Bike industry fail...
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RevellRider wrote:Wow, you must really think that the owners or CRC, Wiggle, Evans, Leisure Lakes and every other large cycle retailer sit down in dark room with Madison, Fishers Outdoor, Ison and every other major UK distributor and plot how they can rip off every schmuck that walks through their door. I mean come on, what must the margin on bikes be now days? 75%? 80%? Cycle shops must be rolling in their money
I take it you have heard of the internet? Oops silly me this is a forum after all! It's not very difficult to price compare these days, is it... Which leads to some amusing accidents when someone gets it wrong and the others copy...
So what is your explanation for the same common high-volume Japanese item being £35 here (CRC) and €19 in Germany (Rose)? Or a frame £2500 here and $2500 in the US? Many of my comments were not aimed at the bike industry in particular (which incidentally is massively high margin compared to the industries I have worked in, but is lower volume) but just pointing out that there is little logic or reason to pricing and definitely in some countries for some products price fixing and profiteering happen, in all sorts of industries. The UK seems to be disproportionately affected for a relatively large/rich country.
It is strange, but some people seem to think that if you like bikes, then you can't possibly criticise the industry in any way. Seems a bit odd to me.0 -
jehosophat wrote:RevellRider wrote:It is strange, but some people seem to think that if you like bikes, then you can't possibly criticise the industry in any way. Seems a bit odd to me.
I do sympathise with you to an extent. I have noticed the 'if you don't like it buy something else' attitude on several forums. Ditto the heroic LBS owner.
On the former I'd say that many people seem to be happy to deal with crap service and poor retail practices by just voting with their feet. This is obviously ok and desirable but nothing changes unless you say something too.
On the latter, we could all be forgiven for thinking that our LBS owner happily toils away on your £5k uber-bike for a mere pittance as he/she is a martyr to the cause. My experience of two recently left me thinking of the dark days of retailing when the customer was not king but an inconvenience. One was surly and the other just not interested.
From my own experiences the bike supply chain feels like it has entrenched itself way back in the dim and distant past. Very little concept of 'I want it and I want it now' and no regard to flexibility of choice. It seems to me more like; here is what we have, you'll get it when we say and no you can't change anything re the product itself. Poor.
Additionally, and back to the main point, this is the internet and people like to disagree on the 'net. It's safe, you don't have to make eye contact and what's the worst that can happen? I'm pretty sure that some people get their rocks off by disagreeing and arguing for the sake of it. So I guess some people just argue against your criticism just for the hell of it and maybe really agree with you.0 -
jehosophat wrote:So what is your explanation for the same common high-volume Japanese item being £35 here (CRC) and €19 in Germany (Rose)? Or a frame £2500 here and $2500 in the US? Many of my comments were not aimed at the bike industry in particular (which incidentally is massively high margin compared to the industries I have worked in, but is lower volume) but just pointing out that there is little logic or reason to pricing and definitely in some countries for some products price fixing and profiteering happen, in all sorts of industries. The UK seems to be disproportionately affected for a relatively large/rich country.
This comment here goes a long way to starting to explain it.
Average disposable income is much lower in Germany than it is here too. So you may well find that retailers work to tighter margins. The Uk has one of the highest average disposable incomes in the world. One of the results of that is that we pay more for luxury items.
Other things that negatively impact costs here include-
- Potential Market size
- Distribution costs
- Overheads (of both the distributer and the retailer)
To name but a few of the biggest ones.0 -
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Margins vary massively - shops make higher percentages on budget kit, but bigger absolute margins on the more expensive stuff.0
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UK has "one" of the highest disposable income values, but it's about 6th or something on the scale, iirc. I found it a few days ago on Wikipedia (arguably not a concrete source)... I'm on my phone now so not so easy to find it again0
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Yeh we're 7th on the one I used (not Wiki, it's one we use at work). Germany is 22nd though. US is top, but they still get cheaper prices because of the other stuff I mentioned in my last post.0
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My recent experiences have been brilliant quite frankly - wanted to build a new hardtail up, did my research, decided what bits I wanted and where I was going to get each lot of bits from and had no issues whatsoever and cannot fault any aspect other than Royal Mail taking 3 days to get me a package that was on a 24hr Signed For delivery... My build went as follows:
Emailed Stanton Bikes asking if I could pick a frame up from them as I noticed their registered office was in Bristol where I live (saving them delivery charges and me waiting for it) - Got a reply same day from Dan Stanton saying all frames kept up in Derbyshire but he was driving back to Bristol a few days later and could drop one off at my work for me!
Phoned TF Tuned to have a chat about which type of fork they thought would be better for the intended build/use which they then stripped to check for manufacturing faults (or a friday afternoon set of forks), rebuilt and set-up for my weight, bke & riding style and then couriered out to me - all for a whopping £10 more than I could get them from CRC and well below the RRP.
The remainder of the bits were sourced from CRC (gears/brakes/cables/handlebar) and Superstar (Rotors/adaptors/Chain guide/pedals/grips & wheels) All very competitively priced and arrived within 3 days of ordering and both were very helpful on the phone when I rang to check a couple of things before ordering.
All in all, I had a very positive experience with all the contact I had (even Evans when I returned a SFN installation tool and got a full refund with no queries). The only thing that I did find was that due to ordering in dribs and drabs I have an overload of Haribo from Superstar
Of course, though, as others have said, shit happens and I could have bought everything bar the frame from numerous other sources and had shit service, got a duff bit of kit etc.0
