liv211

"You get what you pay for..." the higher the price, the better the quality？
Or
"Giant brand has serious premium..." will choose cost-effective products?


Which view do you support?

Leave your opinion in the comment section, let's discuss together!

Darth Lefty 

Different brands have different reputations.
Giant has a rep for making good value bikes, but they seem... a bit dull. And we know they are one of the real "bike companies" as opposed to distributors who order bikes made, and they make a lot of other brands' bikes
Pacific, another real bike company, buys up dead brands with familiar names like Cannondale and Schwinn and pastes the decal on some awful junk. Man, when you think of what Schwinn used to be and what it is now, it's heartbreaking
Trek has a reputation for eating local bike shops like The Blob.
Specialized has a reputation for making gimmicky bikes, and lawsuits. Presently they are suing Fox about something in their bleed valves, and everyone is having a good laugh since bleed valves on telescoping forks have been around for decades.
QBP (Salsa, Surly, All-City) has a reputation for having cool frames with middling components, but those bikes are never in stock anyhow.
Shimano and RockShox both have really cool components in the upper half of their lineup but keep them incompatible with the mediocre stuff in the lower half so there's a threshold over which you can't upgrade except by laying out a large pile of money.

Polaris OBark

The last bike I bought, which was for my wife, is comprised of a titanium frame I bought on deep discount, and all of the parts, including the wheels, were ones purchased from relatively small companies (Light Bike wheels, Chris King headset, Salsa bars, etc). Right now it has a Bontrager stem on it, for sizing purposes, but we will be rid of that, soon.

She test-rode a nearly $9K Trek gravel bike, and I told her we could do far better than that. The big companies seem to delight in charging a huge premium, and then have too many compromises (eg: the one we were looking at was specced with a Di2 front derailleur, but it was in reality a 1X. I understand many people prefer a 1X, but I don't want to pay for a Di2 front derailleur I'm not getting due to a parts shortage or whatever. That was only the beginning. Why 19 lbs for their high-grade carbon-everything bike at that price point?)

I know this might be yet another marketing/troll-thread, but I'm finding the best way to deal with this is turn it into a thread that might be interesting and useful to other people.

J_Chickles

I dont know what YT's business model is but i looked at one of their bikes (The Izzo - and the top of the range one ) -- and it was around $7500 complete with premium SID fork, XX1 AXS components and a AXS post (i think they call it the reverb)

I have looked at other premium brands and if a Yeti SB-100 were specce'd out like this, it would be a $10,000 bicycle - ditto an S-Works Epic , ---

So i dont know ---- there is a lot of markup . Giant sells tons of bikes and the millions of kids bikes they sell probably helps them offer their better grade mountain bikes at a bit lower price than some of the others

But i like what YT is putting out there for the money. I dont need the Izzo, but their 160mm bike , the Capra - im trying to figure out if i need to make room for

veganbikes

A lot of brands out there make a lot of crap and some also make some really high quality bikes as well. Say a brand like Trek I would say is pretty highly overpriced on a lot of stuff but they have the ability to make some decent stuff but the larger logo is a little annoying as some of their color schemes are decent but their business practice of shutting down local shops and turning them into Trek only stores and propping up poor performers with better performing stores just to have their name out there is dumb. Specialized is treading down that path as well but I have a little loyalty there as I do have two Specialized bikes and they are good bikes but they can suffer from a little name premium sometimes but say on their new Aethos frames you might not notice they are Specialized as the branding is more minimally done and it is quite a nice frame. Companies like Santa Cruz and others don't wade into the crap as much but they don't need to you have a lot of bigger brands to do that.

The important things on a bike are geometry and fit and are they using decent parts and hopefully fewer more proprietary parts and then do they have good support behind their product. My old Specialized Langster frame cracked after 11 years and they replaced it with no fuss. If the company has a good reputation and is using good geometry and parts I am down to look at their stuff but these days I prefer building from the frame up so complete bikes generally don't interest me as much especially with the propensity for using SRAM brakes these days and while the SRAM brakes are much improved I don't want DOT fluid anywhere near my bikes : )

CliffordK

Just about anything I purchase that would be a bike frame or bike is used. Let someone else pay for the premium depreciation.

Sommy

That’s funny you say that about Trek buying local bike shops. I live in DFW and we had a group that had 4-5 bike shops that sold several brands. Trek, specialized, ore a, etc. About 2 years ago they all became Trek stores and I was like mmmmhhhh. Not a place I go anymore. Trek makes good stuff that looks good but everyone seems to have them. Boring when everyone has the same bikes on the trail or riding around the neighborhood.

liv211

I like your opinion!

veganbikes

Huh?

5pac3gh0st

IMHO as a recent purchaser (last week) brand gets you in the door but that's it. From there it's fit, components, and support. I'm not going to save $500 by getting a brand nobody supports or with components that can't be replaced or easily maintained. I'm also not going to pay an extra $500 to have a brand name on my bike.

DMC707

i do. In regards to the mountain bikes, i've been riding booshy stuff from smaller manufacturers for a lot of years

But is your original post implying that Giant has some kind of brand premium? Perhaps they do compared to offerings from Bikes Direct or something, but ive always looked at Giant as offering relatively affordable machines - And i thought were known for giving good value for the dollar

Specialized and Trek s high end stuff always seemd to me to be a bit more spendy than Giant (id put Specialized, Trek and Giant as the "Big 3" out there - in the US at least - maybe Cannondale could make it 4 ) with all those brands having models that rival prices smaller brands like Santa Cruz , Yeti, Ibis etc etc sell their top tier stuff for .

And its true i like the smaller brands, i cant deny how refined something like a upper tier Specialized or Trek PRoject series bike is

I didnt compare specs line by line, but the top tier Giant MTB is 10k, while Specialized and Cannondale has models in the 12-13k range, Trek too. So with just a basic search it looks like Giant is putting out a really really nice bike for 1 to 2k less than its biggest competitors
I would expect the pricing for the rest of the lineup trickling down is similarly a little less than their competiton --------

rosefarts

I’d pay extra not to have one of the big brands.

xseal

Pay for the warranty too. My Yeti frame had an issue, they provided a new frame no cost. Was that worth a premium? I think so.