PRESS RELEASE: Commencal BicyclesThis famous year of 2020 is about to end... What a time!
As you know, the bike industry has generally been among the lucky ones to "benefit" from the situation. Demand has exploded. People have realised the value of cycling and the joys of mountain biking in the great outdoors. And this is obviously very good news for our planet.
But on the other hand, with this rapidly growing demand,
several factors are now slowing momentum.First of all, production.
Particularly components. Finding the vast majority of components required to assemble a complete bike is extremely complicated today. Saddles, tyres, suspension, transmission. Major component brands such as Shimano, SRAM, FOX and Schwalbe, who produce mainly in Taiwan, give lead times of between 9 and 18 months. They are normally able to deliver within a maximum of 3 months. The reason for this stems from difficulties in finding certain raw materials and/or factories that have had to be shut down due to COVID, which also lengthened supply times.
On top of this,
issues related to transport. The delays in moving goods from Asia to all other continents have skyrocketed. A concrete example, it took us about 3 weeks to ship a container from Taiwan to Golden, Colorado, but now we need between 2 and 3 months. The ports are full. Boats are floating outside port entrances for several weeks whilst waiting to be able to dock (see photo). Transportation prices have suddenly and strongly increased. We are currently paying on average 4 times more for the delivery of a container compared to the same time last year.
Final point,
exchange rates. The currencies of our main countries (United States, Canada, Europe, Australia) have fallen sharply against the Taiwanese dollar. The cost price of our bikes has therefore increased sharply in just a few months.
Therefore, for all these reasons combined, our production and delivery times have been greatly extended, and the cost price has exploded. This is why we have been forced to review the price of some of our bikes in a number of currencies. And of course, we apologise to those who are patiently or impatiently waiting for their bike, or who can't find their dream bike in the right size.
We hope for a return to normal as soon as possible but we believe it won't be until the end of 2021 at the earliest.
Happy holidays to all and let’s look forward to 2021 anyway!
COMMENCAL Bicycles
If only bikes were similar to PC world, where building it yourself is financially viable, but a self built bike with MSRPs costs almost twice as much as a prebuilt... -_-
@rrolly: no shipping, more stable production conditions.
Granted, you don't have the warranties and support that you get from the big ones (well, the jury is out on this one), but given that I'm well capable of wrenching my PC (do it for my friends too) as I am capable of wrenching bikes (do it for my friends too, too, including suspension servicing and wheel building), I don't really need the manufacturer warranty. Hell, given my experience, I'd be better off without said warranty!!
THe issue is that I don't get the products cheaper in that case. They are actually more expensive... Vastly so :/
As for 1000 times, there is a place for that, for sure. Most people need that. Businesses and companies need that!! Some of us, geeks, nerds and hobby mechanics, can handle the stuff on our own. For those, in the PC world, there is a benefit (lower total price). In the bike world, not so much, you're heavily penalized for going 'your own way'... :/
not yet, anyways....also, not if you ask the chinese....
But "the joke's on you", regardless if I bought a prebuilt PC/bike or not, I'd still service it on my own. Because I know how to and I want things done "properly" and because I enjoy it. And regarding research, it would take me roughly 10 minutes of checking internet stores to throw you together a parts list for a new primary workstation PC AND a new FreeNAS server that I would build right at this moment. And same goes for a new bike, where the only problem would actually be choosing a frame. Because I follow these topics passionately and daily so I'm up to speed on them.
So yeah, the cost argument is thrown out the window in this case and is essentially zero, as that time would be spent on the same topics in any case.
But you do have a point, don't worry. If I had the space and tools to do servicing on my car and had 2 or 3 cars where I always had one working to go to work with, I'd maybe wrench on cars too. For the pure fun of it. With no space, not enough tools and having only one car that must be operational tomorrow for me to go to work with... Sorry, it's a car workshop for it, let them deal with it. I don't have an option of having a car torn apart in my driveway for 2 weeks because I snapped a bolt trying to replace brake pads or something. But these are not problems I have with PCs and bikes as I'm more than well enough equipped with tools and knowledge to deal with them. Most of the time.
As for prebuilt PCs, it's the exact same situation as with my car when it comes to businesses. Workers aren't paid to deal with their equipment, it was bought with a certain level of support from the manufacturer for them to take care of it. You usually don't have such mission critical applications at home to need a few-hour-support level. If you do, you better be earning some big bucks from it to make it worth it and/or learn how to handle it on your own so you can actually fix that complicated system you have running.
Also, regarding the worth of time, I'm an "idiot" who doesn't charge anything when servicing and fixing computers and bikes for friends, because I do it as a favor. You never know when you will need something from them and if I charged every single minute of my time even for friends, what kind of a person does that make me? Hardcore capitalist doesn't even begin to cover it. It just doesn't seem okay for me to 'earn' from my friends. If I was running a business doing these kinds of things it's a different story, but like I mentioned, I do it for the fun of it.
@rrolly: shipping from the production hall to the warehouse?
The idea was to have your own production. So stable as in you know what you can do and when you can do it. With asian manufacturing you're ordering products from a company that covers a few companies like 'yours', so you might not be the priority. In times like these when there is less production and more demand, you could pull the shorter straw. With your own production it's more or less business as usual.
It was never my intention to imply that they don't have their shit together or anything. Hell, even Cornelius (Intend) sources certain parts of his forks from Taiwan (I think it was the grinding process of the sliders?) when the intention was to have it all made in Germany or the EU at first. He simply couldn't get a supplier with a high enough level of quality over here...
Plus it's fairly well known, at least with carbon, that the best products are made in Taiwan while China is the go-to place for cheaper stuff, usually.
This was all discussed in various WAN shows from LTT.
But this is a 'fluke' in the system where there isn't enough production due to TSMCs 7 nm process being strained. They cover a shit ton of SoC production for everybody and their mom, like Qualcomm, Mediatek and the like, they do all the AMD stuff, GPUs, CPUs, APUs and both new consoles, and they do Nvidias higher end (Tesla and the like) GPUs. Consumer Nvidia GPUs are made by Samsung in 8 nm, but that process also isn't all that it could be yields and quantites wise I think.
On the opposite side you have TONS of demand for these products, apparently up to 10-times as much as in previous generations.
Well, honestly, there isn't much of a difference in the bike world, except that we don't have a scalper issue with our stuff and previous gen stuff isn't 50 % worse in performance
Pardon The Swamp!
And yes, I was being sarcastic.........
What am i missing? Other than a customs charge of a few quid maybe?
“Hope! That comforter in danger.”
That hope has been around for the past several years, and while it resulted in lower barriers to selling to Asia, has not produced an increase in US domestic manufacturing.
(Manager at mid-sized manufacturing company)
Make the whole bike and it’s parts in Europe or similar? Well that’s miles off for a consumer level bike and currently not possible, £10k bikes don’t count.
We recycle all of our ‘scrap’ here at work, I’m not sure if it stays in the UK though or not, it would be interesting to find out.
The issue in the UK at least is I am not sure if there is a single aluminium mill for production of engineering grade raw material - all of our stuff comes from Europe but this will be because it’s local to the mines.
The honest answer is probably simpler though - we all need to consume less and less often, £10k bikes lasting 2 years before the industry convinces us it’s obsolete is a much bigger problem.
In Canada we're lucky to have Devinci, chromag and a few others as "local" builders but those come at a price for higher end stuff. As well if your looking for components to build those local bike they're still coming from elsewhere. Manufacturers would basically have to have independent factory's on every continent with their own independent material sourcing that was also local. That's fox, Shimano, SRAM, FSA.
As mentioned above in another comment, new start ups or entire wings if current company's (imagine Cane Creek doing drivetrains) would require huge investment to get rolling to cover the needs of an entire region. How many wheels is weareone pumping out right now? Imagine if they were the only option what the lead times would be and how long it would take them to expand. The current surge in cycling could also be very temporary so expanding to big to fast could be the end for some.
It going to suck for bikes in 2021 until the surge dies down, but we'll get over it. It's not commencals fault or any other bike manufacturer that we're dealing with this issue. At least they've come right out and said it. I was going to order a TR in December but saw what was coming and held off. Unfortunately my new Rootdown ordered over a month ago is supposed to land in may but I'm not expecting it to be on time at this point, and it is what it is. I might not have a fork or drivetrain by the anyway with how things are going.
Just remember not to smash your derailleur this season, because you're not getting a new one.
Obviously this oversimplifies things as brands aren't buying their bikes from Taiwan at the full MSRP that their selling them to consumers, but it gives an upper bound on how much of price differences can be reasonably be attributed to fluctuations in exchange rates.
The current Euro is only slightly off from it's price vs Taiwan dollar in 2018.
Exchange rates are unlikely to be a large part of the price change for Euro and AUD customers. I can certainly understanding shipping, parts sourcing, and other covid related costs, though.
What about countries which had hard lockdowns, and yet have higher cases and deaths per capita than Sweden, such as France, Spain, Italy, the UK and Slovenia (@Primoz , hate to say I told you so) etc. You speak as though Sweden is an runaway outlier; It's not even among the worst countries in Europe.
As for whether the pandemic would affect the economy, in the strictest sense you're right. Global events affect economies- shock horror. But the damage being done by the lockdowns is worse than many effects of the virus. Sure, we prolong a few hundred, or thousand lives now, and give them an additional 6 months (A *very* generous estimate). Those people won't even be alive to see the real disaster we're all facing when the bill for all the various programs come due. And when that happens how many deaths will occur because the money that could have been used to keep them alive is being used to pay off the debt from Covid programs, or feed the families of the people who lost their job because of the lockdowns?
So, if anything has been tried and failed it's lockdowns by government mandate. They were vain attempts to control what cannot be controlled, only delayed. Australia and New Zealand may yet escape the worst of it because of their relative isolation and the manner they're treating everyone entering the country as a suspected case, but they too face the same fate as other countries; Again, the cost to their society and economy as a result of their totalitarian response may be greater than the disease.
Leave it to humanity, and in particular politicians, spurred on by cowards to take a bad situation and make it catastrophic.
It's so tragically true: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
You're a massive right wing twat with a chip on your shoulder. You're wrong about pretty much everything, but you're desperate to prove otherwise. The smartest health experts in the world are advising on the measures being taken, and equally intelligent people have being weighing their advice with economic impacts and making policy decisions. Here in BC, Canada, there was a lot of balancing between economic and health outcomes that went in to policy making, and I'm sure it's similar elsewhere,
But YOU know better. You're the f*cking expert, and anyone who disagrees with you is someone who you have to dumb yourself down for. Get f*cked, you arrogant loser.
I'm not right-wing. The fact you would even conclude that (after what I'm sure was a very painful and difficult 0.02 seconds of wracking your default reference- The Great Encyclopedia-Propaganda) says more about you than it does about me.
You don't need to be an expert, although I have rather unique experiences which help cut through the BS.
If you engaged your gray matter a little and critically evaluated what you're saying before you said it, instead of repeating ad verbatim what you read/ heard elsewhere you might see the glaring holes in the information being communicated by/ to you as well.
I pointed out that Sweden attempted to follow this strategy and it didn't help protect their economy, while causing significant damage (Sweden's deaths per million is TEN TIMES Norway's). While they may not be the hardest hit overall, they could have significantly mitigated loss of life, and ended up in a similar place, economically.
What aren't you understanding about this? Use your gray matter, f*ck face.
Norway is 1 data point. And while it's a neighbour of Sweden's, and they have a lot in common the way the population is dispersed in Norway (primarily the coast- away from other major population centres) is likely to have had a big influence on the spread of the virus there.
What about all the other countries I mentioned that did have a lockdown and still have higher rates of infection and deaths? Can you honestly say the lockdowns work in the face of that data?
Of course Sweden's economy suffered. Everyone has suffered- that's kind of my point. But we would have suffered far less if reasonable measures had been implemented, and reasonable losses anticipated. It's very unlikely the people we're all working so hard to save will be around in 6 months anyway.
This vain attempt to prevent their deaths is as close to madness as ever I have witnessed. We're investing huge sums, for questionable gain (even on ethical grounds) and all that while curtailing the means to fund it all. That's no right wing talking point. That's the pure and simple truth.
There are data points from all over Europe. There are various outcomes based on cultural issues, and how early the virus arrived, but the experts agree that locking down was the best way to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Your interpretation of the data is not how those experts interpret it. So unless you can explain why you have some insight that they don't, I don't see the use in wasting time with you.
"experts agree that locking down was the best way to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed". Experts would also agree that reducing the maximum speed an automobile can travel at to 10 kmph, or banning them from the roads altogether would reduce road deaths significantly. Do you understand the concept of a directed question? Can you see how hyper-focusing on one aspect of the equation like that prevents you from seeing all the other important factors and balancing them appropriately. Let's assume that it's a valid point though, and that approach was appropriate when the virus initially arrived (Even if the modelling that informed the predictions couldn't be trusted to predict the current time correctly). We've had months to prepare since. And yet the virus is just as present, and the lockdowns continue. It's almost as if we're just delaying the inevitable, and all those sacrifices were for very little to no gain. The WHO has even called for an end to the lockdowns:
www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo
"Your interpretation of the data is not how those experts interpret it." A fact I am very proud of, believe me. I've seen and worked with enough MDs to know all too well they make the *worst* statisticians. So, with that in mind let's go back to whether 'experts agree'. Well, some do. Others don't though, and many are simply quiet on the subject for fear of reprisals in the media, or being subject to disciplinary action by the national governing body. But since you're obviously enamored with medical professionals, here's one with a dissenting point of view, supported by appropriate numbers no less:
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/dr-martin-feeley-young-and-healthy-majority-need-to-be-allowed-to-live-1.4362503
Realistically, if you replied to a comment during a civil discussion in person with this line:
"Honestly (And I genuinely mean this), you could well be a nice guy but I find you about as enlightening and informed as a horse turd. It's exhausting having to come down to your level to respond. I wish you would educate yourself a bit more, and stop depending on your overly-simplistic understanding of things. It's like you have nothing more to contribute to an argument than a superficial prologue; and all the details and complexity of the main text has passed you by."
Even if you WERE an expert and not just some guy who's read some things on the internet and decided he knows better than everyone else, that would still get you in to a fight pretty quickly.
I won't be replying to you again.
And one's opinions count for nothing unless you're willing to fight for them. It's also why I'm careful that they're as correct as I can make them. I don't want to get my head caved in over half-formed ideas and inaccuracies. Not that you would know anything about such things- All the tired opinions you've expressed that I've seen seem to belong to other people. You might want to check why pointing out that fact, and how it's perceived by me has got your panties in such a twist.
The game they are playing now is "squeeze the cow to the last drop of milk" they want to raise prices to maximize profits, they know very well this is a golden opportunity for their coffers.
You mention trickstuff - they just closed down for 3 months to catch up on a 6 month backlog.
Do I believe the delays are there? I know they are, I don’t manufacture in the industry but I do manufacture and have come to know some that are involved over the years, believe what you like but I know a company waiting 6 months for pedals from the manufacturer.
The shipment costs are also true - trebling of container costs, huge delays.
The industry is swamped - ask anyone actually involved.
The industry is in chaos because the industry in our "world" no longer exists.
Western industry is short-lived (and so do we) if they don't change course and go back to real production.
We've wanted cell phones and clean clothes until now, but now those who broke their backs for us are asking for the bill, and also quite salty.
Out of interest. How are you helping achieve that? I co-own a manufacturing business in the UK, we make a UK product and sell worldwide, pay fair wages and make a product that lasts while turning an acceptable profit.
If we stopped selling outside of the UK, we would have to sack most of the staff and drop 2/3rds of our work - how does make local sound to you then - I’m living it.
What I meant is that Western industry, and by industry I mean Industry, not manufacturing, over the years, chasing only and exclusively the maximum portfolios, has increasingly turned to Asian productions. Now the Asians have the power.
It doesn't matter who has the money, it counts who works, who has the factories, who has the power to make you eat or fast.
P.S. congratulations for your company which, as you say, produces by making people work and guaranteeing a fair profit. I would be curious to know what you produce.
Who had ‘power’ is a different argument but this is a global world, we can’t all make product to sell, some business must exist simply to resell and provide service, so if not Asia it must be somewhere.
I don’t agree that in Europe and the west more generally we have moved from manufacturing but in a global world someone needs to make the goods we use and having most of those manufacturers in one place just makes sense - and for the bike industry that’s Taiwan.
Anyway, I think we actually mostly agree with each other, I’m just not sure the task is easy to solve or would be good for the customer - look into the bike industry and just how much is made, assemble and packed from Taiwan and you will see how hard it would be to unpick and potentially how expensive for the customer.
I just imagine the discussion:
Marketing manager: - Guys we need to drop a new BB standard the previous one is one year old
Production manager: - we can't we haven't delivered the prévious standard...
I don't mean to be alarmist, or incendiary, but this is only a symptom of the beginning of the wider implications for society of the measures to prevent the spread of Covid. Anyone who has had to save hard to buy a new bike should review their priorities- put the money away instead. If at all possible invest in precious metals. Because the world economy could well be about to go pop! and with it the supply chains we all depend on could be thrown into disarray. Prepare for shortages of necessities, and not just luxuries. Actual necessities you depend on, like food. Be sensible, and hold off until the world rights itself.
I was told my 2021 TR would ship in January but now after reading this my hopes arent that high anymore.
How much carbon fibre do you see on a stock KTM 450?