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Comment by _Wintermute | Hacker News Reader

Funny that Specialized are worried about local bike shops given their track record. Want to stock Specialized bikes? They'll try and strong-arm you to dedicate the majority of your floor-space to selling other Specialized components, removing options for the existing customers of the shop.

Named your small bike shop after a famous bicycle race and French town (roubaix)? Specialized will try and sue you because they have a model of bike with the same name (and don't even own the trademark). https://capovelo.com/Specialized-Threatening-to-Sue-Bike-Sho...

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> Funny that Specialized are worried about local bike shops given their track record. Want to stock Specialized bikes? They'll try and strong-arm you to dedicate the majority of your floor-space to selling other Specialized components, removing options for the existing customers of the shop.

Exactly the same as trek and giant will do. There's a whole other game involved when dealing with the top 5 consumer brands of $1000+ bike, as a local bike shop.

I mean, the idea that Specialized isn't moving toward the apple store-style model that Trek seems to be moving toward is honestly an act of good will. Dumb lawsuits aside, specialized is one of the best brands out there, and they absolutely have the power to ask for concessions. They're running a business selling absurdly high-end bikes. They're not bikesdirect selling baseline products.

Specialized have had their own "concept stores" for years now, Trek are merely copying that idea.

As someone who has worked in multiple bike shops, and also broken their own Specialized bike and had to deal with their warranty department, I'm never giving them any of my money again.

Huh... so it seems. It appears that they only really exist in the UK, which is odd seeing as Specialized is based in the Bay Area. I see there are two locations in the Los Angeles area.

I thought the UK was big into competitive bike culture, what with having big champs like Cavendish and Froome, the Ineos Grenadiers being based there too, as a really successful team.

UK has great funding for elite cycling but it’s not very popular generally, and definitely not as a mode of transport. The car is king.

I agree with that observation; also somewhere in-between you have hobby/club cycle racing that has some popularity (Road, MTB, BMX, 4cross, CycloX etc), which are essential feeders into the national/pro/elite (my Brother is a British Cycling qualified coach/scout for BMX).

That really varies a lot by geographic location. Oxford, Cambridge (and to a lesser extent, London!) are very cycling intense places and the infrastructure is reasonable. Nothing compared to Denmark, Germany or Holland, but reasonable nevertheless.

> The car is king.

This seems a very strange observation to make about London. It actually has the lowest rate of car ownership of the cities in the UK.

In my experience the primary mode of travel is public transport (or it was before Covid-19 at any rate), with people occasionally using their cars for trips outside London and perhaps larger shopping trips. Though this clearly varies by Burrough, with those on the outskirts of Greater London being more car focused than those near the centre.

> This seems a very strange observation to make about London.

It was an observation about the UK.

Ireland checking in: if you go outside of Dublin, most people own cars and use them as their main mode of travel. A recent post on Reddit /r/AskUK came from an American who was astounded that someone would be given directions to a location and told "it's about a 30 minutes walk". They asked if British people really walked "that much". A redditor responded with Bill Bryson's piece about Americans and their cars, which included an anecdote about inviting his next door neighbors over to dinner, in which they drove. While Irish people certainly aren't allergic to walking considerable distances, I've seen "country people" here drive obscenely short distances. The car becomes a habit. Once you're outside the city, the car is still king, unfortunately. When I visit my family, I get a train to their nearest town, and if there's a convenient bus, I'll use it to do the last 20km. But that bus only runs every 2 hours and, stupidly, doesn't align with train times. When I'm there, my family constantly offer to drive me stupidly short distances. Occasionally I accept if it's raining or after dark, since most county roads have no foot path and are unlit. Also, because almost everybody in the country drives a car, there's a far higher percentage of idiots behind the wheel. For example, those between the ages of 17 and 21 who think that they're amazing, omniscient and indestructible, even after a few pints. In the city, many people hold off on the unnecessary expense of a car until they "need one", since rent costs a ton, and decent public transport makes a car a luxury that you don't need until you get a space-wagon with 3 child seats.

Specialized earned a life-long customer in me when they replaced the frame on my 3 year old Allez Sport with an Allez Elite frameset.

Admittedly this was 15 years ago but still, never had a bad experience with them.

Trek replaced a hardtail xc mtb frame that cracked at the bottom bracket/chainstay interface with the next model up in the series. Was quite a painless process with the dealer.

I was told the chainstay of a Specialized Enduro was not covered under their 5 year frame warranty, as they class it as a suspension component, despite even their technical description listing it as part of the frame.

Yeah. Pretty frustrating. I’ve had similar experiences with other companies. It’s unfortunate the experiences aren’t more uniform.

what? They spend a crap ton on marketing and it seems to have paid off. I don't really know how their bikes are particularly that much better than other stuff out there. It's not like they make the drivetrain and carbon frames are pretty commodity at this point. Unless you buy into the layup marketing and special construction that only they can do hype.

Specialized and other major bike brands spend a lot on R&D. The reason that you can buy a reasonable quality open mold carbon frame direct from Taiwan these days (and rebrand it as “my great bike brand” before selling it on at a markup, if you want) is because the big brands have spent a lot of money developing and refining the concept over the years.

Modern bikes, with all their bells and whistles, which are light years better than their counterparts from 20 years ago, simply wouldn’t exist had this R&D not occurred.

That doesn't really explain the prices, a Specialized Turbo Kenevo SL Expert (9.6k EUR) full suspension e-mtb costs more than a Kawasaki or Yamaha 900cc naked motorcycle (~9k EUR). The top of the line S-works e-mtb is in a similar price point as the latest BMW S1000RR. It just doesn't make any sense other than greed.

I don’t like big corps but my specialized bike has a feature (front spring shock absorber) that no other road bike has.

Also their triathlon bikes have multiple unique features

Try to steal a sandwich from a squirrel. It isn't going to bite you out of concern for how you'll treat the sandwich...

Specialized worrying about small shops is certainly ironic. They definitely have been one of the players central at pushing out the small shops. They were one of the first pushing concept stores and are really squeezing the margins of small shops.

It's been an interesting observation to see how all the big brands have been massively increasing their margins through cheap manufacturing in China (a frame that costs >$4000 retail is less than $300 for those guys to get to the US) while the margins are incredibly low for the actual shops (<10% often) especially on high end bikes. I know many shops now make their primary income on bike servicing.

I think specialized avoiding amazon is more a case that they don't want to stay the big guy that can push the small shops around, instead having to deal with the 500lb gorilla that amazon is.

I mean of course they are worried about local bike-shops: they certainly can't strong-arm Amazon!

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