Folding Bikes - Flamingo / Neobike / Merc connection? Are you sure?

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driftwork
10-31-08, 02:37 AM
Hey folks,

I've been checking out this forum for a while and it seems like there are lots of people talking about the connection between Neo-bike (a Taiwanese company that used to make crappy brompton copies) and Flamingo (a manufacturer of folding bikes located near Taichung City -Taiwan-) and some person who had bought a sea container of bikes from Taiwan, re-branded them MERC and are reselling them in the UK.

Does anyone know the REAL - DEAL here?

I've heard really good things on this forum about people who are riding their MERC bike and are very happy with the way it compares with Brompton.

I actually live in Taichung City, Taiwan and I've had one of the Flamingo reps over to my house to show me his line of folders, and nowhere, at no time, did he mention that he had 'another' option in anyway related to the MERC bike people seemed to have. The only thing that Flamingo has is whats available on their website.

Can anyone straighten this out for me? :)

Cheers :D

EvilV
10-31-08, 04:16 AM
I have pm'd you with some details of how the mercs came into the UK and the details of the agent for Flamingobike who exported the bikes to Anita.

The model I have seems to have vanished from the Flamingobike website. It used to have the Flamingobike model number FL-BP02-3. I'm sure you know that Flamingobike is a trading name of the Grace Gallant bicycle manufacturing corporation. I suspect that Grace Gallant got the old Brompton drawings from Neobike when they stopped making their copies. From what I have read Grace Gallant made a better job of producing the bikes than Neobike did, but that's guesswork. I have never seen a neobike version, but people said bad things about them.

I have good reason to think that the reason Anita has not ordered a new container load of bikes is that she fears legal action from Brompton. Actions have been successfully prosecuted in the Benelux countries by Simon Koon a Brompton agent. I suspect the only way to export them here would be either to fight court cases, or for someone like yourself to send them in a small scale way, one at a time to individual buyers in Europe.