Latest price rises...

My touring bike is a custom built aluminium frame (incl. carbon fork) and cost me 1100€. The rest of the build cost nearly twice as much again. (I bought the parts, ordered hand built wheels and assembled the bike). I found it was well worth doing because when I later looked at touring bikes in magazines mine was cheaper and a lot lighter. 

I suspect that Cube bikes are made outside the EU, imported into the EU (Germany) and therefore subject to further 14% tarif when re-exported to the UK.  Just like Canyon.  Throw the COVID supply and demand premium (which seems to be around 10% across the board) and the double whammy of Brexit and COVID and a 23% rise is maybe not a huge surprise.

Sniffer wrote:

... a 23% rise is maybe not a huge surprise.

It was. 

Even the decathlon RC 520 has shot up to a grand. I was considering one, but not at that price.

Decathlon are French owned.  If they are importing non EU bikes to France and then exporting to non EU UK they will have an extra 14% tariff.

Yep costs to ship a bike are the same(ish) but you normally insure the more expensive ones due to the higher value so there are some variances. However if you're banking on X cost per bike and its 5 or 10 times X then that does impact all the way up the supply chain, those costs are real but hopefully will come back down, maybe after Chinese New Year later this month.

The price increases you're seeing currently are due to this perfect storm of increased cost out of the factory, additional shipping and tariffs if they come via EU. I dont see any brand jacking up prices due to the increased demand, its still a fiercely competitive market.

Who knows, prices may come down again when some of these issues change? Brands that buy from the EU will now resource from Asia if they can, shipping costs will stabilize but the cost of raw materials might settle down. This could be a blip.  

My word. Brexthick comments are even on this website. 

the little onion wrote:

Brexit creating supply chain problems and exchange rate issues. Disrupted logistics chains lowers supply. Rising demand for bikes during lockdown. Add that all together, you get increased prices.

I don't think we can blame Brexit (except maybe Canyon's latest prices for the direct sales model). Most of these price hikes already affected 2020 models, I've seen 10% is roughly across most models and not only in the UK. Covid has impacted massively on production of frames and components but also further down the line and coincided with a spike in demand.

A 105 disc-braked aluminium bike like the Giant Contend SL 1 discussed by a beginner on the forum yesterday costs £1,600 while the Trek Domane AL 5 Disc, a direct competitor, is £1,775. These are well-specced bikes but that is a lot of money for a bog-standard road bike!

Rim-braked models are still cheaper at the moment but even they have gone up. A bike that was £700 3 years ago is now £999.

Simon E wrote:

I don't think we can blame Brexit

[/quote]

But Brexit has created a 14% duty rate on bikes coming in from the EU, how can you not factor that into price rises?

I wasn't blaming brexit entirely for the logistics issue - clearly Covid has had a massive, probably bigger, impact, particularly on parts from the far east. But Brexit has sent shipping rates through the roof on trade between GB, NI and the EU.

On exchange rates, bear in mind that the bigger importers will have hedged and ordered in advance where possible, so the increases we see today may be the legacy of changes in exchange rates a year ago.

Because the vast majority of bikes don't come from the EU and those bikes that definitely don't have also seen price rises.

Rich_cb wrote:

Because the vast majority of bikes don't come from the EU and those bikes that definitely don't have also seen price rises.

You'd be surprised, Specialized, Trek, Scott, Cannondale, Giant, a lot of these are assembled or warehoused in the EU.

Price rises are not brands or distributors (or retailers) jacking prices up due to demand. I can imagine factory prices are rising due to raw materials but also PPE and covid compliant working which has never been 'a thing' in bicycle manafacturing (or anywhere i guess). The shipping and duties seem to be the short term issues, who knows, prices in the summer might come down as brands resource outside of the EU and the container shipping returns to some sort of normaility? Fingers crossed.

There was an interview with a specialized representative on road.cc who specifically said that they imported directly to the UK so would be unaffected.

Doubt the other big brands would sit back and accept a 14% price hike compared to a competitor.

Edit: Bikeradar did a nice article on this recently, the tariff busting Cotic sounds like the start of a trend. https://www.bikeradar.com/features/long-reads/pandemic-brexit-bike-prices/

The link does suggest the tariffs have an impact on Specialized. Where before they could move stock between European and UK markets, that will not be so easy. Another example of a barrier to trade and a negative impact for the consumer.

Not a huge issue though is it?

May even lead to greater end of year discounts in the UK as they'd be better off knocking an extra 10% off UK stock and selling it here than copping the 14% tariff to move it to the EU.

There are also ways around the full tariffs as the interview with Cotic demonstrated.

in itself.... no.  Maybe more likely than discount bikes in the UK market is that a cautious stocking approach will reduce availability.

As we agreed on a previous thread, at the moment, the bike consumer is worse off due to Brexit.  You may think that is temporary, I am less sure.

Time will tell.

Gossa wrote:

......

But Brexit has created a 14% duty rate on bikes coming in from the EU, how can you not factor that into price rises?

Sunlit uplands dear boy, sunlit uplands.....

Gossa wrote:

But Brexit has created a 14% duty rate on bikes coming in from the EU, how can you not factor that into price rises?

Because, as I stated in the post you responded to, most models had gone up in price by around 10% before the end of 2020.