Adult bicycle sales are down to just 1/3 of what they were before the covid boom, and new bike sales are still declining.
Last year I bought a pretty high end Enduro dirtbike, it’s street legal too, but it’s mainly for offroad. It was a previous year model holdover, that I purchased for almost $2,000 less than my mountain bike cost.
Maintenance is obviously an expense, I need to change the oil in it every 15 hours or so, easily done by myself and it costs about $35 for supplies. Tires are probably the biggest expense, I’m averaging a set of tires about every 40 hours, that’s let’s say $260, so a once a year expense roughly. A suspension overhaul, done once every couple of seasons, is about $450. Chain and sprockets will be $500, but it’ll be a few seasons for me before that needs done.
What’s infuriating about this, is the mountain bike remains just as expensive. A suspension overhaul and tune up is currently about $700 in local shops. Parts remain expensive. A bike chain and sprockets are just every bit as expensive. It’s a fucking bicycle, the dirtbike has literally hundreds if not thousands of components, whereas the bike has like what, 10 to 15? I mean overtime, the motorbike will obviously cost a bit more, but holy hell why is this even a conversation?
I mean I wonder why bikes are not selling (/s)!? My mountain bike is from 2022, and it’s going to be my mountain bike through 2032 at this rate, whereas a decade ago, I was getting a new one every three to four seasons. Cycling industry marketing and greed has always been an issue, but it’s out of control again. With tarrifs and current world wide events, this is going to be the death punch for a bunch of them, and it can’t happen fast enough.
This conversation has been going on for a while, and people have all these cliché justifications for the high price of mountain bikes ‘they are lighter’, ‘the global market for motos has higher economies of scale’ etc.
End of the day I think its a “hobby tax” that bike riders have been justifying in terms of “a price the market will bear”.
A friend of mine who was working for a bike brand told me (this was a few years ago) that the company paid about $75-200 wholesale cost for a welded alloy frame and they could sell these for $2500.
I mean, that is fine, but now explain why bike companies are slow to return an email, have sloppy customer service, battle customers on warranty’s and don’t support 3 year old designs and have no spare parts. Like, how are they not providing red carpet service while charging luxury market markups? Infuriating.
Companies are super secretive on warranty and frame failure rates, but I’ve heard that a lot of modern bikes fail about 10X as much as they used to. They have shaved so many grams the products just don’t last.
I also think there is a lot of cultural and technology stagnation going on, new models and new versions never excite me as a rider. I cant figure out why I want a new bike, what’s the benefit?
it’s economies of scale . the mountain bike industry isn’t a conspiracy. most small bike companies produce a few 1000 frames a year, and there is very little economy of scale in that. most brands and shops aren’t raking in massive profits.
and most of the money they do make, comes from cheap bikes like commuter bikes, that are bought in far greater quantity than mountain bikes are.
they cost what they cost because they are a niche product in a sport that is pursued by high income people, and it’s a low-volume product with high production costs. bike companies are putting out entirely new designs every 2-3 years on average. that’s tons and tons of R&D. engineers, marketing, and testing staff are all getting paid USA wages too.
I wouldn’t argue against this, but basically most bike companies are really slapping commodity parts/components on frames that they outsource the manufacturing on. The basically are just designing custom label products that they get made by large factories that handle many competing brand’s orders. Often the companies don’t even own their own fixtures or do all their own engineering.
At current boutique prices in the Direct To Consumer model, you can have $1M gross revenue selling 200 bikes a year, which is like a mid-size bike shop volume of annual sales. This is very low volume.
Yeah, that’s true for Trek selling $1000 entry level bikes that have generic frames that haven’t changed in 10-20 years. Or the bikes on BikesDirect.com which are all catalog frames.
It’s not true for Pivot, whose bikes start at $6-7K, who only make carbon bikes and redesign every model every 3 years.
DTC companies like YT and Canyon aren’t charing boutique prices. They have models that are like $2500, but can range up to over 10K dependon on the frame and part spec.
I’m confused what you are upset about? Do you think a UCI Pro level XTR race bike should be $1000 bucks or something? The amount of engineering and development and marketing that goes into a 15K pro race bike is where the cost is. Not the materials or manufacturing. Trek isn’t spending millions to develop new hybrid commuter bikes… that’s why they cost like $600.
The amount of engineering and development and marketing that goes into a 15K pro race bike is where the cost is.
For $15K, they should be better engineered. Think of the amount of engineering that goes into making a moto… It has to pass safety standards, meet all kinds of regulations and perform as expected.
Mountain bike engineering is a total joke in comparison.
Who designs the suspension kinematics for Pivot? Don’t they hire Dave Weagle for that? According to this page, they just have a few proprietary patents that are basically some static frame hardware. https://www.pivotcycles.com.au/technology/patents-and-proprietary-designs/
No.
You are more than welcome to go start your own bike company. Good luck.
I consider the race results of a company like Frameworks to be a solid exemplar of what you’re suggesting.
All these multi decade bike brand behemoths got their lunch stolen by a single poor guy with a better idea.
They were so butthurt they went through the UCI and made such a startup company illegal in future world cups.
Do you pay attention to what’s going on? Literally yes, you or I or anyone can design a better product. These guys are resting on 20 year old ideas and keeping technical development stagnant. This has now been proven beyond any doubt. You don’t get small companies banned from the world cup if you’re confident in the competitive strength of your engineering!
bikes and motor bikes are an order of magnitude of difference in scale of production.
Honda sells over 20 million motorcycles a year, Trek sells less than 2million bicycles.
of those 2 million, probably less than 10% are high end mountain bikes. so let’s say 200,000.
this is globally by the way.
Knowing what I know about manufacturing and R&D, do you know what kind of expenditures that Honda has for Labour, R&D and manufacturing costs, versus Trek? Even if you scale it for size, vehicle production is on an entirely different planet cost wise vs a bicycle company. It’s obviously not zero cost either, but there’s some margin bloat there, boy howdy.
Honda makes way more money than Trek.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Apples and oranges don’t even grow in the same climate dude. They are two entirely different fruits with entirely different production environments and concerns.
Just like all the ‘my car is $2000’ crap. Yeah. there are bicycle equivalents of those cars too. You can go find a 20 year old bike for $20 at a yardsale too.
When you go to the bike stop and see an 10K bike, that’s the equivalent of a Lambo or a Ferrari. Not a Mazda.
Or do you think Honda makes 1% margin on it’s 50K race motocycles because they are so wonderful or something? Jesus
Yep. I’m in Australia and keen for a tourer / commuter / gravel area steel bike. They’re all $4000 ish. Plus racks and extras and I’m looking at $5k maybe $6k. My car I’ve had for ten years was $2750.
There are way cheaper bikes than that out there. You are looking at the equivalent of Porches
A new Honda Civic is 25K, a new Porche is 60K+
I think peak madness is I’m sort of shopping for a 20 or 24" bike for my little guy, and they are all right around the 1k mark for anything with a few gears. Might look to the bmx market for his next one honestly.
Kids bikes are prime second hand material. All my friends kids have bikes from hard rubbish. Plus they get to teach the kid about basic bike servicing in the process.
I would normally agree with you. We live in a prime mountain biking area though, and I want to get them started young as I want them to start accompanying me on trail rides, and I want my eldest to start racing in U8. I don’t think I need to spend 4k on them to succeed like some people are, don’t get me wrong, but I want them to have decent enough equipment to have a good start.
No disrespect to rubbish bikes though. I rode lots of rubbish bikes as a kid. They still will too I’m sure.
What price is fair for you? You want a race quality bike for your kid that’s $300?
Nope. The two I’m looking at are in the $1300-$1400 range. I’ve been seeing some that are $3-4,000. Which is ridiculous. It’s arguably ridiculous for an adults bicycle. Just marketing, inflation and greed.
$1300 is a very basic intro level bike. 3-4K is a entry level bike if you want carbon, or a mid level bike if you want an alloy frame. A race level off the shelf bike is easily going to be 6-8K.
Between inflation and tariffs, that same bike 7 years ago was half that the cost. Bike companies had nothing to do with massive price increase in raw materials, shipping, and other inflationary factors. Let alone tariffs.
Call it greed all you want, but bike companies aren’t going to sell you bikes at cost. You are demanding at cost pricing. I have worked in bike shops. The wholesale cost of a $1300 retail bike is about 1000 bucks to the shop.
Anyway, you should just buy a used bike. Tons of people buy a 6K bike and then never ride it and sell it 2-3 years later for less than half cost. I bought my nephew a 5K bike for 1500 bucks last year.
When I worked in the bike shop, we used to joke that when the bike rack has mor value in the vehicle above the rack than the vehicle on the bottom, you have the right priorities.
But its absurd when you think of the precision and standards that go into the manufacture of each…
I drive a van so when me an the lads go for a ride, we load 3x Carbon Fibre road bikes in the back and drive to the bike path. A shame there isn’t a safe route to the bike path either. All three bikes are worth more than my van.
