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I listened in to Mark’s message last night and one of the standout comments was to hear that there was a suggestion in the industry that one of the big players landfilled excess stock, rather than flood the market.
That sounds absolutely insane and I’m curious who it might be. If it’s a big player, then are we looking at Trek, Spesh or Giant? High end stuff, or first bike/pottering grade?
Well whoever made that decision (assuming it’s true), I hope they stub their little toe everyday for the rest of their lives as punishment.
No idea who it is but this rumour has been doing the rounds for months now.
Will the full story ever come out?
On a similar subject a well known shoe and boot maker, which starts with Dr. , puts all of its returns into landfill. I was working in a warehouse in Daventry, I asked why the boots were all piled up, they look new. Yes, they were new, but not put back up for sale, just thrown away. Actually put in a secure site, to be disposed of.
Same with Lindt easter bunnies. Pallets of them going for pig food, as they didnt want to discount, as it devalues the brand.
Happened with PDAs when the market for PDAs suddenly tanked - fairly normal.
Maybe like Atari 2600 ET carts they will be recovered decades later 😀
Hahaha! Xora I came here to post the same comment
Was also by done by some of the high-end fashion houses; don't know if they my still do it.
The excuse offered up was if they discounted prices to clear stock that would 'devalue the brand'.
Having seen some of the stuff which passes for high fashion it's difficult to see what there is to devalue.
Should be named and shamed in my opinion. The publicity from sending saleable goods to landfill will devalue your brand quite rapidly. Especially so if the brand in question is publishing a sustainability report and/or wider ESG strategy. Really boils my piss this sort of thing if it is true
one of the big players landfilled excess stock, rather than flood the market.
Not an unusual act when a manufacturer/retailer doesn't want to sale them and (possibly) devalue their brand.
Really boils my piss this sort of thing if it is true
+1 but it's quite common in fashion as well. Excess stock / returns etc sent to landfill or burnt. 🙁
I was told by someone in the industry that Speech was cutting up frames and binning them. They may have just been passing on a rumour, not actual evidence.
The fashion industry is a nightmare. I could go on a six page rant regarding water usage and dumping of stock. Devaluing the brand is a piss poor excuse for landfilling or burning. At least recycle some of the fibres you utter bastards. It should come with mahoosive fines and stripping of any ability to talk about ESG credentials.
No one in the bike industry will tell you who it was. You don’t shit on your own doorstep.
it shouldn’t be ‘not unusual’ though - it should be illegal.
I was told by someone in the industry that Speech was cutting up frames and binning them. They may have just been passing on a rumour, not actual evidence.
They have a significant sale on at the moment which they're publicising so it'd seem unlikely that they're also binning stuff. 🤷
its hardly a new thing, have you seen the bike dumps in China?
They have a significant sale on at the moment which they’re publicising so it’d seem unlikely that they’re also binning stuff. 🤷
Not necessarily. Sales and destroying stock are both ways of maximising the return on what you hold.
its hardly a new thing, have you seen the bike dumps in China?
A lot of that is the huge number of bikeshare schemes that started up out of nowhere, massive investor input, overwhelming supply. There were loads of them, all in competition but none of them were ever profitable and the whole house of cards collapsed pretty quickly.
massive investor input, overwhelming supply. There were loads of them, all in competition but none of them were ever profitable and the whole house of cards collapsed pretty quickly.
pretty much describes the post covid bike glut, at least the Chinese are probably recyling all those frames rather than just burying them
Sounds like people making excuses for this shit. If it doesn't sell, then it's not devalued, it's over-valued.
"No one in the bike industry will tell you who it was. You don’t shit on your own doorstep."
It's not the dopers omerta : )
Plenty would if they knew for sure and it was off record. I heard some news/ a rumour not long ago about a crazy number of unpaid for bikes that could be landfilled but that's all it is to me, a rumour. There's a few bits of info going around that concerning the value or fate of many 10s of 1000s of bikes but what's more professional, feed the rumour mill or just think, "Yeah maybe.."?
Can't they just paint them a different colour and sell them as next year's bikes?
Happens in high fashion all the time, and I know for certain Supreme do it, to keep the hype alive
Bosch claim to be all " green" and want to look after nature yet when asked what happens to all the different motors they replace under warranty they won't discuss it 🤔
Presumably nobody in the bike media is going to dig on this, don’t bite the hand that feeds you etc.
I can't imagine any outlet which depends on advertising from bike brands would be enthusiastic about potentially alienating a bike advertiser by breaking this.
However it's definitely something that the mainstream media could (and would) run, and then the specialist media could pick it up without concern - fearlessly emailing the relevant press office for a stock PR statement.
OK, I'm being slightly facetious, but in order to run a story like this you basically need someone with definitive inside knowledge willing to either go on the record, or to talk to you on condition of anonymity - but supply convincing evidence. Preferably two people actually.
That could happen, with all the layoffs of the past year - but I wonder if any brand that did this would let go of people who "knew where the bodies were buried", so to speak?
I agree with that, but I'm also of the opinion that there isn't enough people that care about this side of things...we (the consumers) seem to be wanting more carbon and more plastic bike bits...all the top end stuff has a wide range of carbon nice things amongst the alloy stuff. We want the latest fancy things...and the bike industry seems to be quite happy to offer plenty for everyone, but it is such a massive choice market now that there must be loads of companies with surprlus kit that they don't want to recycle so just dump.
What would be very impressive would be bike companies (actually all companies that make stuff), publishing how they recycle the stuff they don't sell - yes, will cost the companies more money, but this surely would be a great way to help reduce and reuse (although I suspect carbon either can't be recycle or is so expensive to do so that it isn't worth it)...there surely must be 'stuff' that can be reclaimed and reused from stock that isn't getting sold and won't be sold.
No doubt, this is a very naive look at things and I suspect some bean counter will be able to argue that into oblivion as a ridiculous way of running a business. However, it does seem to sound far more appealing than hearing that some companies could be dumping a load of excess kit into the ground as it isn't sold.
Devaluing the brand is a piss poor excuse for landfilling or burning.
How do we all think late-stage capitalism works otherwise?
The fashion industry is a nightmare. I could go on a six page rant regarding water usage and dumping of stock.
My wife buys designer deadstock from a shop that specialises in this ... obviously not all of it goes there, but I am currently wearing trousers she made me from excess Donna Karan fabric.
Today on the radio I heard that there's huge numbers of excess EVs in China from many local brands that are effectively being dumped because of the downturn there.
Next daft thought - could this excess stock be used to help train people? Excess kit gets supplied to a training centre (or multiple centres) and they do a training course in bike mechanics and builds - the group then get to keep the bike they have built from parts i.e. wheelbuilding, parts fitting, frame checks, etc.
I'm thinking of scheme that helps refuges/immigrants/homeless people to start adding some skills to allow them to find employment to help them (don't think that has been worded properly, but there are many groups who are there to help give new skills/retrain to various groups). If one of these groups had a tie-in with a cycle location, then perhaps the group could keep a fleet of bikes of varying sizes in place and be able to be used by the group.
This obviously isn't capitalism, but could help slightly reduce the amount of items being landfilled.
It's not actually that surprising that it's happening – four days ago someone put a PSA on here about half price Epics and they are still available – people just don't seem to have the spare money / appetite to spend thousands on new bikes right now.
Fewer people have the spare cash...without a doubt, but there does seem to be a massive amount of stock getting built. Aware the idea is to sell as much as you can to make as much money as you can, but given how many bike companies making bikes there are, is it time that the manufacturers accept that they won't sell everything and cut the amount being manufactured by something like 10%...would reduce manufacturing costs (unless they are on the cusp of discount with the volume being made now i.e. build 3000 of these frames and pay $1.50 per frame; build 3500 of these frame and pay $1.00 per frame).
Not just the biking world, but everywhere needs to reduce the amount of stuff being built so there is less excess...again, a naive outlook, but it would help a bit.
It’s not actually that surprising that it’s happening – four days ago someone put a PSA on here about half price Epics and they are still available
How many people:
a) read this forum, specifically that post? and
b) are actually in the market for a new Epic? and
c) are in a position to buy one now?
I'd be surprised if it was more than single figures!
Now how many shops does Specialized supply and how many bikes have they each ordered?
I'd wager that figure is very substantially higher than the first figure so I'm not surprised they still have stock!
I bought a Chisel Comp at very nearly 50% off last year and they had stock of those for quite a while in spite of several folk on here saying they'd bought one and generally publicising the sale prices.
Today on the radio I heard that there’s huge numbers of excess EVs in China from many local brands that are effectively being dumped because of the downturn there.
Doesn't help that many of the local brands have a trading life measured in months, no dealer/service network and are likely to go bankrupt before your first service.
But yes, many are over producing as well.
I posted a link to an excellent podcast mini-series by the Escape Collective - most of the ex-Cycling Tips people - about how the industry reacted to the pandemic and where it all went wrong. Spoiler: it's not quite as simple as 'pure greed' gone mad, there are systemic issues with, erm, capitalism and the way the bike industry functions. But anyway, it's a really interesting listen and explains how big bike brands seem to have got things so blatantly wrong:
https://escapecollective.com/how-did-the-bike-industry-get-into-such-deep-trouble/
It's also worth bearing in mind that the whole stock to landfill thing may or may not have actually happened. The fact that it's rumoured to have been a thing tells you quite a lot, but it seems a bit like something from 'Things Fall Apart' and personally I'd want something a little more concrete then people saying stuff 'off the record'.
Off on a bit of a tangent...
Post Covid a very well known bike manufacturer placed a load (£10m's) of stock on consignment with a well known and long standing (from mid 80's) retailer presumably to avoid dumping excess stock. All well and good but the retailer was having a tough time and presumably, concentrated on paying staff, premises overhead etc in order to continue trading. Come the day the music stopped, that big manufacturer was left holding a very big baby. They took over the retailer, rebranded any major competitor activity and continue as the new owners/operators.
So it's possible without throwing kit on the tip but presumably not all manufacturers want to be retailers...
Back in the early 90s, I remember a car manufacturer binning car head units by the skip load (literally skips full of them). All brand new/unfitted . Because there was a new model coming down the production line and they had a different/newer HU fitted. On site security were tasked with hitting each one with a hammer before it went in
four days ago someone put a PSA on here about half price Epics and they are still available
People definitely have bargain fatigue IMO.
Many of us have probably already scratched our new bike itches via previous sale offers.
And post-Chiggle fire sale, there's a bit of my brain that won't get out of bed for less than 75% off.
😀
I doubt it was done with actual bikes. The thing to consider here is the cost of the stock vs the value you lose on future stock if you sell it cheap. For a full bike your cost price is maybe £1k for a £2k bike, and if you flogged them for £1000 you're not going to significantly impact the cost of next years model - last years bikes have always been half price. For a cycling top, you have probably paid £5 for a £100 item - binning it is almost no cost but selling it at cost (£5) would ruin the image of your company.
Given their financial results, I'm going to go with Ralfa.
Gibson guitars did something similar years ago. In the midst of a takeover/ buyout and they had a huge stock of unsellable guitars that had flopped in the market. So they did this to them
You would have to think its more high end bike brands as after all selling of an already cheap bike cheaper isnt really going to de value the brand.
You would at least hope there would be some value in re-cycling metal bikes, or is it just that all these bikes are in boxed and its costs more to dismantle and melt down than it does to shove in a hole in the garden?
Plastic bikes are harder to recycle I imagine?
People definitely have bargain fatigue IMO.
Many of us have probably already scratched our new bike itches via previous sale offers.
And post-Chiggle fire sale, there’s a bit of my brain that won’t get out of bed for less than 75% off.
Agree completely. 20 or 25% off seems pathetic now, mad when you think we were all paying RRP and over a few years ago!
I can see the stock dumping thing making sense. When Evans had five tens for £40 odd, people grabbed 4 or 5 sets so I cant see them needing new ones in the next 5 years! Even if they do need new ones, RRP might be hard to swallow.
You would have to think its more high end bike brands
I was wondering that. Say you're Colnago. You've a dealer network full of bikes and many customers have just laid out several thousand £/$/€ for their latest bikes. You have a massive stockpile but can't flog them off cheap as you'll piss off those customers and your dealers won't be able to sell the bikes they've already bought off you without making a loss and potentially going out of business. What's your move?
If the components are of a high enough value, then there might be a plan to strip them down but that takes manpower so not only is there an added cost, you're also widening the number of folk aware of your predicament.
Say you’re Colnago. You’ve a dealer network full of bikes and many customers have just laid out several thousand £/$/€ for their latest bikes. You have a massive stockpile but can’t flog them off cheap as you’ll piss off those customers and your dealers won’t be able to sell the bikes they’ve already bought off you without making a loss and potentially going out of business. What’s your move?
Rapha found themselves in this position when they started having predictable sales profiles. Everyone knew that in September there'd be an "end of summer clothing" sale, in December/January there'd be a Christmas/NY sale and so on - the result being that no-one* bought stuff at any other time, they'd all be waiting for the sales.
*Well OK, not "no-one" but certainly a lot of their big buying regular customers...
They had to really rationalise the process, remove all the predictable online sales stuff and just go with "archive sales" where they could lump 2 years worth of kit into a pop up store for a long weekend and just cash in on the rush.
And post-Chiggle fire sale, there’s a bit of my brain that won’t get out of bed for less than 75% off.
And they were selling at a loss before that madness even hit. If we except everyone else to sell at a huge loss, well...
Say you’re Colnago. What’s your move?
To be fair, Colnago are probably *fairly* well insulated from this as they tend to have models that hang around for a few years. Just with "this years colours".
The thing that hurts the well heeled dentist end of the market is new groupsets. No one is going to buy an 11 speed groupset on a £10+ grand bike. But they will buy a C68 in colours from 2021...
Someone with a wider spread in the market will be hurt a lot more. Making 10000 extra £1500 RRP bikes in a factory in Thailand and then only selling half of them is far more likely.
I'm an example of someone just not in the market. What ever discount. I've already a garage full of bikes and they don't get ridden enough as it is. The £££ is going into a pension so I can actually retire early... and then ride the bikes I've got more.
Now... if Toyota have a half price Land Cruiser sale... I'm in.
Ive had my eye on a new ebike that came to market in February (stock not due until June). Ticks all the boxes I want. I thought maybe I will wait until Dec/Jan . Hopefully there will still be some stock left as no one is buying stuff and hopefully it will have 20-30% off.
Already though 1 retailer is knocking 10% off the price of the bike and its not even arrived on the shelves yet !
Personally I would have thought it would be Santa Cruz - chuffing expensive bikes that the bubble of being special has now burst. until this year I never saw them in sales. But SC have been seen for huge discounts this year.
Back in the day I used to buy top end bikes ie Kleins or Cannondales. Back then top end bikes were expensive relative to wages, but you could justify saving the cash and it not denting your income too much. The last mtb I bought was in 2013 and cost me £1,300 for an XT equipped fairly posh full susser. Its gone crazy since then. I dont know how anyone can justify spending £10k on a bike these days.
They had to really rationalise the process, remove all the predictable online sales stuff and just go with “archive sales” where they could lump 2 years worth of kit into a pop up store for a long weekend and just cash in on the rush.
Given that Rapha appears to be posting consistent losses - £12 million pre-tax in the year up to January 2023 says google, sixth year in a row in the red - you might think people buying stuff in sales is the least of their problems. You have to envisage that something a bit more radical than simply changing the way they sell off end of line stock is needed.
At what point does a business that's posting consistent losses become unsustainable? It doesn't make much sense from where I'm sitting, though I get that the weird and whacky world of commercial accounting etc all sorts of non-intuitive stuff suddenly flies. I like Rapha, but I can't see how it works as a business unless the owners genuinely believe it's on a pathway to profitability on quite an impressive scale?
The fact that it’s rumoured to have been a thing tells you quite a lot, but it seems a bit like something from ‘Things Fall Apart’ and personally I’d want something a little more concrete then people saying stuff ‘off the record’.
Yes, this.
-four days ago someone put a PSA on here about half price Epics and they are still available
I think that's the issue. The sale prices are what we expect to pay at RRP so they're not going to sell out quickly.
Spending £7+k on a bike is ridiculous to most of us, particularly analog ones. Hence we get to the point where the bikes are heavily discounted or even binned.
Same with Lindt easter bunnies. Pallets of them going for pig food, as they didnt want to discount, as it devalues the brand.
B-in-L worked for a waste disposal company. Except, most of what he was disposing wasn't waste..... Just excess stock, even food.
Sickening.
He said if these companies can just throw lorry loads of stock into an incinerator, what difference is it going to make if we recycle bits of packaging?
Can’t they just paint them a different colour and sell them as next year’s bikes?
Not that I condone binning perfectly good bikes, or anything else, but what would all the people who are employed to get next year’s bikes ready do for a job if they didn’t?
Never if you’re owned by the Waltons of Wal-mart fame. It’s basically a hobby.
Which is fine, I guess, if that's how they view it. A bit like Belstaff and INEOS.
Maybe change the supply of the bikes...companies manufacture a frame that they want to use for the next 3 years, they build a set number of bikes and have them painted in that year's colour way. If demand remains high they get a small number painted up and built and hopefully they have far fewer 'left over'. Next year, there is a new colour way and new groupset and the staff prep the frame for the right colour and built with the right kit...
Sort of what they do now, but without the yearly frame changes...
B-in-L worked for a waste disposal company. Except, most of what he was disposing wasn’t waste….. Just excess stock, even food.
You should see what supermarkets throw out on a daily basis. Problem is, because of food hygiene and storage laws, it's quite difficult to give it away and - as mentioned above - it'd impact the bottom line if everyone knew that at 6pm the supermarket would be throwing out a shedload of food so why bother going in at 10am and buying it?
Quite often the waste bins are secured to stop people accessing it.
^ MrsRNP has a relationship with a local supermarket, we collect their fresh 'food waste' on a Sunday evening when they close, she then cooks it up on Mondays in her community kitchen and feeds 60-80people FOC. There are also hampers/food parcels to see people through the week. Anything left over I take to another local community group on Tuesdays mornings.
There are lots of similar groups doing this all over the country.
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@XORA those ET cartridges have already been found. Documentary about it on Netflix i think.
I know, thats what I said 😀
Like all brands, Scott sold less bikes in 2023 than expected, thus they seem to be doing "hold over" bikes in the same color for 2024.
I think they've only added complete new bikes (ransom, voltageE, foil RC ) with few to no color changes to ranges in their expected life cycle
The spark 910 has been the same color for all 3 years that it's been available. Great for me as you'd have no idea my spark was 2 years old. Previously, the top spec bike of the range colors move to much lower spec bike the following year, emotionally challenging the owner to upgrade to the current years color of risk being viewed as a peasant by their riding peers.
Some spec changes (e.g. genius st910 gets axs t for 2024 vs old axs plus realigned/reduced pricing) so perhaps lining up with what you're suggesting on the higher sell through models.
"four days ago someone put a PSA on here about half price Epics and they are still available"
I would imagine Balfe's website stock display is not just their stock but includes what is also in the distributor's warehouse. And that lot isn't selling out in 4 days.
Peasants bike if that type of thing bothers you...it will to some and it'll be completely irrelevant to others, but I get your point. Consumerism drives the need for the latest and people.will.pay for.it, but I suspect that volume has decreased over the last 4 years - either due to cost of living impacts or more bikes to buy for various disciplines - point being there are fewer people looking to buy X at that RRP.
The on consignment thing is similar to what's called Channel Stuffing in the IT hardware industry. If you're a vendor or distributor and need to pump those numbers up, you send your stock to disties (if you're a vendor) or resellers / other disties (if you're a distributor) and mark it as sold. That gives your quarterly number a bit of a pump, and the receiving party either returns, sells or buys at a discount. A few scenarios I covered as a journo way back when:
A distributor used to send lorryloads of expensive hardware for long, long laps of the M25 once a quarter. Unfortunately one of the lorries was ripped off, causing all kinds of issues, as the kit it was carrying should have been in a warehouse or sold - but was neither.
A very, very large vendor's sales teams used to oversell kit to customers. If you needed, say, 500 of something, they'd sell you 1,500 at a massive discount to hit their numbers. Often that spare thou would end up on the grey market - and at least one distributor was founded on buying grey market kit legitimately sold as a stuffing exercise, or by exploiting the Treaty of Rome and buying in kit sold cheaper in Greece or another EU country.
One very large server manufacturer that was absolutely slaughtered during the dotcom bust as they sold / loaned / traded for stock all kinds of kit at a discount to startups which then went bust, quickly followed by receivers and administrators selling that kit on to second hand dealers, sometimes still in its shipping containers.
The landfill rumour may or may not be fact - but equally it's not necessarily the vendors who can't shift it- it might be the contract manufacturers who are suddenly lumbered with thousands of really quite distinct frames they can't shift and are obliged to scrap by contract. The vendor may have to pay a kill fee of some sort to stop them reselling as a white label, too. So - bear in mind this may be more of a supply chain thing than a brand name thing.
If the bikes are alloy, it's likely the frames have scrap value and can be recycled. Carbon not so much. I have to say I've seen loads of discounted kit from some of the brands named above on sale, so I doubt it's them. Also bear in mind some stuff can be repainted for 2025, or pushed further down the model rank to the more basic models, something I think Cannondale did at one point. That's often the case with big makers anyway, as they trickle building techniques, designs, specs or even overstock frames down a rung; that's how and why you can pick up boost hardtail frames with through axles now when a few years back they were 135 or 142 qr.
I'd be looking for the large scale manufacturers whose bikes are not as easy to find on discount.
There are lots of similar groups doing this all over the country.
There's a charity that do it nationally: https://fareshare.org.uk/what-we-do/
What would that achieve?
I and a few folk I know would never buy from that bike brand again. It would also help form up regulations against this sort of thing. Could result in fines for the company. Opens up a world of hurt and damage to reputation and brand if they’ve made any bold green claims. This sort of behaviour, quite frankly, needs to stop regardless of what sector it is in.
I and a few folk I know would never buy from that bike brand again. It would also help form up regulations against this sort of thing.
Regulations? How?
We went and had a look at a Trek Powerfly for my wife this morning. RRP was £3,500 reduced to £2,500. The original price was wildly optimistic given the spec , even the shop guy agreed that the lower price was more online with it's actual worth .
I think it highlights the greed ? Post Pandemic by companies and a much needed reset is happening.Ive thought for a long time that model years is a joke if it's just the same bike with a different paintjob , unless there's significant changes .
Don't get me wrong, if it actually has happened, then it's lamentable on sustainability grounds in particular, but unless it's actually broken the law, I'm not sure there's much that can be done about it. Of course, people could choose to make buying decisions informed by the brand's actions and probably would.
But as far as I can see, at the moment, this is basically an unsubstantiated rumour. And if it did happen, you have to think that it would have been a pretty desperate measure taken on existential grounds - ie: without it, the company goes bust, people lose their jobs etc.
But unless it really has happened, it's all a bit of a moot point.
The original price was wildly optimistic given the spec , even the shop guy agreed that the lower price was more online with it’s actual worth .
But hidden in that cost is shipping (hugely more expensive now than it used to be plus disruptions due to piracy around Yemen), energy costs to run the factories and shops (also hugely increased in price), inflation plus margins for distributor and retailer.
It's not as simple as just going "everyone got greedy and it's biting them on the arse".
Should be named and shamed in my opinion.
What would that achieve?
They might stop doing it.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90895425/adidas-yeezy-shoes-stock-unsold-charity-ye-partnership
So, is there any actual evidence that any manufacturer sent bikes to landfill?
Sadly it seems they've buried the evidence
I think it highlights the greed ?
Really? Costs have gone up hugely... where's the greed in bike companies and shops trying to avoid loses, staying open, and paying their staff?
Which Powerfly was it by the way? There's a big range under that umbrella model name. Some are definitely worth more than £2.5k. Some perhaps not.
What we need to know, is where these bikes are buried !
That's Giant suing Stages for unpaid invoices, including over $5m for product they've manufactured and are still storing. I can see how that might end up as landfill.
Regulations? How?
Times are changing, WEEE regs are a thing. EPR is taking off, massive ball ache that it is. Reusable packaging regs are on the horizon. Doesn’t take much of a leap to move to hefty fines or tight regs about what does and doesn’t go to landfill.