berlinonaut

I searched in the forum and found an old thread where Hermespan described his experiences with the Flamingo from the moment he made the buying decision. He was not happy. But - to be fair - it seemed to a degree have been a special situation:

- reading between the lines he seemed not to be an easy customer attitudewise
- he had absolutely zero knowledge about even basic bicycle-maintenance and therefor even the tiniest irregularities let him freak out, as he needed help and could not judge on the reason and if it was a big or a small issue or a design flaw
- he paid about 1000 US$ for the Flamingo in Singapur in 2014 which to me sounds like a lot of money for this bike - far too much if you ask me.
- he had expectations that may have been challenging to fulfill even with a Brompton. Buying a "cheaply and worse made Knockoff" in a country where he didn't live from a shop with debatable service made by a company with an at least debateble level of morale and service and w/o any knowledge himself didn't make things better.

I never saw or rode one of these but judging from what you can see on pictures on the internet alone it is pretty clear that it is far from a Brompton qualitywise. No wonder if you look at the history: Brompton licensed their design to Neobike in the early nineties to serve the asian market. They supported Neobike with tooling, technical drawings, knowledge and training, Neobike promised to build up to 50.000 (!) "asian" Bromptons per year and to pay a licensing-fee for each bike sold. The contract lasted from about 1992 to about 2002. Problem was that the quality of those bikes was always way below the british made ones. As Will Butler-Adams (CEO of Brompton) said:

"[The Taiwanese-made bikes] were just crap. They outsourced various frame parts. Then the person they outsourced it to outsourced it to someone else and there was no coherent understanding of what they were trying to achieve. The thing was a disaster area - it didn’t fold properly, it didn’t sit properly, it was just shambolic and it was carrying our brand. (Source: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-dept...007592.article )

He repeated this on various occations, outlining that Neobike continuously took shortcuts in production that affected quality and that they did not understand the product. This was one of the reasons to end the contract (in addition to Neobike selling the bikes in countries where they were not allowed to and licensing-fees being rather low and a total lack of control about the real amount of bikes made and sold) as those Neobike-Bromptons affected and endangered the image of the brand. Neobike was as well the supplier of the Brompton handlebars that suffered from breaking in the second half of the nineties, resulting in a recall, so they even affected the original product.

Japan was one of the countries where british made Bromptons were sold along with asian made ones. Interesting was the difference in price and performance for what should have been pretty much the same bike. In an article about the Tokio cycle show 2001 you find:

"In Japan, two types Bromptons are available. U.K. made Brompton is 147,000 yen. Brompton made in Taiwan is 86,500 yen. Both have 3-speeds internal gear hub." (Source: Japan International Cycle Show 2001 Tokyo)

You can find a side-by-side-comparison of a Brompton with a licensed Neobike-Brompton here: http://mirabeau.sakura.ne.jp/brompton/brompton_21.html

So even with extensive support from Brompton Neobike did not manage to do it properly, obviously in big parts due to their attitude. Still the bikes looked pretty similar on first sight. After the end of the contract they stole the drawings and the tools and continued though various brands and companies until today. They got sued by Brompton for selling the bikes in Europe and by Dahon for theft of intellectual property. David Hon had even warned Andrew Richie back in 1992 to do business with Neobike as some of those were former employees of his and he seemed to have an idea how this was going to end. You can find a deeper look on the story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobike and here http://www.bicycleretailer.com/north...n-wins-ip-case

Today, Bromptons patents have expired long ago, so it is probably perfectly legal to build a bike that folds and (to a degree) looks like a Brompton. Brompton say, there is so much knowledge in the process that a knockoff will not be able to achieve similar quality. To keep it this way is one reason to keep production in London, therefore the knowledge is in Europe and not in Asia, making it harder for the copycats.

So after so many years the Flamingo is still based on the 90ies Brompton-design. In the open-source world you'd probably say it is a fork, that split off in the 90ies, lacking all the development found in the original since then. And there is a lot, though - as it is in the details - you only recognize it when looking closely and knowing the Brompton pretty well. But it makes a difference. Neobike and it's followers on the other hand continued their way of imitation and shortcuts.

With that history in mind I do not believe that their product is of even near equal quality to the Brompton, even if it looks more or less similar. Apart from the warranty- and support-situation.

So if you want something that looks like a Brompton (but does only to a degree behave like one) a clone might be ok. In pretty much the same way that a fake-Rolex bought on a beach in Thailand relates to a real one. If you do not like surprises but want quality, reliability and service I'd suggest going for the original. It all depends from your needs and as long as you don't expect Brompton-performance for a fraction of the price you might be ok. A level of (negative) surprise regarding performance and quality is probably always included when going for a clone (at least if you have experience with the original). If you want to spend your money on a product made by a company with a more than doubtable morale is another and maybe independent question.

A while ago the British BBC did a test of fake vs. original with Bromptons and Strida. Interesting to watch: