Why are Brompton folding bikes so expensive?

[rogerzilla]

You've not lived till you've toured on a Brompton.
And you've not nearly died till you've done Ventoux on a Brompton...

I've done the Langdon Beck road (the joint highest in England) on a 3-speed steel S-type. I had to stop ten times on the way up.

 

[TheDoctor]

M6R for me.
I had ridden myself a bit fitter on the preceding six days, but I had also had a beer, a Pastis and a litre of cheap red the night before...

 

[Elybazza61]

There's a bit more to it than squeeze the punter until the pips squeak.

Brompton has the best customer support of any bike company I know of in terms of parts inventory and published workshop instructions - there's an expanded diagram available online for almost every repair/maintenance task.

All this is a genuine cost to the business which Brompton can presumably only recover from the price of the bike/bits because that's their only source of income.

I believe the heavy metal work is done in South Wales, and paint is also outside London, so Brompton has taken steps to reduce costs while staying in the UK.

As a general point, I'm told China and the Far East is not the bargain to manufacture in it once was, partly due to increasing wage costs.

That's something to be welcomed, given the benefit was based on slave labour.

Eastern Europe is now just as cheap as China, if not cheaper, and one of my ebike company buddies tells me it's almost as cheap to assemble in the UK.

Now there's an innovation.

Lot of sense in this^

Our "Light Blue' bikes are manufactured in Taiwan but apparently it's a nightmare getting stuff (ie designs/adaptions) done quickly so it may be that relatively small production items like bikes may soon be as cheap to make in Europe than the far East.

Dunno how Brexit might affect this though (sure Boris/Rees--Mogg etc have an answer)

 

[rogerzilla]

Brompton are adopting an increasingly customer-hostile approach now. You can no longer buy a lot of spare parts such as stems and rear hinges unless you have them supplied and fitted at an official dealer for ££££ "to ensure it meets the quality standards". Compare this to the car industry, where they will gladly sell you any part you like (and it is more likely to be safety-critical as far as other people are concerned).

Ever since the beginning they've adopted a borderline illegal policy of refusing to supply retailers who discount the price of the bikes. Spa fell out with Brompton, bigtime.

 

[chriscross1966]

Brompton are adopting an increasingly customer-hostile approach now. You can no longer buy a lot of spare parts such as stems and rear hinges unless you have them supplied and fitted at an official dealer for ££££ "to ensure it meets the quality standards". Compare this to the car industry, where they will gladly sell you any part you like (and it is more likely to be safety-critical as far as other people are concerned).

Ever since the beginning they've adopted a borderline illegal policy of refusing to supply retailers who discount the price of the bikes. Spa fell out with Brompton, bigtime.

Having got the tools (and experience using them) to do some of the supposed dealer fit parts i can sort of see the point. Some of the things you need to do the job properly are not commonly found in private hands nor are the skills to use them. The other thing is they are not parts that go quickly, it takes me several years to kill a frame pivot or seatpost liner, and the only reason I've needed a frame or handlebar stem pin swapped out was cos i wanted to repaint. It also means someone who know what they are doing has a look at the bike every now and again. The general beef the big chains have is that they can't get better terms out of Brompton than a dealer that has been selling them in ones and twos for over twenty five years, they are very loyal to their dealers, because they know that a strong local dealer network is imperitive for a company that makes commuter bikes. If you ride it to work every day then it really needs fixing in a day... drop off in the morning, borrow a demo bike to get to work, pick up on the way home... the box-shifting chains cant really do that so why should Brompton give them a better deal than the place that can?