I'll just say anecdotally that lately I've received weekly emails from Canyon US and QR regarding "sales." I don't remember Canyon ever having more than 1-2 sales/year in the past. So it's made me wonder if both brands have a ton of unsold inventory. Too bad Canyon US never has any Speedmaxes, and they certainly are never on sale.

There are a lot of people out there trying to make that a reality but it’s decades away, if not longer. KAV sort of has the killer app, but they choose to go the custom path rather than POS.

Med device is way ahead of everyone else. My guess is about ten years after your collar bone implant and tools are manufactured at the hospital, your bike frame will be made in the basement of your bike shop.

I think what they meant is that it *was* a top of the line race bike. My strategy with buying used equipment (like skis for my kids) was to buy absolute tope of the line gear...that is about 4 years old. Still fairly cutting edge, but the price has come down significantly. I even do it for myself: in 20014 I bought a 2002 original P3 in grey and built it up with cheaply sourced parts to make a frankenbike. The most expensive part was getting the frame repainted matte black. I still get compliments on it at races.

I think OP is right, but it needs to be in the past tense.

I think that's a pretty narrow view of things. The bike industry is not just Road bikes and Tri bikes.

My LBS in Germany has had to move to bigger premises to cope with demand. They are a Trek dealer, and the amount of Electric mountain / touring bikes is massive. They are completely full. This has been their best time for many years.

It is pretty cool that your 18,000 year old bike still gets kudos. I would’ve been more impressed with the time travel but to each their own.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

this is a tricky spot for me with all the changes in conventions over the years. i'm generally a cheapskate and would happily buy used - i'm still riding my 2004 (aluminum) soloist, thanks - but then will i have to juggle 9/10/11/12 speed cassettes and chains? QR and thru-axle? rim and disc brake? etc etc.

after years of holding out my wife and i are switching our stable over to disc brakes, and likely 11 speed. this way we can share wheels across various bikes, share spares, etc. throwing an older bike into the mix - even a really good one - also means more hassle in terms of spare parts and compatibility etc.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

I found it at an archaeology site, although Indiana Jones says "It belongs in a museum!". It's a funny typo, so I'm not going to fix it.

in the early/mid 90s the taiwan-dominated bike industry moved to china, for cheap wages. a lot of it was taiwanese brands leveraging easy chinese bank money to set up factories there. (i don't know of any chinese entrepreneurs who set up their own factories unassisted, but i'm not expert in this.) now, as you say, the move is elsewhere because china has become wealthy enough to be in the place now that taiwan was in 30 years ago.

but i think that's half the story. covid, hong kong, the uyghurs, tibet, covid, south china sea, threat of taiwan invasion, disappearing businessmen, forced relocation of factories, just too many things that are not bike industry-related. i don't see (for example) any great financial reason to leave or not be in china if you're a bicycle tire maker yet when i think of tires i don't think of china. i think of taiwan, germany, eastern europe, thailand, france, italy. there are just too many 1-time events in china screwing things up that you can't call them 1-time events any longer. i know no major brand making anything in china for the bike industry that hasn't already left or isn't planning to do so, and i rarely hear margin as the dominant reason.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Yes - I agree. Certainly not just margin - I was being simplistic in an already long post.

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Dan Kennison

facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com
http://www.PositionOneSports.com

You should see the number of bottom bracket standards there are in 20014, each one better than the last.

About 10 years ago, I got a dental crown. The dentist made a 3d model of the existing tooth with a mapping tool and then CNC'd the crown in house from a color matched blank. The whole thing took about an hour. It's not outlandish to think that medical implants using additive technology isn't far away.

If you look back in the ST archieves you can find stories about bikes from 2008. They say that an entry level tri bike back then was $1,500-2000 and the top of the line bikes were $10,000. There were bare bones aluminum entry bikes and the upper line hadn't added a tier of what we now call "superbikes". $1 in 2008 is now worth $1.43. So those entry level bikes would run you around $2.5k and the top would be $14k.

Even more interesting is Felt sells a bike now called the B. A B sells for a hair under $3k. That bike is almost the same as they sold it in 2008 as the B12. the B12 sold for $2700 back in 2008.

That's at least a step forward for the industry.
Because in the last 10 years each one has still been worse than the one originally being moved away from.

Well, *SOMEONE* is making some money on brake pads at least. I just bought 4 sets (2 bikes worth) of Shimano disc brake pads. £72 ($87 at current rates). Geez. I just looked and I can get 4 pairs of Brembo or Bosch pads for my 2 tonne 120MPH SUV for about the same.

I'm in the market for a new road bike (I've been using my gravel bike as my road bike for the past year and am ready to get back on a pure road bike). I'm really eyeing the new Teammachine R, but I'm not sure I want to pay the new bike premium. Picking up a used SL7 is pretty appealing.

Maybe because people like me are choosing the bike (Canyon) with the SRAM fit out, due to Shimano behaviour and not looking after their customers.

It's really he Perfect Storm - and yes, all levels of the business are getting hammered. Shimano - always the 900 lbs gorilla in the room recorded one of their worst Business Quarters EVER recently.

That Storm is a huge overproduction going into this year. A reflexive big pull back in sales at retail. A huge number of used bikes flooding into the used market - usually from folks who jumped on the cycling band-wagon during the pandemic, but now that life is back to normal, either don't have time to ride, or have moved on to something else.

I've heard that the level of product sloshing around in the wholesale retail channels is ridiculous right now.

What is ironic is that the Bike Business finally in 2018 - 2019 had right sized production after 10 years of over-producing and having too much product in the channel. Then came the insane roller-coaster ride of the pandemic for 2 + years - first not enough bikes - then not making them fast enough, then not pulling back on production fast enough, thinking the good times would just keep rolling in 2022 - '23 . . NOT!

My insiders in the business tell me it's bad out there! In Canada we have already had a few notable causalities at the Wholesale and Retail levels!

The good news for Consumers if you are wanting to buy a new bike - at retail, I'm guessing it's name-your-price time. And as others have noted, there's a crazy amount of bikes available in the used channel as well - here's prices were WAY up there a year ago, now it's the same as at Retail - prices coming way down!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

For wiggle / chaineareactioncycles it's "huge" maybe due to the brexit.
As european it was common to buy things on this website. I've read many comments that people needed to pay taxes after brexit (now they seems include them in the price).
But with the brexit there are less competitive and now many european use "cheaper" alternative (bike discount, bike24, bikeinn ...)

They remain competitive in Europe post Brexit (maybe too competitive looking at their financials).

Losing Wiggle (potentially) would be a huge loss for consumers , the pricing is very competitive, the range excellent and the customer service is second to none.

As a repeat customer, when my (dreadful) Wahoo HRM failed, they immediately sent out a replacement without requiring return etc. When that failed without friction they agreed to swap it for a Garmin and charge the difference.

The repeat customer discounts are also great.

So... just saying that maybe they weren't charging appropriately for such excellent service and when cheap financing was no longer the standard and sales slowed at the same time they had no profit margin to fall back on.

Not saying you disagree, per se, but profits aren't a dirty word and they enable companies that can't predict the future to weather the somewhat random storms in the economy. I think we all naturally feel indignation at higher prices but those prices, to a certain point bring stability.

i would say there is a bit more at play since the parent company of the parent company of wiggle is also seriously struggling. the other main business of benko is property and owning some high street chain stores. and their failled to pay the builder their monthly invoice in one of their prestige poperty they build
and certainly on the continent since brexit wiggle was not really competivie price wise.
i would agree their after sale service was top notch

Speaking strictly about TT/Tri bikes, where IMHO braking isn't paramount -

The move to disc brakes was one of the few times where the new tech wasn't "backwards compatible". Because I own a lot of rim brake wheels, I doubt I'll ever upgrade to a disc brake frame. Count me in supporting the used market!