of making everything look quite boring.
I used to see absolutely loads of Meridas being ridden around when I lived in Taiwan in the late 90s. I’d never heard of the brand before then. I think in the past their main market was more in the budget end of things but in the last few years they have started looking more and more into the high end market. Their design department is based in Germany ( near the Black Forest) and a friend of mine works there for them and from what I’ve heard it’s a team of real enthusiasts who work very hard. I do see op’s point because of this perceived lack of heritage but in real terms that is meaningless. The bikes they are producing now is all that matters from a consumers perspective. Perhaps they should start using Specialized marketing department!
Forgot to say yesterday that their CS is ace too, wanted to know where a bearing set/details could obtained for my bike and a full set arrived through the post FOC.
When #1 child is big enough it'll get built up again.
SaxonRider isn't materialistic, He's a romantic. If it's old or is linked to something old, he likes it. He's also an absolute bike tart 🙂 (all IMHO!)
Me, I'm a pragmatist. If it works well and rides well, I'm in.
SaxonRider isn’t materialistic, He’s a romantic. If it’s old or is linked to something old, he likes it. He’s also an absolute bike tart
Well i have a Big 9 Hardtail NX and love the ride , responsive n lively well put together and well priced.
Whats Not to LIKE>