Trevtassie

Yep, my purchases of Shimano will drop a lot now. No more switching things just for the hell of it. The local importer in Australia is useless, tiny range and high prices and generally gotta wait weeks to get stuff locally if it is even available. Or I'll just use a shipping service.

https://www.bike-components.de/en/Shimano/embargo/

rosefarts

Is it a better situation with Sram or Microshift? I am sure Campy is expensive as always.

Marcus_Ti

Only a matter of time. Everyone else locked in region specific markets for sales. Surprised it took them this long

Nessism

Old news. Various threads on this already.

ColonelSanders

This will be an incredible boost to companies trying to be an alternative to Shimano.


Next year when I buy hydraulic disk brakes, I was planning to get Shimano brakes, now I'll be getting either TRP Quad or something from Magura.

HerrKaLeun

You can thank the LBS for that and their whining about bow SRAM gives them MAP (minimum advertised price) and Shimano doesn't.

And there was I hoping that they will lift the EU-US embargo that started this January now that the LBS are still complaining anyways...

As far as alternatives go, pretty hard to avoid SRAM and Shimano if you want modern drivetrains. For lower end stuff there are dome alternatives. Shimano also has a lot of low end "good quality" stuff. So they would be missed on many levels.

radroad

Buy something else.

Marcus_Ti

LOL, you can't. All the component players now region-lock markets at a minimum if not pull MAP.

DrIsotope

Most impressive is that there are 188 countries on the bike-components.de "embargo list" and there are only 195 countries in the world. So now they can no longer undercut domestic sellers, which seems fine by me.

mstateglfr 

Ebay

guachi

MAP doesn't prevent you from selling something cheaper, it just prevents you from advertising that fact.

Trevtassie

Shimano in Australia is a minimum 100% more expensive than Germany

Bonzo Banana

Irritating but wouldn't stop me buying Shimano and much of this has been from pressure from distributors who are losing sales because they have set a higher price for their country because of higher costs or reduced volume. Shimano seem to have a fantastic approach to cycling with some incredible value products. Their trickle down philosophy of constantly moving engineering improvements and design down the groupset hierarchy has meant even a cheap groupset like Claris delivers fantastic performance. Their engineering standards are second to none like many Japanese products.

As already pointed out you can avoid these restrictions by buying from smaller sellers who sell via Ebay or Amazon etc in different countries. There is normally always a way to save money, they have just made it a little more difficult.

ColonelSanders

How big a price premium are you prepared to pay?

In Australia, many items that one use to be able to purchase online, are twice the price or more from the LBS.

Marcus_Ti

And even before this...it isn't like there was that much of a demand for groupsets/parts from LBSes. The entire bike-industry successfully weaned almost everyone into accepting bicycles as pre-built systems. After all, for a small collection of bike parts--even online you can buy an entire pre-built bike system. It isn't like this is going to make money or increase sales off parts for the LBS.

Just another FU to the fringe bike-builders.

TimothyH

"Stuff you" is an evasive synonym for "F--- you."

To write one is to write the other.

Cursing is infantile.


-Tim-

HerrKaLeun

But the small ebay sellers don't have the selection and service CRC et al have. And for Shimano parts CRC et al typically had the lowest price. And with large "actual" retailets gone, those small ebayers also can charge more.

Overall fewer available vendors rarely is good for us riders.

radroad

It also doesn't prevent him from posting a whiny thread about it either, when in reality he has many options for buying Shimano components at discount, including from the very website he linked to.

No good deed goes unpunished. And yeah, Shimano's value is unparalleled. I'm not in the market currently but I last test rode Shimano 6800 back in 15 and 16. It was almost mind boggling how fast, smooth and silent the shifts were both front and rear.

Lever travel for front ring shifts is very short and required very modest effort, and shifts were completed as soon as I looked down to the rings. Noise was essentially absent. In the rear, again, same story. Super short and easy lever throw and smooth, fast, quiet shifts. Shimano shifting is as good as it gets. I have average sized hands, and the size of the levers and hoods is darn near spot on perfect. The 6800 levers are an ergonomic dream.

6800 is so good, I swore off electronic from that point on. What's strange however is that reviewers claim new 8000 ultegra is a clear improvement (how is that possible?), and that Shimano has essentially eliminated any performance gaps between their top three groups: DA, Ultegra, 105.

If you examine the shift levers for example from all three groups, design is identical. All that differs is the materials and therefore the weight. The bottom line is that even though it seems impossible for Shimano to improve their components, they still manage to do so.

Go compare shimano's top groups with any of the other racing groups. The clunkety clunk performance of the others is almost laughable in comparison.

PDKL45

Chain Reaction Cycles stopped selling Shimano months ago now, and their shipping policy was much cheaper than that of the German sellers. It's utterly ridiculous and really quite infuriating, but ultimately Shimano and their messed up distribution network, and the blind eye they turned to various purchasing practices (by the CRCs and bikediscount.de's of the world) led to this. If someone at Shimano had sat down and worked out a comprehensive integrated policy for regional, national and online sales, we could still actually get our hands on the components that we need.

All of the bike shop people love to jump in and start crowing about how we'll all have to support our local shops now, but the problem comes with national level distributors, who, for the most part, are utterly useless. I get that I may need to pay a little more from them, and I'm pretty understanding of that. We all need to eat. My problem with local distributors is their lack of stock and their infuriating attitude to paying customers. In my country of residence, you can order a part and wait months, only to be told that they can't get it, don't know when it will be available and they don't seem to care. With online sellers, you could look at the inventory, know exactly what was in stock and buy it immediately, knowing it would get to you within a few weeks.

I have a stash of old Internet-purchased Shimano parts (that were 100% unavailable locally), but once that's gone, I'm going to look elsewhere. I may still use some Shimano parts if I can get them locally, but there are some really good alternatives:

Sunrace have really stepped up their game lately and have new 10-11 and 12 speed rear derailleurs on the way, with their usual excellent selection of cassettes. On CRC they are advertising Sunrace groupsets, with cranksets and chainrings becoming available as well. There is a lot of competitively priced Sunrace stuff on Aliexpress as well, and quite a few major companies are speccing their cassettes on bikes as OEM parts; they're not just cheap junk at all.

Microshift are offering a very interesting 9-speed groupset called Advent, with an 11-42 cassette and a clutched derailleur. No crankset as yet, but you can recycle an old crankset with Raceface narrow-wide chainrings or get an FSA double.

Box Two, the brand that Seth, from Seth's Bike hacks on YouTube, is affiliated with have some interesting products as well, including an 11-50 eMTB cassette that I am very interested in, albeit for non-eMTB purposes.

I am very sick of Shimano and their lack of a coherent distribution policy, but I'm more angry with smug LBS owners and employees who are now strutting around digitally, all happy with themselves and telling us all how they told us so. Yeah, great, you did tell us so, you complained until they took the parts off the Internet, and now we can't get anything at all in some cases.

It's frustrating, but ultimately, maybe it's a good thing? I am certainly much more open to alternatives to Shimano, SRAM and Campy right now and those smaller companies have a wonderful opportunity to step into the gaping void left by Shimano in the online marketplace.

ColonelSanders

The thing that annoys me the most is now that I have to source an alternative for my disc brake pads.

Trevtassie

Do you struggle with reading comprehension usually, or is this just a one off?

Embargo:

NOUN

• 1 An official ban on trade or other commercial activity with a particular country.
  

The link was announcing an Embargo against selling Shimano parts outside the European Union. ie very soon that, and other EU based websites won't be a source for Shimano parts, except by way of a shipping forwarder, with the associated 17% VAT added, plus the forwarding fee, both of which I'll then have to pay 10% local tax on.
I'll still pay for imported parts, because stuffed if I'm going to wait 3 weeks for my LBS to get something in and for it to cost 100% more, just because the costs have risen overall, I won't be buying as many parts from Shimano.

tagaproject6

Are Juin-Tech brakes available in your area? They are a much nicer alternative to Shimano hydraulic.

TiHabanero

"I'll still pay for imported parts, because stuffed if I'm going to wait 3 weeks for my LBS to get something in and for it to cost 100% more, just because the costs have risen overall, I won't be buying as many parts from Shimano."

One must wonder how many thousands of dollars this individual spends each year on Shimano parts.

HerrKaLeun

Wait, is the US part of this embargo? I didn't seeit (am on phone).

I've been sitting on my Xmas list for this year and was pricing bikediscount vs bike24.

Is anything known if bike24 is impacted as well?

Edit: USA included

ColonelSanders

I'm going to order a set of Shimano 4 piston brakes and store them away for a year or two, then I will then install them on my current bike or a new build.