Crisis: Buy More Bikes
 

Today's Wall St. Journal has an article titled "Why Bike Prices Are Shifting Higher". The whole idea is that the aerospace industry is on a roll and buying up all the titanium and carbon. The world is obviously ending.

Quoting two sentences: "Zsolt Rumy, chief executive of St. Louis based Carbon Fiber (sic) maker Zoltek Companies Inc., says he is trying to keep prices lower for bigger customers by raising prices for smaller ones, such as bike and golf club makers, who 15% of his companies business. 'We really jack up the price' for smaller customers, he says."

From now on I'll only buy bikes made of krell metal and structural seaweed.

Does this mean I can raise the prices on those 20 yard sale bikes I have in my basement? :D Or has the price of rust remained the same. :mad:
Why am I ALWAYS the last to know these things.

I owned one car made of compressed rust. Modern engineering can do anything!

Perhaps your rust is better than krell metal ans structural seaweed. Remember the old sales adage: 'If you can't fix it, feature it!'

Ride a [moly steel] classic. Problem solved!

problem solved......

Here is a link to the story. [Link is good for 7 days only.]
http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI...jgwMzI3Wj.html

Boy, Zsolt Rumy sure knows how to say 'screw you' without sounding like he's swearing. An alll American role model there. bk

Boycot carbon and go Steel! That'll drive the price down.

Something about a shift in the demand curve???

Since I work for a company that makes airplanes from carbon fiber and titanium and I think steel is the perfect material for bicycle frames, I don't really see this as a problem ;)

Nope! Won't work. We're Americans, as soon as someone says we can't have it or there will be a shortage we run out and buy it up at any price.
Does anyone remember the beef shortage of the 70s? It created high beef prices for a brief period. Then something unexpected happened. It seems people became used to chicken and beef sales plumeted for a long time. While titanium is a metal with a limited supply, carbon is only limited by the number of processing plants, there's no raw material shortage. As soon as some country, hungry for exports builds another plant, the shortage will disappear and the current suppliers won't be able to pass their cost increases on to the small customers. If that happens, it ought to make this a real interesting situation.

gosh, I'm so glad that my next bike is going to be real steel...