I had a look arounf Stif this afternoon
Its been a while since I paid any attention to new kit

With the news today being full of financial misery I thought there may be an outside chance of a bit of a Woolies moment to be had

Wrong!!

Bloody hell a new style Blur LT frame is £1950 in an ano finish

That has to be an increase of about 600 quid in less than a year over the old model

Now OK its new and I agree the pound is worth thrippence to the dollar but even so

Interestingly I was in the states before Chrstmas and even tho the exchange rate was rubbish the shops over there were all keen to do deals due to the US credit crunch/economic climeate and the discounts on offer more than made up for it, although I didnt visit any bike shops

So is anyone actually selling Blur frames at nearly 2k?
I can only guess they must be as I dont see bike shops closing yet and the price didnt seem negotiable

It just doesnt make sense
As a country we are skint and going down the toilet but prices have gone up massively

Or are we about to see even more LBSs go under?
Or just the ones selling the boutique stuff?

Anyone have an opinion?

i work in a good bike shop mid to high end stuck (shimano service centre plus)and its shocked me at how quick prices have risen with nearly all brands doing it, i knew it would happern but the where when and how fast is what shocked me i knew they would go up twice 08/09 but three by jan 09 is madness but stanglely where selling a lot at the moment and are service work board is full solid normally jan is a tic over month 😕

ps people seem to be wanting a better quality comute bike at presant between £250-£500 over the cheaper crap you can get just to know they are getting somthing of a more long term bike

Yes we are being screwed a year ago it was about $1.90 to £1 its now about $1.50 to the £1. Also the price of shipping has fallen too with the drop in oil prices and the drop in imports. I have heard that some big shipping lines are offering container rates at 40% what they were a year ago.

Santa Cruz frames are particularly expensive though.

Prices are rising for sure, but there’s still plenty of good deals to be had and the more mainstream brands are still pretty good value.

Lots of shops were doing 10, 15, even 20% off 2009 bikes recently – obviously taking the initiative to increase turnover.

Think you’re right that it’s the high-end brands who’ll feel the hurt. Some bike shops are sure to go under, they do in good years let alone bad – but I wonder if any brands will go bust too?

My post want really a comment on being screwed over – even if we are

Its basically that the countrys skint, people are losing jobs on a massive scale and yet a high end new frame is just even more stupidly expensive

Are they selling or is it tumbleweed in the bike shops?

Id expected them to fall over me when I walked in like car dealers are

This doesnt seem to be the case

An LBS bloke here as well, turnover on a par with a year ago, workshop very busy for this time of year, not selling quite as many new bikes but bits doing ok.
Now as for prices, currencies really do make that much difference once it’s passed on down the chain via manufacturer/wholesaler/retailer. Although i’m also surprised at the rate of increases.
The other issue is of course credit, bikes are paid for way in advance of them arriving in stores, often paid for via credit, which is alot more expensive now, that also has to be factored in.
It’s not all bad news though, I remember selling an XT mech 15 years ago and they were £44.99 then, until recently the latest XT shadow mech was £44.99 rrp, not bad really, if the products had followed the price of inflation each year you would be paying even more than todays price hikes.
There are signs that some prices may drop a little soon, after all whats the point in a warehouse full of bikes going nowhere?
However you also can’t sell a product for a small unsustainable margin in the long term if you want to continue trading.
I seriously expect a couple of brands to go to the wall within the next 12 months.

Got to say, the price rises have come at an unhelpful time, but it’s all part of the same problem. Sure you can do your own research for the reasons why it’s happened. As a business, retailers have to increase their prices when the supply costs more, it’s not like they’re profiteering.

Santa Cruz > Jungle > Stif have ALWAYS been expensive in the UK (both relative to other products and to SC in the US including adjustments for tax and transport), and conspire to continue to be so. As long as those fools in surrey with their L200 pickups keep buying Santa Cruz bikes for their sunday trip up to the tower and back down then it will always be that way…

I was out of mountain biking for about 5 years.

I was kind of shocked how good a bike you could get for relatively cheap when I came back to it.

Things seem to have caught up the last while in equivalent months…

Oh yeah Santa Cruz have are overpriced (and Jungle have always been like that…)

The cost of raw materials has gone up a lot in the last few years, esp carbon fibre, as there is a worldwide shortage. Therefore it is all the more puzzling when santa cruz use aluminium and the price rises in the USA have been much less even allowing for the exchange rates. I have a classic blur and am not upgrading/changing for this very reason. Industry rip off if you ask me.

I’ve been looking for some new forks since xmas – the new prices are frightening!

The list price of a BLT2 ano frame last year was £1569 with an RP2 or £1649 with an RP23 – still a big hike but not quite as bad as £600. Unfortunately we are suffering from higher raw materials prices and the exchange rate.

I got a reasonable deal last year even though I got the bike just after it came out. No discount on the frame, but was able to negotiate on the build kit bits and pieces, plus some extra gear

As long as those fools in surrey with their L200 pickups keep buying Santa Cruz bikes

Cheeky!!

🙂

been waiting for you…

May generalised slander obviously doesnt apply to ford mondeo drivers from the Midlands 🙂

A few weeks ago there was a place knocking out Spesh Pitch Pro’s at £970.
Two complete bikes, & decent ones at that, for the cost of a single Santa Cruz frame.
Crazy.
Not a fan of SC. If I had that much to lash out it’d go on a Mojo.

Love Santa Cruz, however they’ve moved production to low-cost countries so why the big prices on what is essentially evolution (read tweak) with VP and single pivot frames? There are a lot of fluctuations out there- not just dollar:£. Someone will be along shortly to put me right however hasnt the price of aluminium dropped over the past year? This would surely negate the difference and anyway, what is with the pricing? Are Santa Cruz aiming their brand higher now, more niche? Its a **** aluminium frame ffs. Its not carbon, fancy steel or titanium is it?

£600 for a Chameleon frame tho, that does take the p1ss.

As long as people keep stumping up the readies, they’ll keep hiking the prices..

Stoner – You’re wrong about Santa Cruz/Jungle mark-ups, they are not excessive, and for the price you get a decent bit of kit with good warranty and parts back up. (speaking as an ex-Stif employee and somebody who’s worked in bike shops for 5 years prior to Stif, and has owned a Sant Cruz too!, ooh get me….).

Bike shops, like other shops, need to make profit to exist!

BTW I got out of the bike trade eventually…. yipee!

From what I’d heard, until recently jungle had not done any significant changes in almost 3 years.

The premium price that Jungle can enforce is down to Santa Cruz forbidding their US retailers from selling overseas. Whilst the difference between UK price and a fully paid up US import price (if you were allowed to) has come down, within the last 12 months it has been as much as a 25% mark up – retail to retail comparison (so the wholesaler argument is a red herring).

ive been looking at getting some new forks, most shops ive talked to have said Fox are going to be hiking their fork prices up end of the month!

Although alot of good (small) shops struggle I think big and established importers/distributors also hide behind this screen.

Plus, are people at the likes of Madison etc well paid or do they do it, in part for the love of the industry (at first)?

Jungle havent tweaked their prices for the past few years? Says to me that they must have already had a healthy profit in there then.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the high end shops did better at the moment than the lower market shops. Those who ride not that often and aren’t that fussed about having the best gear might see bike stuff as something easy to give up. It might be the first saving they make if they’re hard up.

If riding bikes and having the best kit is a big part of your life, it’s likely to be a higher priority and maybe those people will give up other stuff rather than reducing what they spend on bike stuff. It might be wrong, but it might explain why the high-end shops are doing good business and not offering big reductions.

One other thing, are we actually all skint? Unless you’ve actually lost your job or feel in imminent danger of losing it, are many of us much worse off than normal? Food prices have come down, fuel is cheaper than it has been for a long time, mortgage rates are low, lots of (non-bike) shops are offering massive discounts. It’s not all that bad is it?

hora – Member

Love Santa Cruz, however they’ve moved production to low-cost countries so why the big prices on what is essentially evolution (read tweak) with VP and single pivot frames? There are a lot of fluctuations out there- not just dollar:£. Someone will be along shortly to put me right however hasnt the price of aluminium dropped over the past year? This would surely negate the difference and anyway, what is with the pricing? Are Santa Cruz aiming their brand higher now, more niche? Its a **** aluminium frame ffs. Its not carbon, fancy steel or titanium is it?
Most of SC’s production is made in the far east, has been for a long time, its only recently that the VPP bikes have switched production there.
Do you think the frame manufacturers pass the lower costs of aluminium on to the vendors such as SC? In turn do you think jungle pay less because the price of aluminium fluctuates? I bet regardless of the costs of aluminium, jungle have a set price with SC in the states.

BTW, although I’m a Santa Cruz owner and so probably biased, I don’t think they’re all hugely overpriced. In spite of the poor dollar rate, the Superlight is roughly the same price as an Orange Five. I suppose the Nomad and Blur LT look a little pricey next to a Tracer but not massively so.

Its the job of the Senior Buyer to renegotiate on fluctuations though? Any savy business person would pick up on such fluctuations and look for help on the trade price surely?

gingerflash- You tend to check your competitors pricing and set accordingly though? Informal pricefixing? Which is illegal here in the UK? Where is the Orange 5 built? Is it subject to import duty/shipping etc? Would be interesting to see how the Orange’s are priced in the States compared to here.

hora – Member

Although alot of good (small) shops struggle I think big and established importers/distributors also hide behind this screen.

Plus, are people at the likes of Madison etc well paid or do they do it, in part for the love of the industry (at first)?

Jungle havent tweaked their prices for the past few years? Says to me that they must have already had a healthy profit in there then.

People are generally in business to make money, they don’t do it as a favour to you, they are not a charity, they have wages to pay, bills to pay, family’s to feed, morgages, rent, tax and lots of other boring stuff to pay so hence they are selling their products to make money, its how the world works.

Thanks for the lesson in realism. If the importer margin on a £1.9k retail frame (dont forget they also sell it through their shop and as fullbuilds etc) is that slender. How inefficient is the business model?

A complete bike can cost 4 grand. That is alot of money.

Maybe you should direct that question at Jungle/Stif!

Orange Fives are, I believe, built in the UK. A Superlight is only $1199 in the states. i’m sure Orange Fives are a lot more than that over there, as are other european products like those from Sidi, DT Swiss and Hope.

If the importer margin on a £1.9k retail frame (dont forget they also sell it through their shop and as fullbuilds etc) is that slender. How inefficient is the business model?

Pretty inefficient – that’s why small importers go bust all the time, and you can never get the spares/back-up you need. The only way to make it work is to do it on a larger scale e.g. Bromley/Yeti or Jungle/Santa Cruz.

any argument about raw materials cost is a bit misleading.

The scrap value of a frame isn’t £600, so any raw material cost will be nowhere near that. Its nearer £2-3 per frame. So saying the cost of alu trebbled, would add £6 to your frame.

Ditto carbon, although tooling for carbon, especialy monocoques is hideously expensive, hence why a lot of carbon frames are still made from individual tubes whereas alu is often made into big hydroformed (in all its meanings) monocoque strutures (old old spesh enduro, intense etc).

So why is a Orange five so much? They dont have to pay import duty and distributor costs in the uk? Why are they over a grand? Ah yes, look at what your competitors charge and set your pricing that way.

I work in a bike shop that caters to all markets, but mainly top end road bikes and lower end, sub 400 commuter bikes. Commuter sales have plummeted. The workshop is empty. Despite us hoping that more people would commute by bike as petrol prices rose. They did, briefly, and now the prices are back down a bit and the weather’s cold it’s back to normal.

Meanwhile, despite frankly ridiculous price rises for bikes (although oddly not on most frames we sell- Look and Giant remain much the same), road bike sales in our shop and top end mountain bike sales in our other shop are up. Bizarre.

People see it as a more ‘responsible’ way to salve their desire to shop/reward themselves for having to work? Promise yourself to get fit etc so it doesnt feel like an evil purchase in a recession? TOTALLY guessing mind!

"Meanwhile, despite frankly ridiculous price rises for bikes (although oddly not on most frames we sell- Look and Giant remain much the same), road bike sales in our shop and top end mountain bike sales in our other shop are up. Bizarre."

Combination of:
"New year, new me" get-fit resolutions
+
"Balls to this recession" buy-yourself-a-feelgood-thing
+
"This car’s only 3 years old. I’ll keep it and spend the £££ on something else"

…?

Don’t know what’s going on with Stif pricing. Leisure Lakes list the BLT2 at £1792 for an ano frame with RP23. Prices pretty comparable with other "niche" makes like Intense and Yeti.

The price point for any product in any market, not just bikes will depend on:
Cost of goods sold (including mfg cost, shipping, distribution, packaging etc)
Margin you need to make to run the business profitably
Price point of competitors’ products
Any performance/quality differentiators compared with competitors

SC/Jungle obviously reckon their ratio of number of sales vs margin is about where they want it. SC are expensive, but not sure that there is a bigger difference this year than last year, as everyone’s prices have gone up.

Commodity prices are dropping. However, a lot of raw materials are bought on future based contracts, so the pass through to bike manfuacturers like SC (being lower quantity users of raw materials than, say Giant or Trek) may take a little longer.

GF makes a good point about actually having less cash. For me, other than the continuing threat of job insecurity, the recession and falling prices is providing me with more available income.

Still unlikely to buy a SC, however. Maybe a track bike and a CX bike, though… 😀

Oh yes, and agree with GF and OMITN. If you have a job, you have more disposable income than this time last year. Personally even if I do lose mine, which is a distinct possibility, I will still find a way to keep the bike in top condition as it is the one thing that keeps me sane.

Love my BLT2 – its my only bike and does everything I want it to.

And Stoner, I think you will find that the written word is libel, not slander 🙂