Bingo, that and because they can. Having known people who work for zipp and been off and on of the products for years. The extra cost is all marketing and because they can. When the prices jumped up a couple years ago is was all because they could. They were selling discs as fast as they could make them so they jumped the price up and they still sold them as fast as they could make them.

I highly doubt you'll be able to tease out anything that will let you say a Hed or a Zipp wheel is better than the other overall. It's depends on to many factors, one wheels may work well in one frame another may work better in an another frame.

One thing to remember and it applies to bike, or cars, or nuclear physics, just because it's the fanciest coolest engineered way to do something, doesn't mean it's the best way to do something for a given application.

Hed's Web site claims:

"We’ve been making our own hubs at Hed for since the beginning, and they’ve always been very good – but in 2009 they go way beyond We’ve lavished attention on them and believe they’re the best in the industry." (http://www.hedcycling.com/...s/Hed_sonic_hubs.asp)

And I'm still surprised at so many threads that imply that something made in Taiwan is understood to be of suspect quality. Taiwan makes parts for Boeing, Airbus, not to mention hard drives, where the bearings actually spin at 10K+RPM and manufacturing defects actually result in stuff blowing up. Taiwan can hold its own in manufacturing. Not to say that a lot of crap isn't also made in Taiwan, but the days where you could dismiss stuff made in Taiwan out of hand ended sometime back in the 90's.

I was more making the implication that Taiwanese hubs are cheaper, not necessarily worse, than hubs made in the US. I have no issue with Taiwanese made product, but if you trying to tease out why product X costs more than Y product which is "similar," then where things are manufactured is a part of it. Apparently, though, in this case, the location of production is not a factor. I stand corrected on that. I suppose for some things, though, I am still biased. I worked restoring vintage and historic race cars for about 6 years as a summer job. We got all our bearings from SKF or FAG. I don't think we ever used a Taiwanese bearing. I guess that sort of mentality is still lodged in there somewhere, as much as I know it isn't really right.

As for the claim on the HED website, I do find that a bit odd since when they first reintroduced the Stinger's in 2004, they were built on rebadged American Classic hubs, which are of course made in Taiwan. I know this because I owned a pair of these wheels. I wanted to swap out the freehub, so I wrote to HED and said "your hubs look exactly like AmClassics hubs. Are they? And if so, can I change the freehub bodies in the same way?" The answer was "they are AmClassic hubs and yes you can." Not saying they weren't making some hubs in the US, but HED has definitely made wheels with hubs that were not made by them. It does appear that ALL their wheels are NOW made on their own Sonic hubs, but that certainly hasn't always been the case. I just bring this up because I find it odd because that if they were making there own hubs and they were really good, why didn't they use them on the 04 Stinger 50s?

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

   

Does anyone know why the Scott Plasma2 which in Australia is a build only that comes with a 1080 and 808
however these wheels don't come with zipp hubs, oh no they come wth DT swiss hups. what does this mean

Jordan,

I agree that Taiwanese products are not any worse than products produced elsewhere. It is just a fact that manufacturing of products are being globalized, and in my opinion it is more important that Hed (or Zipp) are strictly controlling the quality of the manufacturing overseas, than that they perform the manufacturing themselves. It also seems like Hed has done numerous changes to their hubs this last year, but I don't know enough about the changes that I can argue pros or cons here. However, it would be interesting to know if you agree that Zipp's marketing budget plays a major role in the price difference between the two products???

Ragnar

Here's what I will say about marketing. One is "in general" and the other two are as it applies to Zipp.

1) Zipp has a far, far larger engineering department than they do a marketing team. Do you have any real idea as to how much Zipp spends on marketing (including sponsorship, etc.) and how that number compares with what they spend on engineering? And, are you sure that in terms of percentages, that it is less than HED? I don't think you do. Rather you see bigger ads, more exposure under pro tour teams, etc. with Zipp than you do with HED. But Zipp also sells more wheels. And is a bigger company. Is Microsoft's advertising budget bigger than Apple's? Yes, but it's a bigger company.

2) As a rule, marketing should offer a RETURN on investment. I.e., marketing is what you use to sell things. Take Lew wheels. Lew wheels are really, really, really expensive. Same with Lightweight wheels. Let's imagine they invested in a well thought out marketing campaign that doubled their sales. Do you think that the cost of that marketing campaign will overrule the reduced cost that should accompany that sort of increase in volume. The more wheels you sell, the more carbon you can buy, the more raw materials you can buy, the more you recoup your investment in machinery, etc.

3) In Zipp's case, they've settled on a price point that it seems the market will bear. They could obviously make the wheels better, look at the ZedTech wheels with ceramic bearings, dimpled hubs, and impact-formed spoke holes (instead of drilled), but those wheels would be more expensive. So, Zipp could make the exact same wheels as they made in 2004, and use the marketing to sell those wheels, and drive the price down. So you could get a 2004-technology 404 today for a cheaper price or you could have an improved 404 at roughly the same price. Some companies (WalMart, for example) use growth to drive down prices while offering an equivalent product. Other companies roll that money back into development. "How many features can we cram into a wheel costing $X?" That is the question they are always asking. I know because I've been a part of those discussions. It's not, "how much can we get for a wheel that has Y features?"

Let's take HED as a counter example. Look at the H3 Deep. That wheel would (or *should*) be lighter, stiffer, and and equivalently aerodynamic if, instead of sticking a Jet90 fairing onto a H3 (which already had a deep-section rim that you are covering over), you simply cut a new mold that had the 90mm rim profile instead of the ~50mm profile of the standard H3. However, the cost of doing that would be substantially higher than just bonding on a fairing. Personally, I'd rather have that wheel purpose built as a 90mm wheel, but I know that would cost more. HED probably also feels that they have a price point that they want to operate to, and a fairing on the H3 is an easier way to hit that target.

So no, I don't see marketing as the major driver here. Marketing allows Zipp to sell more product which allows them to develop better products. If you don't advertise, you don't sell. And if you don't sell, you can neither make better products or cheaper products.

As a final note to your "...(or Zipp)..." Zipp doesn't make anything overseas that they oversee. Everything is made in the US, except for things that they buy direct from suppliers - like bearings, which they get from Switzerland, or spokes, which they get from Sapim. The one exception to this is the Zipp Tangente tire, which is made for them by Vittoria on a dedicated mold for that they designed. This is also excluding soft goods like water bottles, transition bags, etc. I'm talking about core products here - wheels, aerobars, cranks, stems, etc.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

and still i wonder when the proof is goin to come that zipp makes much better hubs than hed hence the $700 difference ????
the thing is now we have hed claiming to have the best hubs in the market ?????
me i think i will stick to the bargains of hed rather than buying the zipp line of dimples and then covering them with their stickers or i almost forgot their superior hub
:-)

Zipp publishes all the information about their hubs. Maybe the onus really ought to be on HED to say something other than "we use ABEC 5 bearings and have improved our hubs for 2009 by tightening up our tolerances." Zipp has written a great deal about their hubs. Now, you are welcome to perceive that as marketing, but it's still out there and available.

I also find it really funny that people pick on the stickers over the dimples. Not that long ago, Zipp put the stickers underneath the clear coat, so that the dimples were fully exposed. They had all kinds of complaints from people about 1) not being able to remove the stickers for that "stealth" look and 2) the yellow tint that the stickers got from being underneath the epoxy. So now they put them on top - make them removable - and people complain that the stickers cover the dimples. If people really cared about what was fastest, they would have left the stickers underneath.

HED claims to have the best hubs in the industry. Zipp actually provides some data to support their own claims.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Just so I understand this correctly, the time savings quoted by these manufactures is purely the aero savings right? This doesnt include what you could save by the use of a higher quality hub?

Zipp has written a lot about their hubs, but let's face it--there hasn't really been much besides 'saves up to one watt' in terms of a quantifiable benefit. I'm really curious about the testing protocol which determined this, so if you have a link, I'd love to see it--seriously.

That said, while I don't doubt that a brand new Zipp hub may save 'up to one watt'(OK, I do doubt it actually) over competing hubs, I'm pretty curious about how a 3 month old Zipp hub ridden in varying conditions would compare? I know that the bearings feel pretty crunchy after that, and there's so much play in my hubs that the rim is actually rubbing the brake pads during hard accelerations--on the FRONT wheel (as well as the back), and there's no provision to adjust out the play (besides replacing the bearings). There goes my one watt savings... (I'll save you the keystrokes-I know they've addressed these issues for '09).

I agree with you that their engineering costs and manufacturing costs are higher than HED, and this drives up their prices. I never got the 'marketing thing', as it appears to me that as a % of sales, it appears at least that HED spends at least as much as Zipp.

I have no pig in this luau, I have wheels from both companies and I like them both--but claming that the hubs are 'faster' seems a little specious. Personally, I think the Dura Ace hubs put them both to shame.

You and me both! ;-)


If you don't doubt it, I think you might be off by an order of magnitude or so as well...



Aaah yes...the "joys" of cartridge bearings with no play adjustment...<rolleyes>

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

I think your order of magnitude is correct. Comparing even between Zipp's steel bearings and ceramic bearings. Also comparing the changes between Zipp's 08 and 09 hubs, the new Zipp hub actually allowed them to drop the spoke count on the wheels on all their wheels to 16/20. So that's yet another way that hubs can affect the overall package.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp