Zonda (Campag freehub) £243.75

mfin

£243.75 with SALE12 code

http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/sp/road-t ... ampwhfr505

...just in case anyone is interested, as they are popular wheels

ugo.santalucia

I remember the days when Campagnolo was a serious brand and wasn't prostituting to make a sale... I suppose those days are gone even for prestigious brands, or maybe Campagnolo is no longer a prestigious brand.

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

rudivoller22

I've got a set of Zondas and they are fantastic in my opinion. That's a great price too.

mfin

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I remember the days when Campagnolo was a serious brand and wasn't prostituting to make a sale... I suppose those days are gone even for prestigious brands, or maybe Campagnolo is no longer a prestigious brand.

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

Ah, you stick your old fashioned ways Ugo, I'm sure you could give all the extra money you think you should pay for anything by Campag to charity if you'd like to pay more.

Rolex can do what they like, only certain 'types' of people buy Rolex watches!

ugo.santalucia

Sorry, I can't help but feeling sad by the way Valentino runs the company. They have gone the route of competing on every slice of the road market... even the cheap buy-to-bin one...
I am not talking about the Zonda, but a brand that takes itself seriously won't allow prices to be slashed. Serious brands don't... even in cycling

I hope you don't mind me going off topic... there isn't much to talk about a voucher anyway...

rolf_f

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I remember the days when Campagnolo was a serious brand and wasn't prostituting to make a sale... I suppose those days are gone even for prestigious brands, or maybe Campagnolo is no longer a prestigious brand.

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

People don't want serious brands anymore. Once upon a time, Saab made genuinely well made cars. All the quality was underneath and an adequate minority of people appreciated it.

Nowadays people want the sort of quality Audi produce - cheap plastic tat hidden by a very nicely finished veneer. Nothing special, no real quality but it looks posh. Saab went bust. The expensive Breightling clock in a Bentley is exactly the same thing as the clock in a VW Passat aside from the face and hands and both probably cost about 25p to produce. That says a lot about both Breightling and VW.

Campagnolo is now just an alternative to Shimano - it's remaining exclusivity is purely down to Shimanos dominance in the ready built bike market. That's still a degree of exlusivity but a Campag groupset is no longer almost a guarantee that the bike it is on is something a bit better than the norm as once was the case.

mfin

Campag are a business, I'm sure their sales models are based around making money, whether they have that about right within their current setup god knows.

ugo.santalucia

Rolf F wrote:

Campagnolo is now just an alternative to Shimano - it's remaining exclusivity is purely down to Shimanos dominance in the ready built bike market. That's still a degree of exlusivity but a Campag groupset is no longer almost a guarantee that the bike it is on is something a bit better than the norm as once was the case.

I agree with you on every point.
There are however different business models and they do survive. I would have preferred Campagnolo being smaller, more elitarian, taking the route of offering fewer products, appropriately priced and with exceptional quality.
I very rarely buy "on sale" unless what I want is on sale at the time I want it. I prefer to buy stuff with excellent quality and buy less of it. I think there is still a market for it

rolf_f

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Campagnolo is now just an alternative to Shimano - it's remaining exclusivity is purely down to Shimanos dominance in the ready built bike market. That's still a degree of exlusivity but a Campag groupset is no longer almost a guarantee that the bike it is on is something a bit better than the norm as once was the case.

I agree with you on every point.
There are however different business models and they do survive. I would have preferred Campagnolo being smaller, more elitarian, taking the route of offering fewer products, appropriately priced and with exceptional quality.
I very rarely buy "on sale" unless what I want is on sale at the time I want it. I prefer to buy stuff with excellent quality and buy less of it. I think there is still a market for it

I think you are right but I'm not sure that Campagnolo are taking an intriniscally wrong approach in a business sense. Would you chose to deliberately contract your business? I doubt I would - it would take much nerve. I think the model whereby you retain integrity of your product by local manufacture of the high end stuff and perhaps subsidise that by using the Far East for the lower end stuff is not a bad one. I don't think Campagnolo have sold out (yet) eg in the way that Pinarello have by farming everything out. That immediately destroys all interest I have in a manufacturer.

g00se

Having a look at their wheel listing - basically all their wheels are heavily discounted at the moment, Shimano and Zipp especially, compared to Campag and Mavic. It might also be a new fact of life as they also control Fulcrum which doesn't have the same cache even though they wheels are basically the same. Fulcrum will get discounted - and can they have that undercutting Campag?

But on the bigger question, I'm sure the marketing changes at Campag are not on a whim of Valentino - even though he's no Tullio.

If they try to live on past glories - they'll go the way of Suntour. With the money Shimano have in product development - and the crossover technology they and SRAM know from MTB - they don't have the guaranteed technical edge any more. Even if you don't like electronic shifting, look at the speed Shimano turned Di2 around to get it out before EPS arrived after it's painstakingly slow development (I'd mention SRAM's hydraulic disks but maybe that was a bit rushed in hindsight) . Now the biggest part of the road market seems to be toys for big boys, Japanese hi-tech kit has as much kudos as Italian craft.

You could argue Campag have to do two things.

1. Innovate - and this has suffered since Tullio died. Fingers crossed they get the people in to sort this out. Where it's worked, they've gone the trusted route of developing through the Peloton - but that takes time. They've failed at the quick, catch-up push to market (MTB, powertorque etc).

2. OEM sales - and they've said this is a main push now. But that needs discounted, bulk order work with the large bike suppliers and a supply chain across Asia - even though they still manufacture in Europe - and they appear to have started getting this sorted in the last year or two.

The OEM stuff and wheels are going to keep Campag alive - not past glories. What they need to do is innovate again.

DiscoBoy

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

No, they'd lose their contract to deal Rolex.

I can have a conversation about how Rolex sales are a joke, though, if you wish. The words "license to print money" will come up more than once.

I'm glad that no/few bicycle component/ accessory manufacturers have the power that Rolex do.

rolf_f

g00se wrote:

1. Innovate - and this has suffered since Tullio died. Fingers crossed they get the people in to sort this out. Where it's worked, they've gone the trusted route of developing through the Peloton - but that takes time. They've failed at the quick, catch-up push to market (MTB, powertorque etc).

Powertorque is a good case in point; good thing or bad? To me, it is the stuff of Ugos nightmares and I wouldn't really want it on a bike of mine (I had Ribble remove the Powershift levers off my Gran Fondo and swap them for a set of Ultrashift levers on a display bike when I picked it up! (I had told them I expected Ultrashift!) ). However, before Powertorque there was barely any meaningful mechanical difference across the range aside from the number of gears. There was little practical point in choosing anything other than Veloce or Athena. Now Veloce, Athena and Chorus are all clearly distinct choices. In marketing terms, that seems to make sense (however ,much it irritates me that they no longer make decent 10 speed shifters!).

alihisgreat

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Sorry, I can't help but feeling sad by the way Valentino runs the company. They have gone the route of competing on every slice of the road market... even the cheap buy-to-bin one...
I am not talking about the Zonda, but a brand that takes itself seriously won't allow prices to be slashed. Serious brands don't... even in cycling

I hope you don't mind me going off topic... there isn't much to talk about a voucher anyway...

So campag are going to start buying back the unsold old stock from distributors?

I recently bought some Fulcrum wheels... I wouldn't have been able to afford the 2014 version with an 11speed shimano freehub but I got the 2013 10 speed version at a significant discount. What's wrong with that?

g00se

Rolf F wrote:

g00se wrote:

1. Innovate - and this has suffered since Tullio died. Fingers crossed they get the people in to sort this out. Where it's worked, they've gone the trusted route of developing through the Peloton - but that takes time. They've failed at the quick, catch-up push to market (MTB, powertorque etc).

Powertorque is a good case in point; good thing or bad? To me, it is the stuff of Ugos nightmares and I wouldn't really want it on a bike of mine (I had Ribble remove the Powershift levers off my Gran Fondo and swap them for a set of Ultrashift levers on a display bike when I picked it up! (I had told them I expected Ultrashift!) ). However, before Powertorque there was barely any meaningful mechanical difference across the range aside from the number of gears. There was little practical point in choosing anything other than Veloce or Athena. Now Veloce, Athena and Chorus are all clearly distinct choices. In marketing terms, that seems to make sense (however ,much it irritates me that they no longer make decent 10 speed shifters!).

Agreed. They had to get rid of Xenon and Mirage - that was their first attempt at OEM but was still using the old shape tooling. So they 'dumbed down' Veloce, Centaur and Athena to spread the remaining range of products.

A lot of this also relates to patents - for which Shimano hold shed-loads and Campag didn't want to license. I think that's the reason for the bearings on the spindles and not in the cups. And that's another reason why small scale artisan groupset manufacturers would suffer in the modern component world - being swamped by patent litigation.

(As an aside, you can get an insight into future development but searching patent filing on google. How much do you want to wager Campag will come out with chainrings incorporating asymmetric, offset mounting plates - and extended crank spiders - to increase stiffness and improve front shifting under load?)

ugo.santalucia

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

So campag are going to start buying back the unsold old stock from distributors?

I recently bought some Fulcrum wheels... I wouldn't have been able to afford the 2014 version with an 11speed shimano freehub but I got the 2013 10 speed version at a significant discount. What's wrong with that?

It's not just the unsold stock that gets slashed...
Another example is Campagnolo clothing... I have bought the odd piece, hoping for decent quality and yes, it was half price when I needed it... but it is garbage... really, the quality of their shorts, bibs and jackets matches that of Aldi. I won't buy Campagnolo clothing again and certainly contributes to the rather low opinion I now have of anything that comes from Vicenza (including the poor quality power/ultra shifters).

I understand that in a big market small players get chewed up, but I still disagree with their choice of going for every single slice of the market

ugo.santalucia

g00se wrote:

(As an aside, you can get an insight into future development but searching patent filing on google. How much do you want to wager Campag will come out with chainrings incorporating asymmetric, offset mounting plates - and extended crank spiders - to increase stiffness and improve front shifting under load?)

In other words, real world problems...

sloppyschleckonds

ugo.santalucia wrote:

even the cheap buy-to-bin one...

They want a slice of Shimano & Mavics market

rudivoller22

ugo.santalucia wrote:

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

So campag are going to start buying back the unsold old stock from distributors?

I recently bought some Fulcrum wheels... I wouldn't have been able to afford the 2014 version with an 11speed shimano freehub but I got the 2013 10 speed version at a significant discount. What's wrong with that?

It's not just the unsold stock that gets slashed...
Another example is Campagnolo clothing... I have bought the odd piece, hoping for decent quality and yes, it was half price when I needed it... but it is garbage... really, the quality of their shorts, bibs and jackets matches that of Aldi. I won't buy Campagnolo clothing again and certainly contributes to the rather low opinion I now have of anything that comes from Vicenza (including the poor quality power/ultra shifters).

I understand that in a big market small players get chewed up, but I still disagree with their choice of going for every single slice of the market

Completely agree. I bought a couple of pairs of their bibs expecting them to be good and they are utter garbage. Aldi ones are actually better. That can't be right.

nickynoodles

flasher

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I remember the days when Campagnolo was a serious brand and wasn't prostituting to make a sale... I suppose those days are gone even for prestigious brands, or maybe Campagnolo is no longer a prestigious brand.

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

What does the price that Ribble sell the wheels for have anything to do with Campagnolo?

alihisgreat

Flasher wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I remember the days when Campagnolo was a serious brand and wasn't prostituting to make a sale... I suppose those days are gone even for prestigious brands, or maybe Campagnolo is no longer a prestigious brand.

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

What does the price that Ribble sell the wheels for have anything to do with Campagnolo?

I suppose if they wanted too they could force the distributors to then force the bike shops to sell at a certain price... not sure how good for their customer relations that would be though!

ugo.santalucia

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

I suppose if they wanted too they could force the distributors to then force the bike shops to sell at a certain price... not sure how good for their customer relations that would be though!

I suppose that's not legal.. but they could only deal with certain businesses and not others.
Personally I find all this constant sales culture will not benefit anyone in the long run... shops are forced to close as they can't compete with internet prices, consumers can buy more stuff that they don't need, but they just get more and more rubbish products and more and more copies of the same thing...

alihisgreat

ugo.santalucia wrote:

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

I suppose if they wanted too they could force the distributors to then force the bike shops to sell at a certain price... not sure how good for their customer relations that would be though!

I suppose that's not legal.. but they could only deal with certain businesses and not others.
Personally I find all this constant sales culture will not benefit anyone in the long run... shops are forced to close as they can't compete with internet prices, consumers can buy more stuff that they don't need, but they just get more and more rubbish products and more and more copies of the same thing...

Specialized have been getting away with similar things for a while? They supposedly force shops to drop rivals product lines etc. ?

The problem with the sales culture is that the current economic climate doesn't really allow for much full-priced shopping.. its the same on the high-street where, for example, shops were increasingly starting their sales before Christmas as they competed for a limited pool of consumers' cash. But hopefully that's a short run economic issue.. or we're all screwed!

ugo.santalucia

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

The problem with the sales culture is that the current economic climate doesn't really allow for much full-priced shopping.. its the same on the high-street where, for example, shops were increasingly starting their sales before Christmas as they competed for a limited pool of consumers' cash. But hopefully that's a short run economic issue.. or we're all screwed!

Sell less, sell better, that's where I would like Campagnolo to be... maybe it's just impossible... maybe you do need to flog the junk, so you can actually survive and try to do some R&D to make something good... they could at least not use the Campagnolo name for the crap...

rolf_f

ugo.santalucia wrote:

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

I suppose if they wanted too they could force the distributors to then force the bike shops to sell at a certain price... not sure how good for their customer relations that would be though!

I suppose that's not legal.. but they could only deal with certain businesses and not others.
Personally I find all this constant sales culture will not benefit anyone in the long run... shops are forced to close as they can't compete with internet prices, consumers can buy more stuff that they don't need, but they just get more and more rubbish products and more and more copies of the same thing...

It'll get worse before it gets better. People complain about supermarket prices when the supermarkets are charging (and paying) less than the farmer can produce the product for. It's terrible. All I can do (as I have done since 2009 - my most successful NY resolution ever!) is never to go into a supermarket anymore and I've pretty much managed that. Another example - the desperation of retailers in having the sales before Christmas. It's quite pathetic and it won't do anyone any good in the long run.

ugo.santalucia

Rolf F wrote:

It'll get worse before it gets better. People complain about supermarket prices when the supermarkets are charging (and paying) less than the farmer can produce the product for. It's terrible. All I can do (as I have done since 2009 - my most successful NY resolution ever!) is never to go into a supermarket anymore and I've pretty much managed that.

That's a good one...
The problem there is mainly the dairy products, as I understand... basically the system is you pay them less than the production cost and the farmer gets subsidised by taxpayers... it seems a communist system and I am not sure how we got into this mess, but for sure nobody is happy about it. I'd have no problem in paying milk twice as much, as I suppose most would... people moan about the price of food, but then they are happy to flog 50 quid a month for the privilege of having an iPhone... we got somehow convinced that food is a given... it will change

adamfo

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I remember the days when Campagnolo was a serious brand and wasn't prostituting to make a sale... I suppose those days are gone even for prestigious brands, or maybe Campagnolo is no longer a prestigious brand.

Do Rolex retailers slash prices? genuine question... :roll:

Seems bizarre to me that anyone would equate the bicycle component market with the luxury goods one which has price inelasticity of demand :?

ugo.santalucia

adamfo wrote:

Seems bizarre to me that anyone would equate the bicycle component market with the luxury goods one which has price inelasticity of demand :?

I think you got the wrong smiley there... you wanted this... :shock:
Campagnolo as I remember it was the stuff of the PRO and the rich... it was the Rolex of the bicycle world. Super Record or Nuovo Record was not something I had on my bike when I was a teenager. I had Modolo, Ofmega, Gipiemme, Suntour, Universal, but not Campagnolo. At the time they did not bother with low end stuff... you could afford their Record level or you went elsewhere... and they never really did until recently. Even Veloce 9 speed, kind of end of the 90s was a superb group set... one that won design awards... that's no longer the case

gfk_velo

Hi All

Normally I don't comment on commercial issues but I will here, as there is so much mis-information in the marketplace generally that a few points need to be made.

Campagnolo do not, and cannot under both EU and UK law, control their final point of sale price. This is the same for any company .... it is simply illegal. There are tools that exist in a very grey area of international law and EU regulation that "sort of" allow a manufacturer to do it but in a vertically structured market with a wholesale distribution network, such as Campagnolo have in the UK, it can't be done reliably - as title on a product passes from the manufacturer to the wholesaler, the price at which the wholesaler sells on to the retailer, or retailer to end-user is entirely at the whim of those down-stream parties.

As an example and without naming names, I know of one brand that only got a handle on the free-fall that their prices entered by setting up a wholly-owned UK subsidiary as the point of distribution out to retailers - so they controlled the price at which retailers bought and thus the price at which it was / is viable to sell.

Some general points about the supply side as a whole that influence this not just in the cycle market but across the board are:

Some wholesalers with some brands have used a "grey area" tactic which is to restrict supply to retailers who abuse RRP and some manufacturers have used this as a tool with recalcitrant wholesalers but this is very dodgy ... also under contract law are provisions around obligation to supply if supply has been made historically, alteration of Ts and Cs and a whole raft of other stuff that makes it very hard to regulate final price structures using this as a tool.

OE introduces an additional complication - components are sometimes discounted more heavily to OEM buyers than they are to after-market distributors, and some OEMs, knowing that they can support wholesale pricing of (in the case of bicycles) group set components at levels that are not viable for distributors (because they can often use high levels of turnover and if in a different country, freight throughput, generated through complete bike sales, as a subsidy) will buy more than their real requirement (sometimes also to bump up discount rates or generate economies of scale in freight) and sell on to small distibutors or retailers often in side-deals that undermine any other attempt to control price on the part of the component manufacturer. There is nothing, I would stress, illegal, in this practice (although a lot of OEM contracts specifically forbid it, so manufacturers might choose to challenge it in those cases - I know of cases where it has been done).

In cases of import, exchange rates can play a big part in wholesale pricing, especially. When a product is bought, how currency is bought, and where a product crosses multiple currency zones, how the currencies interact over time can all influence prices paid by importers and therefore the prices that they sold to their customers at. Before the Eurozone, but after the introduction of tarrif-free trading in Europe, it used to be common practice to stage some products through additional countries in Europe to capitalise on one currencies upward trend in value against anothers, only to then "flip" it. Another trick was / is to buy with currency already bought at a "forward" rate where that is better than the "spot" rate, or buy at "spot" when that rate was better than the forward rate committed to - because as an importer you have to look at a currency trend or multiple currency trends and "guess-timate" where you think the average relative value of a currency is going to be over the life of your price list.

All of this is actually bad news for customers and good news for consumers.

What's the difference? Well, in my view, a customer cares about the brand that they buy into and are prepared to buy into that brand on the basis of something other than price - maybe they like serviceability, maybe they like a degree of exclusivity, maybe they just like ownsership of the brand - who knows, but they don't do what consumers do, which is simply consume.

For a customer, long term support of a product is probably fairly important - a consumer probably cares less.

A customer will often expect long term support for a product in the sense that they will expect that good technical advice, say, is available. If a product should fail, they will expect that it should (at least within reason) be repairable and that spare parts will be freely available at a price which is a sensible percentage of the cost of the complete item.

The consumer, on the other hand, outside of his or her "rights", often doesn't care - they generally have little or no loyalty to a brand or to a retailer that is based on anything other than price and will bin a damaged or broken part rather than repair and expect that to be the practice. Technical advice & support they see as part of their right, though being almost entirely price-motivated .... and here is the nub of the problem .... they are basically unwilling to pay for it.

Unfortunately in the cycle trade generally and across retail of technical goods as a whole, we have a problem - retail often (not always) is more interested in consumers than it is in customers. It's easier to move 100 boxes with little in the way of service (outside of getting the goods to the buyer quickly and efficiently) at a lower price than it is to move 50 boxes at a higher price and with a high level of (say) technical support ensuring that the end-user gets the right product for the job and that the technical expertise is available to look after that customer correctly if a problem should occur.

Hence, we have a situation where dudes like me, who do actually care about the brand or good that we work on, do an awful lot of technical support work for which we don't get paid directly by anyone, which should more properly be the province of the guys shifting boxes - trouble is, they can't afford to pay guys like me because they have pared their margins back to the point of being only just sustainable. That feeds backwards up the supply chain, of course. I don't want to leave end-users high and dry because that does the brand which my business in part depends on no good at all, so I set up a set of Google Alerts that lead me to forums like this one ... and that's where we came in.

I don't pretend to have a solution to this, but all I would say is that it's worth thinking about all of the issues that I have hastily (and incompletely) sketched out above, before condemning a brand for "prostituting" itself ...

As ever
Graeme
Velotech Cycling Ltd

ugo.santalucia

You said it better Graeme, I'd like to feel like a customer, which I am for some brands and I don't feel any longer for Campagnolo, a brand that released a chainset the shops could fit but not un-fit for over 6 months. A brand that sells a clothing range with the lowest quality out there at a premium RRP. I just wish Campagnolo actually cared as they used to care... but I think they also are mostly interested in consumers.

bendertherobot

Sold. I think it recognised its clothing wasn't great so decided to shelve it (sic).