Bike Frames - Are prices getting stupid?

[B_Ugli]

I thought I would post this as I think that bike frames are getting stupidly expensive.

When I first raced in the 90's people mainly raced on steel and you could buy a top end (off the shelf) steel frame in Columbus Genius, Reynolds or Dedacciai for about £500. At the time if you went for a Colnago C40 you would be looking at about £1400 (which was the carbon frame of choice).

I then raced in probably 2006 and I couldn't find hardly any steel racing frames so at the time I plumped for a Specialized S Works Tarmac which was about £1200.

Fast forward to 2014 and the rrp for a Specialized S Works is £2600.00 and if you look at a steel frame from the likes of Condor, Genesis and others they are also £2000 plus.

So in 6 years Specialized have doubled the S Works Price and in 15 years steel manufacturers have quadrupled the price of a steel frameset.

I don't have any experience regarding the cost of carbon fibre, however I do know about carbon and stainless steel the wholesale cost of which has plummeted in the past 10 years.

Steel manufacturers seem to justify the cost by saying that it is a pig to work with due to the thin walls but does this justify a quadrupling in price at a time when the raw material cost has gone down? That's not to mention that a lot of these frames are made in the far east where labour costs are significantly lower than the historical frames made in Europe.

I just think the % increases in bike frames year on year is a rip off. You don't see it quite as much on other components but for racing frames it is getting pretty bad.

 

[Jspear]

The prices are getting extremely crazy IMO. I was shopping around for a name brand bike, carbon frame, ultegra components, and it is extremely hard to find anything like that for under 3,000 dollars. You hear about some of the recent bike robberies- they stole something like $100,000 worth of bikes/equipment... All that money and that's only like 10 bikes! I do think its a little silly.

Question for the experts. Do high end bikes really need to cost this much? I know that the technology is amazing these days, but do they need to price things as high as they are?

 

[Jspear]

Related to my last question: How is nashbar able to sell this bike so cheap? It's carbon frame, it has ultegra components? Nashbar sometimes has this bike on sale for even cheaper. From my limited experience you can't find any other carbon road bike for this price anywhere. If anyone knows, I'd be interested in knowing how they are able to sell it for this price.

https://www.nashbar.com/bikes/Product_10053_10052_558876_-1___202339

 

[Benotti69]

Yep it is crazy.

Compare how much goes into some of the top end bikes, how many components and then compare a motorcycle for the same price. You get a hell of a lot more components on a motorcycle for the same price! And there would not be much difference in numbers made between the 2.

 

[B_Ugli]

Yep it is crazy.

Compare how much goes into some of the top end bikes, how many components and then compare a motorcycle for the same price. You get a hell of a lot more components on a motorcycle for the same price! And there would not be much difference in numbers made between the 2.

You are right, I went to a motorbike show last year and you could by a cracking bike for £10k. When you look at the price of a Pinarello Dogma with full Di2 you are talking small family car money.

Don't get me wrong this is not a moan about not being able to afford a luxury bike I just begrudge the fact that prices of frame sets seem to be skyrocketing against a wholesale trend of raw materials dropping and manufacturers benefitting from low labour costs.

Personally I think the bike industry is fooling the consumer as nobody seems to have noticed how much in percentage terms they have increased.

 

[ustabe]

Given the R&D it takes to design and test a frame that weighs less than 900 (or 800) grams, minus the fork, that will hold up to several years of hard riding; plus the tooling and environmental considerations for manufacturing it; plus product liability insurance, I'm not surprised. And it isn't just the frames, it's wheels, drivetrains, and cockpits, too.

Back in the day when a pro level frame could be had for about $450 (give or take about $50), and a pro level bike built for about $1500, materials and techniques were pretty standard. The choices were Reynolds or Columbus (or Durifort, Ishiwata, etc.), forged or cast lugs, Italian or British threading. The superlight tube sets required special joining techniques, but for the most part any skilled craftsman who followed the rules could make a safe, durable, roadworthy frame that would be a pleasure to ride. And anybody with a little experience could examine one of these frames and say, yes, this frame will work for me. It's funny, now, to recall how we bought frames from obscure builders from across the Atlantic and never asked about warranties. We just knew that if the frame failed, it would be because we wrecked it.

The genius of guys like Ben Serotta was not in the bicycles he made, it was in figuring out how to be commercially viable in order to keep doing it for a few decades. Nowadays, you pretty much have to be commercially viable just to get started.

Carbon frame technology doesn't stand still. We've progressed from carbon tubes glued into alloy lugs, to carbon tubes in carbon lugs, to carbon tubes mitered, tacked, wrapped, and molded, to modular monocoque where frame segments are molded as units. Improvements are made in molding techniques, resins, and the carbon fiber itself.

Alberto Contador won his first Tour de France on a Madone 5, a 950 gram frame that Trek now considers mid-range technology. A new Madone 7 weighs around 700-750 grams.

Do we all need a sub-800 gram carbon frame? I sure don't, but I don't mind paying a premium for knowing how my Madone 5 was modularly constructed and what the insides of the tubes look like.

The market offers plenty of 950 gram open mold frames, and I'm sure some of them are very good. Which ones? You decide. You decide what's under the paint, or even better, under that 3k woven cosmetic layer.

 

[LugHugger]

ustabe's right, there's no compulsion to pay for the top carbon frames. A custom steel or ti frame costs a fraction of these plastic frames and can be tuned to your type and style of riding. Condor's Continental Pro tried and tested steel racing frameset is £1300. Do you need a better frameset than that?

A fool and their money are easily parted.

 

[Benotti69]

You are right, I went to a motorbike show last year and you could by a cracking bike for £10k. When you look at the price of a Pinarello Dogma with full Di2 you are talking small family car money.

Don't get me wrong this is not a moan about not being able to afford a luxury bike I just begrudge the fact that prices of frame sets seem to be skyrocketing against a wholesale trend of raw materials dropping and manufacturers benefitting from low labour costs.

Personally I think the bike industry is fooling the consumer as nobody seems to have noticed how much in percentage terms they have increased.

I agree. I dont think the R&D for carbon fibre justifies the price. Plenty have used carbon fibre before the bicycle industry and have done the R&D so the bike industry is piggy backing on a lot of that.

As for steel frames, they are priced too high, but maybe that has to do with specialisation and low numbers being purchased more than anything else.

I didn't compare a motorcar due to mass production of them allows lower pricing, but the motorcycle industry is a more honest comparison.

 

[deboat]

By saying that the R&D for Carbon frames why the frames are so pricey is a crap out. Look at the price of a top of the line down hill carbon bike and compare that price to a new KTM SX-F450. I will let you quess which one has more money spent on R&D.

 

[B_Ugli]

ustabe's right, there's no compulsion to pay for the top carbon frames. A custom steel or ti frame costs a fraction of these plastic frames and can be tuned to your type and style of riding. Condor's Continental Pro tried and tested steel racing frameset is £1300. Do you need a better frameset than that?

A fool and their money are easily parted.

No one is compelled to buy a particular frame or spend a particular amount of money and that's not what this discussion is about. For the record a super accacio frameset to which you refer is not a custom but an off the peg according the manufacturers website.

What is being said here is that all bike frames steel and carbon are going up (and have gone up) at a rate which is massively at odds with the worldwide cost of the raw materials and labour costs during said period.

RnD is a mute point as like others have said bike manufacturers benefit from a lot of piggy back RnD from other industries. Add to that fact that many believe the bulk of carbon frames to come out of 3 or 4 factories in Taiwan (probably steel to if you really delved into it) and you get the impression that the true mark up has got to be astronomical.

Ultimately its the marketing and whether you buy into what is pedalled from the big manufacturers but at this rate the £6000 frameset will be "normal" in 2018.

 

[LugHugger]

No one is compelled to buy a particular frame or spend a particular amount of money and that's not what this discussion is about. For the record a super accacio frameset to which you refer is not a custom but an off the peg according the manufacturers website.

What is being said here is that all bike frames steel and carbon are going up (and have gone up) at a rate which is massively at odds with the worldwide cost of the raw materials and labour costs during said period.

RnD is a mute point as like others have said bike manufacturers benefit from a lot of piggy back RnD from other industries. Add to that fact that many believe the bulk of carbon frames to come out of 3 or 4 factories in Taiwan (probably steel to if you really delved into it) and you get the impression that the true mark up has got to be astronomical.

Ultimately its the marketing and whether you buy into what is pedalled from the big manufacturers but at this rate the £6000 frameset will be "normal" in 2018.

For the record, I never said that the Super Acciaio was custom. I simply referenced your earlier mention of Condor which implied that they their steel race frame costs '£2000 plus'. I have provided an example of a highly capable off the peg frame, raced by Pro's from the same brand built in the EU that costs less than half of the Acciaio Stainless that you were clearly referencing. Indeed, my custom Spirit HSS frame costs even less than the Super Acciaio.

There are clear and obvious reasons why a US/EU-built steel frame costs more now than 20 years ago including higher workshop rentals, business tax rates, labour costs, two decades of inflation and yes, tooling and material wastage, due to finer tubing tolerances. Stainless tubing to build bikes with did not exist 20 years ago. Or if it did, it was classified and prohibitively expensive. Your claim that top end off the peg steel race bike prices have quadrupled, in real terms, over 20 years is inaccurate and hyperbole. If anything the Super Acciaio represents a superior tubeset/frameset at barely twice the cost of a 90's Master/MX Leader/etc.

As for far East made carbon frames costing £4k+? I'll say it again, a fool and their money are easily parted.

 

[DirtyWorks]

By saying that the R&D for Carbon frames why the frames are so pricey is a crap out. Look at the price of a top of the line down hill carbon bike and compare that price to a new KTM SX-F450. I will let you quess which one has more money spent on R&D.

Ahh, but how many KTM's are sold worldwide? How many Specialized carbon bits?

Apparently, the big-brands can charge that much because they are getting that price. I'm not their customer, but somebody sure seems to be.

A factor in all of this is Shimano's market power at most price points. They are keeping a few more yen from a sale than the reseller!

You guys need to do a cost comparison in real dollars/pounds/??. I think you might be surprised.

 

[Master50]

In 1986 a C record Marinoni was 1850, a Pinarello was 2300.
In 1995 I bought a Master olympic Frame for 1900, double the cost of a fully custom Marinoni SL frame 9 years earlier.
Master X lites are what 3000 or more now?
A trek OCLV frame was 900 when introduced and what about 4 k now?
My C 50 frame is around $6500 with a fork but I got the whole bike for 4k with record 10 and shamal wheels. I just had to let a professional rider use to for a year first. I have had that bike since the end of 2007 so it is 7 years old now and I can't afford to replace it so it better last a lot more years. I expect it will too.

I cannot believe all the increases in costs equate to inflation either.

 

[LugHugger]

In 1986 a C record Marinoni was 1850, a Pinarello was 2300.
In 1995 I bought a Master olympic Frame for 1900, double the cost of a fully custom Marinoni SL frame 9 years earlier.
Master X lites are what 3000 or more now?
A trek OCLV frame was 900 when introduced and what about 4 k now?
My C 50 frame is around $6500 with a fork but I got the whole bike for 4k with record 10 and shamal wheels. I just had to let a professional rider use to for a year first. I have had that bike since the end of 2007 so it is 7 years old now and I can't afford to replace it so it better last a lot more years. I expect it will too.

I cannot believe all the increases in costs equate to inflation either.

For sure Masters are over-priced and over-inflated but still under £2k. They're hardly the pinnacle of steel race frames that they used to be though. Hipsters, profit driven distributors and collectors have driven their price to where it is now. My point is that racers can still buy off the peg - and custom - steel frames at affordable prices which are a technological improvement on the frames available 10-20 years ago.

 

[B_Ugli]

Hipsters, profit driven distributors and collectors have driven their price to where it is now. My point is that racers can still buy off the peg - and custom - steel frames at affordable prices which are a technological improvement on the frames available 10-20 years ago.

I agree with you on this point and having read what a lot of people say about the new steel frames on the market they sound like smashing rides.

We just have to agree to disagree on whether they are value for money

 

[biokemguy]

Labor cost

I'd argue that labor costs have gone up.

How many $100k/yr or more salaries does a top end frame manufacturer employ?

Not sure it's smart of specialized to have their headquarters in one of the most expensive areas of the US to live. That means to attract talent they have to compete with lots of tech firms in the area that pay pretty well.

Just because the R&D for carbon fiber has been done, doesn't mean that information is all open source or that those engineers are easily siphoned out of aerospace to work in the bike industry.

Just check out the list of openings here and guess how much money they spend on labor. There's an opening for and IP attorney and they certainly don't come cheap.

All that said, I still think they try and push their profit margins too high and I avoid paying full new price for anything bike related.

 

[DirtyWorks]

In 1986 a C record Marinoni was 1850, a Pinarello was 2300.
In 1995 I bought a Master olympic Frame for 1900, double the cost of a fully custom Marinoni SL frame 9 years earlier.
Master X lites are what 3000 or more now?
A trek OCLV frame was 900 when introduced and what about 4 k now?
My C 50 frame is around $6500 with a fork but I got the whole bike for 4k with record 10 and shamal wheels. I just had to let a professional rider use to for a year first. I have had that bike since the end of 2007 so it is 7 years old now and I can't afford to replace it so it better last a lot more years. I expect it will too.

I cannot believe all the increases in costs equate to inflation either.

I'm using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics page here: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

1986 USD: $2300 Pinarello, steel, 12 speeds, probably still friction shifting
1995 USD: $3,198.18 steel?? 14 speed?? index shifted, lighter.
2014 USD: $4,908.82 I know I can find a *nice* bike at this price.

2014 USD: $6000-7000 carbon 20-speeds, index shifted, really lighter!!!

See?


At least in the U.S. it sure seems like more people of all ages are riding bicycles, so the volume is probably there to pay for those jobs at Specialized/Merida. Plus, there are some really cool import tricks used to pass USD out of country very lightly taxed. It makes it very attractive to export to the U.S.

That IP Lawyer job is especially profitable to Specialized in the U.S. You minimize your competitors and improve volume by suing them out of business.

 

[B_Ugli]

I'd argue that labor costs have gone up.

How many $100k/yr or more salaries does a top end frame manufacturer employ?

You might have a few $100k/yr jobs at HQ in USA or Europe but in the factories in Taiwan who produce these frames I really doubt that this is the case. Once the actual quality control is in place locally the labor and supervision costs are pretty low locally once people are trained up.

My company buys direct from manufacturers in the Far East and you tend to find that these days the best companies in Taiwan (and China) are pretty good on QA. In recent times the quality has gone up and the price has gone down.

Unless that is you are buying bike frames where cost has gone down, quality has remained the same and rrp has gone up!

 

[Master50]

For sure Masters are over-priced and over-inflated but still under £2k. They're hardly the pinnacle of steel race frames that they used to be though. Hipsters, profit driven distributors and collectors have driven their price to where it is now. My point is that racers can still buy off the peg - and custom - steel frames at affordable prices which are a technological improvement on the frames available 10-20 years ago.

I sold mine after I got the C50 only because of the other 2 bikes I would lose the least on that bike between purchase price and selling price. My C40 got the fenders but that master was a really fabulous bike. It did everything better than any bike I rode before it. I can't say how it compares to newer steel bikes but I would still benchmark steel against this frame It is still one of the prettiest steel bikes too. I get that some of Colnago's reputation is romantic but he does make great bikes.

 

[DirtyWorks]

My company buys direct from manufacturers in the Far East and you tend to find that these days the best companies in Taiwan (and China) are pretty good on QA. In recent times the quality has gone up and the price has gone down.

Taiwan was considered to have almost Western levels of many labor/production factors, excellent wages relative to China and generally excellent infrastructure.

It's been a while, so I don't know how true it is any more. But I still consider Taiwan's quality excellent.

 

[Bustedknuckle]

You might have a few $100k/yr jobs at HQ in USA or Europe but in the factories in Taiwan who produce these frames I really doubt that this is the case. Once the actual quality control is in place locally the labor and supervision costs are pretty low locally once people are trained up.

My company buys direct from manufacturers in the Far East and you tend to find that these days the best companies in Taiwan (and China) are pretty good on QA. In recent times the quality has gone up and the price has gone down.

Unless that is you are buying bike frames where cost has gone down, quality has remained the same and rrp has gone up!

Unless you are sram(scam, spam)......