Halfords takeover Boardman bikes

[swansonj]

....but if you've got a fancy Boardman you might not be too happy to see a £200 entry level product with the same branding

If your motivation for choosing a particular bike is to advertise your exclusivity, then I'm afraid I wouldn't have much sympathy....

 

[Big Nick]

Love my Boardman and it got me into cycling

Not sure the move will be good for the brand in the long term but short term a very good financial move for Chris!

 

[Elybazza61]

If your motivation for choosing a particular bike is to advertise your exclusivity, then I'm afraid I wouldn't have much sympathy....

And to be fair you see as many (if not more)Specialized and Trek bikes about than Boardmans and that doesn't stop people buying S-Works or Madones/Domanes.

 

[Andrew_P]

Plus £15m for Chris, deserves it, great ambassador.

From memory CB is/was only a minor shareholder in Boardman Bikes less than 10% if I recall correctly and not even a director, I always assumed he must have had a decent royalty deal for using his name and possibly payment for bike development. I would guess CB has been savvy enough that part of the deal will be continuing royalty payments from Halfords and he gets 9% of the 15 million

 

[SquareDaff]

I've had 3 Boardmans and they've all been top quality, well specced and comparitively cheap. In fact I still have 2 of them (the other was stolen) and they're both still going strong. Bits have never "dropped off" (my CX has about 5k miles on it, the hybrid 8k) - but that maybe because I always insist on building my bikes from the box. Hopefully this will mean that Halfords will start stocking replacement parts for Boardmans as getting some components can be quite difficult.

 

[glenn forger]

He's had worse days.

 

[Rooster1]

Boardman, Hoy, Pendleton, English peeps who've turned (or attached) their names to bikes.

And before that Eddy Merckx, Freddie Grubb, Guerciotti, Jan Janssen.

Cavendish has is own products via Spesh, but what of Sir Bradley - will he ever go down this road ?

Any other notable names I have missed?

Found a great list of Bike Brands on Wiki btw .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bicycle_brands_and_manufacturing_companies

 

[Doc333]

A really good analogy is to compare Halfords to American Golf. When you want some golf clubs building you go to a proper club fitter, because a set of clubs built properly will be for life. Yes there are a few American Golf stores who do have great staff who can do what you want. Halfords is exactly the same and you may get lucky and have your new bike built correctly, but the number of reviews I read (Because I wanted a CX) put me off and so I went elsewhere with my cash.

Maybe Halfords should have a proper technician in every store who has been to the Boardman factory and been trained. This would be a great marketing tool because, I bet there are more people than me who opted to go elsewhere and so Cannondale got my cash from my LBS

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Dunno about overpriced. The frame finish is top notch. No nasty welds is a big plus for me.

I want an older HT Pro MTB.

What size?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Why would anyone buy a bike from Halfrauds. A brand new road bike and the crank had fallen to bits

Because that has never ever happened on any other brand of bike sold anywhere else has it?

 

[fossyant]

What size?

Prob medium ish !

 

[GrumpyGregry]

From memory CB is/was only a minor shareholder in Boardman Bikes less than 10% if I recall correctly and not even a director, I always assumed he must have had a decent royalty deal for using his name and possibly payment for bike development. I would guess CB has been savvy enough that part of the deal will be continuing royalty payments from Halfords and he gets 9% of the 15 million

What? You mean he didn't weld the frames or build the bikes up himself? Well I never.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Prob medium ish !

Soz can't help. I know of one maybe going locally which is deffo a large, and I may retire mine, also large, in October.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

A really good analogy is to compare Halfords to American Golf. When you want some golf clubs building you go to a proper club fitter, because a set of clubs built properly will be for life. Yes there are a few American Golf stores who do have great staff who can do what you want. Halfords is exactly the same and you may get lucky and have your new bike built correctly, but the number of reviews I read (Because I wanted a CX) put me off and so I went elsewhere with my cash.

Maybe Halfords should have a proper technician in every store who has been to the Boardman factory and been trained. This would be a great marketing tool because, I bet there are more people than me who opted to go elsewhere and so Cannondale got my cash from my LBS

Had the tech in your LBS been to the "Cannondale" factory in Taiwan?

I bet there are thousands unlike you who bought boardman; judging by the way the ranges sell out.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

From memory CB is/was only a minor shareholder in Boardman Bikes less than 10% if I recall correctly and not even a director, I always assumed he must have had a decent royalty deal for using his name and possibly payment for bike development. I would guess CB has been savvy enough that part of the deal will be continuing royalty payments from Halfords and he gets 9% of the 15 million

No more royalty payments to CB was part of the deal.