Originally Posted by
andr0id
Poorly made junk that barely accomplishes the goals of the product. Breaks quickly, go buy another one. Walmart is full of this kind of stuff. It is the American way to be penny smart and dollar foolish because instead of buy one that costs twice as much that lasts a lifetime, we'll buy a new one every year when the one we have breaks.
Quality goods. Well made stuff that does what it is supposed to well, lasts a long time and has replacement parts available for wearing parts.
When I was a kid, my parents would buy me shoes at Payless. They weren't particularly comfortable and they didn't last very long so they had to constantly buy me new ones. One day at a mall I fell in love with a pair of Nikes. They looked really cool and they felt good but they were over $100 (20 years ago), probably about 4x the price of the payless shoes. I begged and begged my parents and eventually got them to buy me a pair. And gosh darn if they didn't last nearly a whole year instead of a month or two like the payless crap. When it was time to get new ones they didn't have any problem with spending a similar amount of money again. And as a bonus, I found out that the Payless shoes had no arch support and were destroying my feet, which is why they were so uncomfortable.
A lot of bike stuff is expensive because it is hand made or made in limited production runs. Sometimes that means it is more expensive to produce but usually it just means they have to charge more to recover their costs and make some profit. Oh noes, profit... nobody should make any profit selling stuff!
Of course there is a lot of rebadged generic stuff (cue lazyrider rant) that is sold for much more money than the same item with the generic name but I don't think any of that is in the $12K territorry. Really though, there aren't many bikes in that price range and you have to really get into the tricked out components to get there.