Snydermann

Hello C&V enthusiasts,

I've finished the artwork and I'm getting ready to have these "reproduction" LOTUS water bottles printed. They came on almost all of the Lotus bikes in the 80's yet they are very difficult to find. I'm having a few hundred silk screened in the exact style of the vintage bottles. White and black caps will be available.

My question is, what is a fair price to charge? I'd like to sell them in pairs, or offer a healthy discount in pairs, I'll also offer free shipping. It costs the same to ship two bottles as it does to ship one, around $3.00.

Now I know most of you don't have a Lotus, but imagine it was branded with the logo of your favorite vintage ride, and put a price on that please.

Photo shows a mock-up of the new bottle, a catalog photo, and a vintage original bottle.

Any input would be much appreciated.

commonlaw

I have an old Lotus and would love one of those. I suppose I would pay 20% above retail if I found a bottle with a specific logo I liked.

Snydermann

Thanks commonlaw, my LBS has plain "cheap" water bottles for $3.99, Nashbar has some smaller house branded bottles for $3.50 up to around $8.00.

I just paid $20.00 for two new "Cinelli" bottles, shipped from Biketart.com, the only place I could find them. Vintage bottles on ebay are all over the place in price ($71.00 for a vintage DeRosa!). It took forever to find someone to part with a vintage LOTUS bottle.

I considered making them in a larger size and different colors, but for now I just wanted the feel of the original. I should have them in a few weeks.

Any other opinions please?

Bianchigirll 

if it was a quality bottle I would pay $15-20 for a nice Bianchi reporo. for somereason Bianchi does not see any value in producing any type of "retro" stuff.

about how much would they be? I don't even own a Lotus (yet) but might buy the bottle anyway

UberGeek

Be mindful of logos by companies still in existence (Even if not the current logo), or even if just the name is being used. They are still trademarked, and you may get heat for it.

Snydermann

Actually, while doing research on vintage 1980's water bottles I noticed a number of Bianchi bottles on ebay and thought of you . . . . I envy the availability of memorabilia for many of the vintage bike lines.

It costs more to ship a bottle than to make one and two bottles can ship at the same cost as one. I was hoping to sell them in pairs with shipping included in the price. I want to sell them at a reasonably-low price, yet still make a little profit to perhaps finance another reproduction or help fund the Lotus website.

I don't know what price is good for a pair shipped, is $19.00 too much? Or would a lot more sell at $16.00? $10.00 for one and $16.00 a pair? I just don't know what the market will accept.

I know I could start low and raise the price if they sell "too" good.

Yes, I've considered this possibility. But given that it's a limited run low-volume product and it doesn't compete with anything available in the last 25 years, I'm hoping there won't be any problems. Years ago I reproduced a line of decals for 12" vintage GI Joes, Hasbro didn't seem to care and they were aware of my products. Sometimes big companies cut some slack to their vintage enthusiasts.

jimxyz

I'm not in favor of copyright or trademark infringement, but on old out of production stuff where the limited run poses no financial threat to the company, I am good with it. If they send you a cease and desist letter you can simply stop selling them and just have lots of extra bottles (and the demand and price for them will probably go way up - people always want what they aren't supposed to have). I pay $10 for a generic bottle and would pay a premium for a cool retro one - even if it was just a cool old logo on a newer bottle

Snydermann

I certainly don't want to step on anyone's feet, especially anyone still associated with Lotus bicycles, I respect the Star family and what they accomplished.

Without opening a can of worms, I did look into the subject a little and from what I understand the trademark must be maintained and used or it's no longer protected after 5 years, after 10 years of non use even more paperwork must be filed by the owners to maintain the mark. As far as I know Lotus hasn't marketed a bicycle or a bicycle related product in 20 years.

It's just a water bottle, a copy of a bottle made 25 years ago, made in low production and offered at minimal profit to a relatively narrow market of enthusiasts, not a full line of bikes sold at Walmart.

repechage

A few Masi Gran Criterium original ALE waterbottles sold on ebay over a years ago spread out a bit for $200. each +/-. A fellow in Italy had a run done of reproductions, in the original 2 color and a few variations still by ALE with the latest spout. $38. each, but maybe have sold out, I have not seen them in a while.

For fun, do it.

wrk101

Depends how many you need to make to have a reasonable cost. $19.95 a pair shipped should be an attractive price. Unfortunately, not enough Lotus enthusiasts out there right now (I have three Lotuses right now).

The brands that would get the most response are either still in production, or have been resurrected by bikesdirect or others.

I sometimes think we are the total market of people interested in some of these brands.

jchibante

I would highly advise starting high and coming down rather than starting low and going up. If they don't sell as you hoped, you can lower a little and market them as "on sale" and people will feel like its a good deal. People tend to get angry when prices are suddenly raised. Ask NetFlix

I would think $19.99 for a pair and $12.99 for a single is reasonable, especially since people LOVE free shipping

Snydermann

Thank you everyone for your replies so far, please keep them coming!


When I started designing Vintage Lotus Bicycles dot com, I fully anticipated 20 visitors a month to the site. I thought that I was one of maybe 6 people left in the world who cared about Lotus bicycles. But, here is the statistics for the initial four months of the website from Google Analytics:



I've also answered almost 600 emails and received hundreds of photos. I have a 99MB limit on my email storage and I've filled it up 3 times.

Only 3.8% of the visits to the Lotus site are linked from BikeForums, I don't think it's as representative of the general bike population as members here might think. I must direct 10 people a week here to search for answers to general bike questions I can't answer.

Lotus is more popular than I ever expected.

pumpguy

I would "kill" to have a couple of Panasonic bottles. I almost bought a bike that didn't fit me just because it had the original bottle. 16-19 bucks shipped seems fair.

Snydermann

lol . . . I feel for you. I WILL buy a bike with an original bottle if one shows up within driving distance. Attempts to make offers on original LOTUS bottles still attached to original bikes failed numerous times for me. I even once offered a guy $25.00 to mail me the bottle off of an Excelle he was selling for $85.00. (Bike was 500 miles from me). I finally begged a guy on craigslist from a distant state to sell me his bottle off of his listed bike. To get the deal I sent him a box with $25.00 payment, a new water bottle, and complete return postage and labels.

Snydermann

The photo below is a working prototype of the LOTUS bottle. I was experimenting with colors and different styles of bottles. I cut the image from sign vinyl using a plotter. For a short run one could cut the image as a stencil and use spray paint to make the bottle. I don't know how long the vinyl label would last on a water bottle if you actually wanted to use it, but it would work. The vinyl is two or three mils thick, so you can definitely feel it. The difficult (time consuming) part could be vectorizing the graphics.

I rejected this bottle because of the embossed design and it's limited space for graphics. The original vintage art for the bottles is 105mm tall, this bottle would only allow for about 95mm of space with the embossing in the way.

himespau 

cool idea

commonlaw

I want one. Let me know when you get these suckers made. Any way I could get a Bertoni as well?

Snydermann

Do you have a photo? Anything is possible.

1) Obtain photographable artwork
2) Vectorize the artwork using a program like Adobe Illustrator
3) Convert the file and cut it to scale using a vinyl plotter
4) Apply the resulting vinyl decal, or use the inverse of it to make a paint mask stencil
5) Paint on your design

If you can do that yourself you'd save a lot of money over paying a graphic designer to do it. It's a good couple hours of work, maybe more.

The bottles are in the process of being printed as I write this, they should be ready in a few weeks.

Snydermann

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on my post, the water bottles have shipped from the printer and I should have them any day now.

As a thank you I'd like to send everyone who commented in this thread a free LOTUS water bottle for your review.

If these members will PM me their shipping address I'll send a bottle out to you the day they arrive:

commonlaw
Bianchigirll
UberGeek
jimxyz
repechage
wrk101
jchibante
pumpguy
himespau

I've also added mkeller234 to the list. He took the time to photograph the decals on his Lotus America for me so I could finish the artwork on the reproduction decals sets for the first-generation Lotus bikes.

Thanks again for your comments!

frantik

You're essentially making a "bootleg" copy, using a brandname and artwork which don't belong to you. The price i would put on that is not much more than I would put on a generic branded bottle.

I recognize the time and effort spent to vectorize the artwork and have the items produced, and you should be compensated for that, but I don't think you should earn any extra money for using other people's intellectual property without their permission.

Snydermann

Like I've already mentioned, Lotus hasn't produced any product for sale in over 20 years. It's my understanding that after periods of both 5 and 10 years of non-use the trademark is no longer exclusive. I didn't copy the artwork because I wasn't capable of doing my own design, I used the artwork as an homage to the brand and so that people would have a choice of purchasing a branded bottle other than a vintage $50.00 bottle you can't even drink out of.

This isn't a "for-profit" adventure other than to fund the Lotus website and to bring other products to the cycling community for the Lotus enthusiast. I'm spending quite a bit of money having the first-generation Lotus decals professionaly printed and reproduced, I doubt they will sell enough for me to even make my money back. The bottles will help defray that cost.

frantik

i understand completely i was just giving my opinion, since you asked for it I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, and i personally don't have a moral problem with "reproductions" regardless of if trademark has languished, but I just don't think they have a lot of value. If you put your own logo on them, you probably would have to give them away. So clearly the value is in the logo which is being placed on there.

If you want to sell them to fund your site, I would suggest perhaps making it more like a donation thing.. people pay $XX amount which is a donation to the site, and as a "token of thanks" you get a water bottle

I have worked as a graphic designer for promotional products so i know exactly what kind of time and work is involved

commonlaw

Really cool, thanks!

Snydermann

You're welcome!

Over 250 people read the thread and only a few took the time to offer an opinion. Considering the response some really lame threads get here on BikeForums, I felt like giving something back to anyone who answered my question. I guess I grew up in the day of "one good turn deserves another."

Thank you! Please PM me your address or contact me through the Lotus website and I'll get your bottle out, probably next week. Please let me know your opinion on it!

The bottle is a limited edition, once the 200 printed sell we won't be reproducing that artwork again.

MetinUz

What do you think of those provide decals for vintage bikes? I think the same argument could be made there.