Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
Dorel Industries owns both Cannondale and GT bicycles, Ridley subcontracts with manufacturers in China and Taiwan, etc. This is a globalized marketplace where the vast majority of participants are working with the same few dozen companies who have a base of institutional knowledge that is very similar.
Diamondback carbon frames are designed and produced by Kinesis Industry, which at this point has decades of experience engineering, designing and producing carbon bicycle components.
So, they're pretty much the same as any other Taiwanese carbon bike hung with Shimano/SRAM/FSA parts around a given price point. Easy to snob on the name since they don't win world tour stages and are a top selling performance bike brand but they're decent bikes and due to the far-ranging Accell employee pricing deal can often be had significantly below the street cost for a comparable bike from a different brand.
Kinesis makes some CF forks, but as far as I know and it's besides the point, they're known for alloy frames. Specialized, Trek, etc also manufacture most of the stuff in Taiwan, I can't think of anyone that doesn't. The manufacturing is fairly mature at this point and why it's no longer a differentiator for the most part. But it's hard to argue that the serious players that are R&D heavy, don't have a significant leg up on these guys. And when you factor in pretty massive end of year discounts on bikes from those brands, it becomes an even tougher line to sell.