OK I am slow but at IMCDA this year there was a dude selling Beyond Bicycles out of his car. They looked a lot like the Planet X stuff but the road bike was different. I asked who made them and he said he did. The looked pretty sharp but does anyone know where they come from?
Should I have hit the search button first?
http://www.beyondfab.com/cms/index.php
This the one?
Yep that is the one. I didn’t see anything on their site that tells me who builds em and where kind of stuff.
Are the rebaged?
Kurt
If you look at their tri bike and then go to the Nytro site and look at the Xlab frame, it appears that they are the same. They both have the RD internal routing through the seat stay. The Nytro version is a lot less money (unless you’ve qualified for Kona). It looks like a nice frame with a lot of good features but, like the planet x frame, you’ll see it with a number of different brand names on it.
I saw him at IMAZ. Does anybody own one?
It does look nice and I asked the cat if it was a rebaged planet X and he said it was his own build.
Hmmm who knows
They are just a generic carbon frame from Taiwan that he puts his own stickers on. His company is based out of Mountain View, CA. No difference between them and the XLab frames.
The guy who owns the company has been in my store at least 3 times trying to get me to carry his frames/wheels. We had a customer come into our store for some maintenance work who had purchased a Beyond bike and wheels. According to him the owner, Jim is his name I think, said that he had never heard of my store even though he had been in here several times before. Take it for what it is but what I just wrote is true and witnessed by several staff members in the store.
I believe that his wheels infringe on some sort of patent that Zipp holds too but maybe someone else has more info on that.
“Sold out of the trunk of his car” sounds like a great brand indeed. Can I have one of those?
But can I have a note from his mom that it isn’t stolen?
I’ve seen him at expos before so out of the back of the car may mean he’s not doing too well. I’ve never seen anyone riding one which may be related. The fact that it’s expensive for a generic frame with the fugliest logos out there may also be related…
"The fact that it is expensive " … I’ll say. The website lists the frame, fork, seatpost combo at $3450. The same combo from Nytro labelled as the Avenger lists for $1799 and for an extra $1399 they’ll put their dura ace mix component package on the same frame and you’ll still spend $250 less. Sounds like a tough product to sell … now if they tried to sell it at the $1200 price they are offering for Kona athletes as the regular price then you’d likely see at lot more of them.
I know that he has been selling them to people doing Team in Training who are probably a little naive about the bikes. His typical tactic is similar to his Kona qualifier approach in that he offers a large discount to make it look like you’re getting a great deal on an “expensive” frame.
No idea how many frames he actually sells a year though. I would be interested to know though.
Somebody was selling those frames, unlabeled, in the classified section a few weeks back, much cheaper than that.
You may be the only person who’s seen one owned by a punter. I don’t remember them showing up on the kona bike count last year
I think the Planet X type approach of getting the selling price as low as possible is a better idea until your brand is established. If no-one on ST is riding one of these things then they really are as rare as rocking horse sh$t.
Maybe someone will pop up who owns one, although if they’re going to team in training folks they’re usually a bit reticent around here for some reason…
In talking with the guy one of his goals is to have someone who finishes in the top 10 of an AG at Kona ride one of his bikes.If anyone was at the rolldown at 1/2 Vineman he was pretty aggressive in approaching all athletes who had qualified and asked them if they had a bike sponsor.
We had a couple people on our shop team qualify for Kona at the race and were approached by him. Unfortunately for him they’re riding either Cervelos or Kuotas.
I agree that the better way to get a company established is to try to get your bikes under as many people as possible. It’s worked for companies like Planet X, Rudy Project, and numerous others. Must work for him though.
FWIW, I know of a guy who went 9:44 in kona, on a beyond.
My booth was set up at the Vineman expo near his last year, so I talked to him a fair amount. When I found out they were a Bay Area company I was surprised, to say the least, as I’d never heard of or seen one before. I asked about who built them, etc, and it was pretty clear they were Taiwanese made frames that have several manufacturers putting logos on them.
We started talking frameset design, and he was intrigued that with the custom Serottas we build that we can spec both fork stiffness and rake to suit a particular frame - it had never really occured to him, it seemed. So I asked him how he decided which forks to put on which frames in his line-up, and from what I understood, it was kind of like looking at a picture menu - take the frame you want, pick the fork the “looks best” with that frame, and call it a frameset. It was pretty scary stuff, really.
Still haven’t seen one owned by anybody.
That’s too bad, just think how much more time he could have dropped riding another bike…
A guy from work just got one at the vineman expo a few weeks ago - He supposedly got a deal through his wife who is sponsored by them or something. I don’t have the heart to show him this thread…
I don’t know how much he’s ridden it yet, and no feedback from him on how much he likes it so far.
J
Well let us know what he has to say about the frame, either good or bad. We’ve actually had 2 people in the store who have purchased frames/bikes from him as a result of the Team in Training discount. They were both very new to cycling/triathlons so they didn’t have any other bikes to use in comparison with the Beyond when I talked with them.
As long as people enjoy riding them it isn’t a huge deal. I just think that the guy who owns the company is a bit odd since it doesn’t affect me whether he told people that he had been in my store and he has no reason to lie about it.