I think what some of you are missing is that luxury brand marketing and pricing entered cycling a while ago and has ramped up. It’s like a steel Rolex. It’s just a mechanical watch and while it may be high quality it’s not “worth” $9,000. One could buy many other “made in switzerland” mechanical dive watches for $1500. The extra $7500 is for the exclusivity, low production, and wealth signaling. People wear a Rolex on their wrist primarily because it says something about their wealth status. Read Scott Galloway’s book, The Four, for more information on how Apple turned phones into luxury goods. In the same way, people walk around with an iPhone 12 Max Pro whatever and a $800+ stainless Milanese or Hermes Apple Watch to signal their status. The person that shows up to the group ride with their $12,000 bike is doing exactly the same thing.
Bikes didn’t used to be like this. A top end group was always $1000-1500 for as long as I can remember but then they came out with $5000 electronic groupsets. Framesets used to be steel and priced very similarly. The most exotic you could get was a Colnago and most people thought you were paying a lot for a name. Then we got titanium and carbon and more premium framesets. Wheels came next. It used to be that a hand built set of wheels was the best you could get and they weren’t that much more than a cheaper machine built mail order set. Then we got factory wheels like the Mavic Kysirium with all non-standard parts and after that high end factory wheels like Enve.
There’s always a group of buyers for the top tier - put it all together and now you have a $15K bike. Most people I know and have ridden with don’t have a top tier bike.
Tarmac - there’s not rhyme or reason why the Tarmac costs so much more other than Specialized having pushed the brand upscale. Now you ride the same bike as Sagan, Alaphilippe, and others. It costs more to join the club. The top tier Specialized bikes are the new Rolexes of the bike world. The good thing is that you can buy a Giant or Canyon for a lot less and it’s every bit as good.
This!!! Yes, there are some very expensive bikes on the market that may or may not be a pretty questionable value proposition, depending on what you want out of a bike. But the entry level/non-racer level of bikes is really good compared to years past. Even with the Specialized brand premium, a basic Allez for 900usd is a very functional bike for a lot of people.
Would I let my friends catch me riding one? No way, I ride a racing bicycle But I think what you get for the money on the lower end of the spectrum has gotten way better. And there are some great race bikes with top level frame sets and mechanical Ultegra group sets that I think represent a pretty solid value without being unattainable to most people who have time to ride at least 10hrs/week.
I also think that there are more option available to people who want high end bikes, custom bikes, or high tech super bikes than there used to be. Really cool that this kind of high end stuff is out there on the consumer market, just don’t take the fact that a lot of very expensive stuff is available as meaning that everything available is very expensive.
I live in a place where the economy is ridiculously prosperous for a lot of people and it is common to see high dollar bikes out on the road or at the weekly practice crit back when that was a thing. I can appreciate how cool some of that stuff is but I think it is important to not let that skew your perception too far. Spending too much time with people who think 12k is a normal amount to spend on a bike is a whole different kind of price bubble
I think you get hung up on the bike equivalent of a hyper car. A €/$14k is about as indicative of the greater bike market as a Bugatti Veyron is about the general car market. Indeed, there have been more and more hyper cars in recent years that cost absurd amounts of money (Koenigsegg, AMG, Lotus, McLaren, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Pagani, etc.). But I don’t think you’d claim that a Porsche 911 costing 1/10th of a LaFerrari is now a mid-range or a low-end sports car.
As soon as you mentally move bikes like BMC’s Roadmachine X into the hyper car drawer full of other unobtainium, your perception shifts back.
I think what you and I perceive as low-end is still expensive to the vast majority of people. My sister’s “expensive” bike cost her 1,000 €. It is a good bike, don’t get me wrong, but l think for the average TR user this would be bargain basement. Our perception starts with the equivalent of the Porsche Boxster, this is our entry-level. Our market is a niche, and the hyper bike market is the niche of a niche of a niche.
Equipment manufacturers have expanded their offerings upwards: not only do you have mechanical groupsets, but electronic group sets. In the eyes of some that changes the perception of e. g. mechanical Ultegra from a top-end groupset to a mid-range groupset. I have no problem with that, because electronic shifting is a nice and useful addition — but at present a luxury item in the truest sense of the word.
Car manufacturers do the same. Their models grow over the course of many generations, which is why they introduce new models at the bottom. Compare the size of a E36 3-series to a current 3-series — the former will be positively tiny. Or a Mark 2 Golf to a current-gen Golf: I wouldn’t be surprised if the current-gen Polo is larger than the Mark 2 Golf. But the perception of the Golf has been successfully cultivated as sitting in the same spot of the market as the Mark 2 Golf. That’s what electronic groupsets have done to us. Which is fine, because you know what, the current-gen Golf isn’t just larger than the Mark 2, it is significantly better and rivals the comfort of Mercedes of yore.
Spot on.
If performance is defined as “being able to do the sport”, a 1,000–1,500 € mountain bike or road bike will work great. You can climb Monte Tremalzo on a 1,000 € mountain bike. I know, because I did! My entry-level bike worked flawlessly. The only brake fade was in my fingers, because a 1,400 m of elevation descent requires quite a bit of stamina in your finger muscles (One of my top-3 rides in my lifetime by the way.)
When it comes to equipment I think people lamenting the lack of progress don’t seem to see the same progress I see. 105-level/Deore SLX-level components have become so good that they are not just functionally equivalent to Ultegra/DuraAce/XT/XTR, but they are decidedly better than those higher-end groupsets from two generations ago. People have more and easier gears, which makes bikes eminently more usable. 11-32 cassettes are the new norm. A 9-speed 11-23 cassette with a standard crankset is decidedly less appealing to the general customer than what you have now. Bike geometry has made huge leaps. My 8-year-old mid-range full sus mountain bike is a great bike, but modern bikes with their better geometries run circles around it.
An economic bubble or asset bubble […] is a situation in which asset prices appear to be based on implausible or inconsistent views about the future.
I am yet to see someone buying 10 SWORKS Tarmac SL7 because they have the expectation that the future value will increase and that this is a good investment for their retirement fund.
Discussions about value / worth of bikes always depend on the perspective of individuals. Fair enough to talk about it, but there will never be a universal agreement. Prices for “luxury” goods are driven by supply and demand. It’s that simple.
When the price of something is determined solely by tangibles, it is called a commodity. You know like oil, gold and pigs feet. Products that are not commodities (i.e. road bikes) include many intangibles in the price. Does this really need to be explained?
I believe a good strategy for buying a bike is to make 50% of my decision on the specs and quality of the bike and the other 50% on whether or not I want to support the people behind the business selling the bike to me. This latter 50% is extremely personal and cannot be measured.
Or maybe some of us have been around this game enough to see that most of the manufacturers are getting dough from over excited newcomers.
It’s funny to see how some of you take for granted that we the people that “complain” (I’d say that we are stating more than complaining) about the craziness of the market and the industry are just poor fellas that cannot afford a medium range bike.
Man, all we’re saying is that the tend of the prices respond more to demand than to actual improvements or R&D. Period. There’s nothing “wrong” with it, as most of you are saying that’s something that occurs in many other sectors or hobbies.
Regarding used bikes, in Europe that market is now even crazier and I do really think there’s a kind of “bubble” and people are buying overpriced used bikes. But that will be an oportunity in just a few years, many bikes of newcomers will be for sale in some years, as it will happen with rollers as soon as lockdowns are lifted around the world.
P.S: I prefer a huge market of cyclists buying over-priced bikes than the tiny niche buying bargains that we were just 2 decades ago. Don’t get me wrong
I’m European, but currently don’t live in Europe. In what way is there a used bike bubble? And what kind of used bikes are you referring to? In larger German cities many people have an older/used bike as a commuter (often referred to as “local train bike/S-Bahn-Fahrrad). This way they still have relatively good, reliable bike that nevertheless isn’t worth much and a desirable target for thieves.
I was talking about road bikes, I don’t really know much about other bikes to be honest.
As it has been said many times in this thred “bublle” may not be the most precise word as I don’t think there’s a bubble in the bikes market; I’d say overpriced bikes for what we were used to, and that’s what I meant talking about the used road bikes market.
It’s important to remember that these top-flight bikes are the halos of the range, designed to win Tour de France stages and Olympic road races. Only cyclists looking to ride the absolute best of the best are investing at this level, and it’s sort of cool that we can get anywhere close.
Basically the pros ride mass produced bikes these days. It’s not like in the days of steel when pros would ride a custom frame with whatever brand/label paint job the team needed on it.
I referenced this idea with Mercedes sales (I think) falling around a decade ago when they cut prices, and I assume Skoda sales increasing following an increase in price is the same phenomenon?
I wonder at what point the conventional curve stops applying? 5k? 8k? 10k?
Knowing how labor intensive it is to work with carbon, and the research that companies put in to make bikes feel stiff and comfortable and to make sure the frames don’t fatigue prematurely, I would never buy a “cheap” carbon frame, especially one from an off brand or an open mould Planet X bike with whatever brand slapped on it. It doesn’t have to be a 10,000 frame to be good, but if it’s too cheap it doesn’t inspire confidence in the quality or the service you’ll get. To some extent, you get what you pay for, that doesn’t mean more expensive is always better, and just because something is inexpensive doesn’t mean it’s cheap, but I think it’s important to understand the difference.
Completely agree. I’ve had too many issues with actually fairly ‘mid market’ carbon frames. That’s why - bit of a sidetrack - I’m sticking with high-end aluminium for the foreseeable future. I know that way I’m getting something top end, with decent QC (and a threaded bb), for the price of a middling carbon frame. The c.400g weight penalty is an irrelevance to 99.9% of people IMO. If only Low didn’t have a 9 month waiting list…
I bought an Emonda SL. The SLR was nearly twice the cost and the improvements in stiffness for a new rider at the time were not worth it to me. I also went for Ultegra di2 because Dura ace was twice the cost and also not worth it to me either.
That was 1.5w/kg ago, so today the SLR would be worth the extra stiffness to me, but I would probably still go with Ultegra over DA because I don’t find the benefits in DA (pure weight savings) worth the cost.
I’m sure in a few years once my career progresses and I am making more money my perspective on what’s with it and what’s not will change. Important to keep that in mind though and not make blanket statements about things I can’t afford as being a ripoff to justify the fact that I can’t afford them.
Yes, my trek MTB formed a stress crack. The turnaround time for a new frame was insanely fast, and the claim was approved in 4 days (trek never even saw the frame in person). Not saying other brands don’t have good service, but there’s a thread here discussing people’s issues trying to deal with Canyon. Can’t imagine how wonderful the service would be for a Stradalli or something of that sort.
each step ‘up’ becomes exponentially more costly than the last (the theory of diminishing returns)
I reckon the law of diminishing returns probably kicks in somewhere around the £1.5-2k mark for road bikes, and becomes very acute somewhere around twice that. Interestingly, this is the area where we’ve seen the biggest price jumps that have so exercised (some) people.
Perhaps - and I’m thinking out loud here - ‘basic’ technology is now so good that we don’t appreciate it, and is also so good that we are going into the ‘diminishing returns’ area earlier in a product range than before. I wonder if that explains the perception of being ‘ripped’ off?
But I think what you get for the money on the lower end of the spectrum has gotten way better. And there are some great race bikes with top level frame sets and mechanical Ultegra group sets that I think represent a pretty solid value without being unattainable to most people who have time to ride at least 10hrs/week.
My entry-level bike worked flawlessly. The only brake fade was in my fingers, because a 1,400 m of elevation descent requires quite a bit of stamina in your finger muscles 
(One of my top-3 rides in my lifetime by the way.)