Geek Warning: Why are modern bikes so expensive?
Spin Cycle
Escape Collective
4.9 • 960 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2024
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are bikes so expensive? In this episode, Factor's Rob Gitelis speaks openly, providing an insight deep into the world of premium bicycle manufacturing and breaking down the costs of making a modern high-end bike. More broadly, Gitelis talks us through some of the inner workings of the manufacturing facilities brands employ, staffing models and transient workforces, and his fears that a repeat of the Covid boom and bust is just around the corner.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to a special episode of the Geek Warning Podcast. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Dave Rome and I'm not your host for this episode. |
| 0:17.6 | Rather, Ronan McLaughlin is. |
| 0:19.7 | And Ronan, what have you got for us? |
| 0:23.4 | We've got a recording that I did with Rob Dutelas of Factor Bikes back in January at the |
| 0:28.4 | Tour Down Under in Adelaide, and specifically we're jumping into the question and providing dollar figures for why |
| 0:36.4 | premium carbon road bikes have got so expensive in the past couple of years so |
| 0:41.1 | Rob and I yeah we touch on basically everything that goes into the |
| 0:45.6 | the cost of producing the bikes that we're buying today and the reasons why the prices |
| 0:50.9 | were paying for those bikes are seemingly escalating year on year. |
| 0:54.0 | It's a topic we've been talking about a lot internally over I'd say since our |
| 0:59.4 | inception I think this is one of the articles we or one of the podcasts we discussed doing at our at our start and |
| 1:06.3 | It was deemed the sort of topic that we had never get the required information on in order to do it |
| 1:15.8 | So well done I'm pulling this off and I guess yeah let's not keep it any longer. Should we just jump straight into it? |
| 1:19.0 | I think we'll jump and you and I will pick it up after the interview with Rob is |
| 1:23.8 | finished but in the meantime yeah that's that's here what Rob has to say. |
| 1:27.3 | Great. |
| 1:29.3 | I'm joined for this episode by Rob Juteliz who is CEO of Factor Bikes and |
| 1:38.8 | Black Inc. wheels not to mention the guy who ran much of the carbon frame manufacturing industry at one point |
| 1:46.1 | before diverting is its sole attention to factor bikes and as such is perfectly positioned to answer this question. |
| 1:54.5 | Welcome to the podcast Rob thank you for joining us. |
| 1:56.5 | Thank you. |
... |
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