bike brands, the good the bad and the ugly

reidzer

Hi Guys,

I know that Giant and Trek are good brands with good bikes.
but what about the following:
Is there anything there that you should stay away from?
Bad quality carbon etc...

Boardman
Charge
Cinelli
Colnago
De Rosa
Dedacciai
Felt
Focus
GT
Milani
Pinarello
Raleigh
Tifosi
Verenti
Fuji
cube
Lapierre
Ridley
Scott
Beone
Forme
Ghost
Kona
Time
Bianchi
orbea
sintesi
Stevens

Pandybelly

I have a Bianchi Via Nirone 7 and I love it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=67890914&postcount=22

Anthony.....

Seve OB

I love my Felt Carbon Z6

ednwireland

honestly NONE of those should have issues if they do the shop should pcik them up

tomasrojo

Raleigh doesn't seem to have many fans anymore. It used to dominate the market for casual cyclists in Ireland.

reidzer

ednwireland wrote: »

honestly NONE of those should have issues if they do the shop should pcik them up

I was talking to a guy a while ago who said some of the not so well known brands there entry level carbon frames were not great and id be better off with an alu frame... any truth in this?

ednwireland

reidzer wrote: »

I was talking to a guy a while ago who said some of the not so well known brands there entry level carbon frames were not great and id be better off with an alu frame... any truth in this?

i'm a very fat git with an entry level carbon (focus cayo ) which i've had for 2.5 years i wouldnt go back to an alu frame (i have steel commuter as well)

now if your talking about cheap no brand ebay frames different matter altogether (although there are a number of them on this forum with no probs)

and loads of planet x carbon frames here as well

Wheely GR8

Two other brands that come to mind are orbea and sintesi.
I picked up a alu sintesi bike in humphries and I'm delighted with it ,really comfortable. Orbea is made to order and available in stagg cycles.

Rovi

I'd humbly suggest adding Stevens to the list too.
I'm overwhelmed with joy with my Xenon Carbon.

reidzer

So, there are not bad bike builders...
but what are the top 10?

iregk

Hard to say whats good and whats bad. Most components are the same across all brands i.e. Shimano, SRAM, Campag for group sets and usually something along the lines of Alex for entry level and Mavic/Fulcrum for slightly better wheels.

The rest usually comes down to the frame quality and I was reading in cycling weekly last summer that there are only 6 mass production frames in the world, 4 of which are in China. So with all that in mind chances are the bike you have that says Fuji on it has just rolled out of the same factory that the BeOne or Bianci has.

Where the difference can be felt is in the frame design and material specification. You'll see almost all manufactures will say for decent alu bikes T6061 tubing. So from frame to frame the tubing is the exact same material however geometry will be different. In short there are no real "bad" manufactures anymore just more bad decisions on certain components where they have used the cost saving elsewhere.

Chips Lovell

reidzer wrote: »

So, there are not bad bike builders...
but what are the top 10?

Not being smart, but really it's like asking how long is a piece of string.

Who are the top ten car manufacturers? Or the top ten television manufacturers? Everyone will have a different opinion.

reidzer

Vladimir Kurtains wrote: »

Not being smart, but really it's like asking how long is a piece of string.

Who are the top ten car manufacturers? Or the top ten television manufacturers? Everyone will have a different opinion.

fair enough, then what are the top bike brands for road bikes.
This can be measured by sales of bikes, turnover etc

Chips Lovell

reidzer wrote: »

fair enough, then what are the top bike brands for road bikes.
This can be measured by sales of bikes, turnover etc

I don't recall ever seeing such a list. You'd be able to find turnover for the listed bike companies, but those in private hands probably wouldn't disclose their turnover.

However, I don't think sales is a necessarily a measure of how good a bike is. What exactly are you trying to establish here?

reidzer

I'm just trying to find out who the biggest brands in the road bike industry are.

Wheely GR8

A good set of wheels are important aswell.

Mycroft H

Mercian and Koga Miyata should be in any top ten.

iregk

reidzer wrote: »

I'm just trying to find out who the biggest brands in the road bike industry are.

Well the biggest in the industry in terms of units sold and turnover is Giant. They also have the biggest privately owned frame factory in the world (in china). That's not to say that they are the best though.

Others in the list of top 5 globally where information is available are:

Specialised, Trek, Scott and Cannondale.

ednwireland

few uglies in here
Top five best-selling bikes at Halfords: in pictures

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/5495913/Top-five-best-selling-bikes-at-Halfords-in-pictures.html

C3PO

reidzer wrote: »

fair enough, then what are the top bike brands for road bikes.
This can be measured by sales of bikes, turnover etc

I don't think you can define "top brand" in terms of "sales, turnover etc"

Where would that leave Ferarri, Rolex and many other "top brands"?

Lumen

RPL1 wrote: »

Where would that leave Ferarri, Rolex and many other "top brands"?

Ferrari earn $1.5bn a year from chavtat merchandise, probably more than they earn from car sales. Massively overexploited it is. "Top brand" it is not.

ROK ON

RPL1 wrote: »

I don't think you can define "top brand" in terms of "sales, turnover etc"

Yes you can. A strong brand is something, that generates sales simply because of its name and reputation.

Coca Cola
McDonalds
Starbucks

If a brand cannot be translated into sales, then what is it precisely?

C3PO

Oh God ..... what have I started? All I was trying to say was that you cannot define "Top brands" purely in terms of turnover ......!

Darkglasses

I thought we were talking about quality of product. Storck make better bikes than Trax/Apollo. But, without the figures available, I'm presuming Storck sell significantly less. Not churning the bikes out on a large, cheap production line is a contributing factor to why Storck make better bikes. Even Cervelo (probably) make less money than Apollo/Trax, but the latter have no place in a list like this.

I don't know about coffee, but McDonalds, although they have high sales, have a low quality product. Food enthusiasts probably would not put them in top ten lists. Bike enthusiasts have the same approach.

ROK ON

Darkglasses wrote: »

I don't know about coffee, but McDonalds, although they have high sales, have a low quality product. Food enthusiasts probably would not put them in a top ten lists. Bike enthusiasts have the same approach.

A brand has very little about the quality. They are about mindshare when a consumer thinks of a particular area.

As a food lover, it saddens me that McD and Starbucks are so entrenched. However they are and my distaste of their quality will not dissuade the millions that consume there daily.

My daughter calls skinny chips McDonalds chips. She is 7 years of age. She is already thinking of McD's as a brand.

The likes of Cervelo, was a niche/aspirational brand but has now moved into what maybe called a brand for the mass affluent (ie middle class and comfortably so).

DePurpereWolf

Most of the big brands sell bicycles in a variety of quality.
You can say that Giant is a bad brand because it's entry-level bike is really not that good. You can also say that it is a good brand because it's top-of-the-line bike is awesome. They make bikes of different qualities.

Porsche only makes good cars, you could say that. Volkswagen has a nice scirocco R and a rinkydink fox. The build quality between the two is large.

So what does this mean? It means that brand perception isn't really that important for bikes.

Master of this must be Shimano, who fabricate ****e on the lower end, and works or art on the other end of the spectrum. Ultegra has better brand perception than Shimano.

This way Shimano can dominate the whole market.

smacl

ROK ON wrote: »

A brand has very little about the quality.

It rather depends on your definition of quality. I tend to go with Jerry Weinberg's Quality is value to some person or people which is entirely subjective, rather than attempting objective definitions that imply any item has a universal intrinsic quality. Put another way, no one bike is better than all other bikes for every person, or the beater that gets used and enjoyed on a daily basis provides more value than the high end racer that never leaves the shed.

Marketeers like to promote the idea of intrinsic quality to encourage people to buy expensive items that they don't really need, where value provided has as much to do with fashion as function. Does the quality of the 2011 model drop once to 2012 model becomes available? Does the 84kg rider such as myself benefit significantly from a 1kg weight difference between two bikes? The difference between quality that is not realised as value and branding is slim.

ratracer

Although this thread seems to have gone more into brand marketing than bikes, I reckon Planet X should definitely be on your list. Great value frames and mine has served me well over the last two years.

sbs2010

Lumen wrote: »

RPL1 wrote: »

Where would that leave Ferarri, Rolex and many other "top brands"?

Ferrari earn $1.5bn a year from chavtat merchandise, probably more than they earn from car sales. Massively overexploited it is. "Top brand" it is not.

Chavtat - nice one! Does that include my Colnago socks?

mp31

ednwireland wrote: »

i'm a very fat git with an entry level carbon (focus cayo ) which i've had for 2.5 years i wouldnt go back to an alu frame (i have steel commuter as well)

How is the carbon bike better than the alu bike - speed? comfort? smoother?

seve65

iregk wrote: »

Well the biggest in the industry in terms of units sold and turnover is Giant. They also have the biggest privately owned frame factory in the world (in china). That's not to say that they are the best though.

Others in the list of top 5 globally where information is available are:

Specialised, Trek, Scott and Cannondale.

hero bicycles claim to be the largest bike manufacturer in the world !

bianchi are quite big in europe.

Borris123

KTM Strada 3000, alu frame with full ultegra. Great bike tbh...

iregk

seve65 wrote: »

hero bicycles claim to be the largest bike manufacturer in the world !

bianchi are quite big in europe.

Yeah I read that before. The problem is they claim to be and being an indian company they may well be however they don't have the physical return and income sheets to prove it. I'd say there is every chance there is a Chinese company that is larger than both but can't prove that either.