Bicycle Price Hike (+20%)?

FullHD

Hi All

Just thinking of buying a road bike today, went to my local seller who showed me 2 brands (Trek and Marive). Showed me a current Trek 1.2 for 750euro (seemed ok) but then showed me the new price list which will become active when he orders new stock, price goes up to 900euro.
On the Mariva 901, current price is 650euro, new price list goes up by around 10% but the quality is coming down by 20% (really cheap parts on the new stock).
Has anyone else had experience of hearing of new prices already or new prices on the way.

Garry

Captain Havoc

Never trust a salesman!

Bikerbhoy

Yes price increases are going through at the moment this is 100% fact and please understand this is a Bike manufacturers increase, totally out of the hands of your LBS. :mad::mad:

Cabaal

I've been told this as well by the bike shop I'm looking at getting my Trek from, apparently it applys to the 2011 models. I didn't hear anything about quality of the bike being affected though.

Lumen

Bikerbhoy wrote: »

Yes price increases are going through at the moment this is 100% fact and please understand this is a Bike manufacturers increase, totally out of the hands of your LBS. :mad::mad:

Do Trek enforce the RRP?

Idleater

Cabaal wrote: »

...my Trek from, apparently it applys to the 2011 models.

This happened with specialized last year I believe, and their excuses were that the cheaper price reflected a discount rather than the new one being an increase.
You can tell if this increase is down to the manufacturer as opposed to the shop by getting a quote at another trek dealer.

on_the_nickel

Worth bearing in mind the shops have to buy their stock from Trek in dollars, same probably for the Merida, which has gone up significantly against the euro. Might be an idea to look for a European model?

Cabaal

In fairness dollar v euro has changed, fuel has incresed which would affect shipping and raw material's may have also increased.

Just with the currency you'd see abit of a change,

ednwireland

unfortunately most bikes and bit been made in the far east (and i'm gussing everything is priced in dollars) means stuff is getting more expensive as the euro weakens

tunney

Lumen wrote: »

Do Trek enforce the RRP?

No

FullHD

I am a computer software technical person, who works beside sales guys, and YEAH they are so full of sh1t. The software i work with is great but the way the pricing works?, in the past few years they have started to lock customers in by working on a yearly subscription basis.
The same with bicycles, it's all a number crunching game to them. The "currency fluctuation" argument is a load of bullsh1t. Sure sterling has changed a bit, but the dollar?. The euro was roughly for 1 month=1.20, for 1 month=1.50 and over the last year on avg about 1.30. Yet the Trek that is currently in the shop is 750euro, the new one is RRP 990euro but the seller will give it to me for 900euro, he showed me the price list from Trek, they were telling him it was due to sterling, but surely Trek deals in dollars. I guess they deal in whaterer currency suits them and not us.
Obviously the new price list came out when the euro was = 1.2.
Although i just realised that the currency fluctuating from 1.5 down to 1.2 is about 25% and the bike is only increasing by 20%, so as Trek would tell me I am getting a bargain and it's the right time to buy, where have i heard that one before.
Garry

Lumen

Bikerbhoy wrote: »

Yes price increases are going through at the moment this is 100% fact and please understand this is a Bike manufacturers increase, totally out of the hands of your LBS. :mad::mad:

Lumen wrote: »

Do Trek enforce the RRP?

tunney wrote: »

No

OK then. So "totally out of the hands of your LBS" actually means "part of the normal price fixing arrangements designed to protect margins".

Raam

This is where you use your bargaining skills...

"Yes, I like the bike and I want to buy it, but not at that price."
"I'd also like to buy it in this shop, right now, but I cannot pay that much"

If shopkeep plays ball, he'll reduce the price or throw in some other stuff. If he doesn't, you say thank you for your time and off you go with your cash.

pab_lowe

Bought my bike last year and while shopping around I was told exactly the same thing, ie the new 2010 stock due in was going to be 10-20% higher than the outgoing 2009.
Having been on the lookout for a bike for some time prior to that I could see that the difference between online and LBS prices was increasing while the specs of the bikes you could get for your money was decreasing
For anyone who has gone into a LBS over the last 18 months you can see that large numbers of people (bike to work shoppers) are walking in there with essentially a wad of cash and no real knowledge of what they can get for their money. I have personal experience of being offered multiple bikes and various other items which could be included to bring the 'value' of my purchase up to the 1k limit. Therefore I don't think that it is beyond the realms of possibility that LBS margins are moving upwards since the start of the bike to work scheme. I have no evidence of same except my own shopping experiences in LBS north and south of the border and online

FullHD

Raam wrote: »

This is where you use your bargaining skills...

"Yes, I like the bike and I want to buy it, but not at that price."
"I'd also like to buy it in this shop, right now, but I cannot pay that much"

If shopkeep plays ball, he'll reduce the price or throw in some other stuff. If he doesn't, you say thank you for your time and off you go with your cash.

Yeah i agree to some extent, its all a game, but at my age i have no time for playing games,
From my computer software selling experience (i wont mention the software name), but during the year they come out with some amazing offers. I guess its the same game with bikes, up the price at the end of the year to get rid of last years stock, then have January discounts on the new stock where they can discount by say 20% (the same 20% they already put on). Its a big fec**ng game to ther suited asses and its wasting my time and energy going into the shop every week and ranting on here.
I am very observant and have noticed this in tesco,halfords etc. They up the price for 1 month and then stick on the -20% label to attract customers, where infact you are only getting -5% or 0% and i don't think it's illegal.

Raam

garrycs69 wrote: »

Yeah i agree to some extent, its all a game, but at my age i have no time for playing games,
From my computer software selling experience (i wont mention the software name), but during the year they come out with some amazing offers. I guess its the same game with bikes, up the price at the end of the year to get rid of last years stock, then have January discounts on the new stock where they can discount by say 20% (the same 20% they already put on). Its a big fec**ng game to ther suited asses and its wasting my time and energy going into the shop every week and ranting on here.
I am very observant and have noticed this in tesco,halfords etc. They up the price for 1 month and then stick on the -20% label to attract customers, where infact you are only getting -5% or 0% and i don't think it's illegal.

2 for 1 deals also annoy me. I don't want two, I just want one, for less.

Lumen

garrycs69 wrote: »

Yeah i agree to some extent, its all a game, but at my age i have no time for playing games

Me neither. This is why I buy bikes off the internet. You see a price you like, enter your credit card details and a few days later a bike turns up.

FullHD

pab_lowe wrote: »

Bought my bike last year and while shopping around I was told exactly the same thing, ie the new 2010 stock due in was going to be 10-20% higher than the outgoing 2009.
Having been on the lookout for a bike for some time prior to that I could see that the difference between online and LBS prices was increasing while the specs of the bikes you could get for your money was decreasing
For anyone who has gone into a LBS over the last 18 months you can see that large numbers of people (bike to work shoppers) are walking in there with essentially a wad of cash and no real knowledge of what they can get for their money. I have personal experience of being offered multiple bikes and various other items which could be included to bring the 'value' of my purchase up to the 1k limit. Therefore I don't think that it is beyond the realms of possibility that LBS margins are moving upwards since the start of the bike to work scheme. I have no evidence of same except my own shopping experiences in LBS north and south of the border and online

Good point, but impossible for Joe Soap to prove. Maybe a consumer affairs question if i have the time.
I heard similar stories. A customer of mine told me a story that he got a bike for his 18yr old son and a load of stuff like camping equipment and waders for himself to get the value up to 1000. Who is going to check the paperwork and if he is actually using the bike. Maybe the government should have a discount on bikes since so many people are out of work "Cycle To Social Welfare Scheme".

FullHD

Raam wrote: »

2 for 1 deals also annoy me. I don't want two, I just want one, for less.

Just got 2 for 1 on Strawberries, they go off so quick
have eaten 600grams of strawberriies in smoothies in the last day and a half.
My face is
:mad:

FullHD

Crap i just changed the topic to strawberry smoothies.
I hate topic changers

Back to bikes
I have used ChainReaction and i have browsed Evans in the UK, what other sites are people using
Garry

slickmcvic

Price hike confirmed with LBS 2day!,up 15>20% on trek and we the people bmx's,...honest bloke too!

durrus

So much rubbish being spouted out on this thread - it really annoys me when people start talking about 'price fixing' between shops and suppliers. There is this thing called 'competition' that would quickly expose such practices - if they ever existed.

Price increases are on the way for every bike brand that we deal with, some worse than others depending on a number of different factors - currency, raw material costs, shipping costs and wage demands by Chinese workers. It doesn't suit me at all that the Trek 1.2 is going up by so much, I'd prefer lower prices so that we might sell more of them and I'm fairly sure Centro (Trek Ireland) would prefer to leave prices alone as well as no brand can take the risk of their bikes looking overpriced. We deal with a number of different major bike brands - some we get from within Ireland, some from the UK, some from mainland Europe and ALL of them have released prices for 2011 i.e. from September 2010 that look like minimum 10% over 2010 prices and some are almost 20%.

All of these are totally outside of our control and though I don't expect anyone on here to believe it, margins on bike sales are very low and most shops rely on good accessory sales and busy workshops to balance things out.

Rant over.

Lemag

garrycs69 wrote: »

I have used ChainReaction and i have browsed Evans in the UK, what other sites are people using
Garry

Merlin Cycles. They beat CRC and Wiggle on price for everything that I looked at. I was only looking for components and accessories though so I don't know what they are like for full bikes.

DirkVoodoo

Lemag wrote: »

Merlin Cycles. They beat CRC and Wiggle on price for everything that I looked at. I was only looking for components and accessories though so I don't know what they are like for full bikes.

I've bought a bike and a groupset from them. They both arrived in boxes. The bike box was substantially bigger than the groupset box.

Lumen

To be fair, the huge price discrepancies between UK and Ireland seem to have gone recently, which suggests they were caused by lag after the large fall in sterling against the euro.

For instance, a Cube Peleton is currently cheaper in CSS than CRC, and that's with CRC claiming a "sale price". Given CRCs huge volumes, that's surprising.

Ryaner

durrus wrote: »

So much rubbish being spouted out on this thread - it really annoys me when people start talking about 'price fixing' between shops and suppliers. There is this thing called 'competition' that would quickly expose such practices - if they ever existed.

The most recent large scale pricing fixing was http://www.industryweek.com/articles/eu_fines_steel_makers_for_price-fixing_22172.aspx
An industry covering most of the EU over 18 years. And there have been ones involving car companies, computer makers, you name it, it has probably happened.
So honestly, don't say it isn't possible.

mcgratheoin

Ryaner wrote: »

The most recent large scale pricing fixing was http://www.industryweek.com/articles/eu_fines_steel_makers_for_price-fixing_22172.aspx
An industry covering most of the EU over 18 years. And there have been ones involving car companies, computer makers, you name it, it has probably happened.
So honestly, don't say it isn't possible.

Much more likely to be fixed between the major companies though, rather than your LBS artificially keeping prices high.

CramCycle

Bought a bike this year with the cycle2work scheme. First time I visited a bike shop, ever, that I could not get at least 20% off. It used to always be the case, even in boom times that you could get a discount with your LBS by asking and then saying it was necessary or you'd regrettably have to leave it.

dave.obrien

There are a number of reasons:

http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/aluminum.html

Alumium costs more now than it did last year, where it was at an unusual low. Also, Taiwan raised it's minimum wage in early 09, so manufacturing costs will also increase due to that (they have pledged to freeze it for 12 months to encourage investment and counteract the recession, feeling higher wages = more unemployment).

The dollar is weak(/weakening, and losing it's global importance too...). The euro is unimportant.

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/US/M

You'll notice less of a price hike in carbon frames than alu frames, suggesting it's largely related to that. You'll also see a bigger price for frames from US companies (whether that be due to shipping, currency or what, I can only speculate...) so Trek will be more exaggerated than others. Spesh don't care, they have Contador and Schleck. Can anybody say Cash Cow?!

Ryaner

mcgratheoin wrote: »

Much more likely to be fixed between the major companies though, rather than your LBS artificially keeping prices high.

It happens on lower levels. While I'm not saying that price fixing is going on, there is more of a gentle-mans agreement in place to maintain prices at similar levels between the different shops.

And so we are clear, I am not saying the price increases are because of price fixing. Price increases are a natural part of just about every market.

Quigs Snr

The local shops around here are pretty appalled at the price rises and have been warning us of them for a while now. Like several people have said, currency exchange rate seems to be the big problem and that is affecting some brands more than others.

There will still be bargains out there though...

FullHD

Ryaner wrote: »

Price increases are a natural part of just about every market.

Not during a recession.
In the past year or more the following are down in Ireland,UK,USA
House Prices
Cars
Food
Hotels
Airline Tickets
and more im sure...
WAGES!

Quigs Snr

Garry, that is true, however, the bike shops over here are somewhat held to ransom by the currency weaknesses vs the regions where many bikes and bike components are sourced. Your LBS is not one bit happy about these prices I assure you. Our local dealer who does say.. Trek, Giant etc.. has been warning of these for a while and is actively looking for other brands that offer better value or are coming from markets less affected to supplement the range and keep customers coming in. Last year the big problem was stock, the big brands in Ireland (Trek, Giant, Specialized) all sold out early summer due to the bike scheme, so they just couldn't get stock to sell, as a result they have added new brands, e.g. Scott, Pinarello, KTM, Kellys etc... to diversify and make sure that they can keep customers throughout the year.

Much of the stuff you mentioned in your post re: deflation is stuff that is largely controlled by the local market forces, rather than those of Asia and the US and other places that trade in dollars.

Still though. Sucks that prices are going up. It just means that I will have to be even more aggressive with my favourite hobby of hunting down bargain parts on the web.