Originally Posted by MJBikes99

All following information was from online and some industry veterans who was closed to Dahon before. I think most of them are correct. If there are some points are not true please correct me.

1. Dahon was founded by David Hon and his younger brother Henry Hon in 1982, but Henry left the company several years ago as he has different understanding with David about the direction of the company.

2. Dahon was going to go bankruptcy in 1990’s, Joshua Hon, a Standford graduate, son of David Hon , joined the company and saved Dahon.

3. David Hon went to mainland China in late 1990s and built the Dahon China as production factory for Dahon Taiwan. Dahon Twaiwan was then headed by Joshua Hon and was the product development, R & D and global marketing center for Dahon brand. Hence we can say Dahon Taiwan (changed the name to Tern later) which is the real Dahon.

4. Most Dahon’s current models were designed by Dahon Taiwan ( Tern), but as David Hon was the owner of the trademark and the representative of the company in law, so when they broke up in 2011, Dahon Taiwan couldn’t use the Dahon brand any more.

5. Although Dahon China factory took over the control of Dahon brand ,it has been declining in global market year by year since the breakup with Tern while Tern is growing year by year.

6. Dahon cut off its production in 2016 and outsource its production to other Chinese factories to survive., that is why the quality of Dahon bikes is getting worse year by year.Dahon alleged that it cut off the production as they will focus on R& D and marketing which is not true at all. it was because it can’t survive if they keep hundreds of workers. Most R & D staff left Dahon and there is no any real R & D force in Dahon. None of the current R & D staff has too many R & D ability and expertise.

7. Dahon EU is just a distributor of Dahon China, and under Dahon EU there are many country distributors. Dahon EU pay the lisence fee for the brand and Dahon China has no say to EU market in terms of marketing, sales, service etc. That’s also why the Dahon bike price in EU is so high. you are paying for the midmen !! Dahon USA is owned by Dahon China and David Hon is still the real controller of Dahon USA.

8. Dahon source the cheap components from other chinse companies and they just say it is Dahon ***, like Dahon pedal etc. so Dahon can sell the bike at a higher price.

9 Dahon's ebikes are basically a regular Dahon ebikes with a motor driver which Dahon sourced from some unknown Chinese factory.

10. Curl is basically a copycat of Brompton and is selling at a higher price as Brompton.

Originally Posted by phyko

Originally Posted by phyko

Originally Posted by phyko

Originally Posted by phyko

Originally Posted by kidshibuya

1. don't care
2. don't care
3. don't care
4. don't care
5. don't care
6. don't care
7. don't care
8. don't care
9. don't care
10. don't care

There are so many things wrong with your view. As a consumer Ill buy the best bike that fits what I want out of it, who cares what the company does or who runs it? Apple is a terrible company, everyone still has iPhones for some reason. And you seem quite naïve about big business, especially manufacturing.

Is there this much faboyism in other sections of this site? I get enough of this crap in PC forums where idoits create "don't by intel", then another mental giant creates a "don't buy AMD" thread. Grow up, get over it.

Originally Posted by Bonzo Banana

On the Dahon wiki page they mention a Macao facility where I believe bikes were assembled for selling there due to it being preferable to assemble in Macao which is similar to Hong Kong in being part of China but also partially independent. Maybe that facility transferred to Tern when they separated? When Tern had the recall on frames it seemed like they were tendering contracts to build them and had a handful of manufacturer's supplying such frames. One of which was obviously very poor quality hence the recall. A quick google gives no indication of a Tern factory anywhere but this isn't unusual, many top brands have no factory or even proper design facilities sometimes and merely order product from the main manufacturer's like fuji-ta.

My impression though is Tern do invest in R&D but outsource their manufacturing, this may change in the future of course. Where as Dahon is more varied with some product outsourced, I suspect the majority but it could be a minority. Looking at their frame production I think I'd rather have their outsourced frames.

Originally Posted by phyko

Originally Posted by MJBikes99

Oh, do not get pissed off. I prefer buy the product from a decent company who made really good products. Obviously the current Dahon is not such a company. You can check my previous posts that I am a fan of Dahon, but after I knew these facts about it, I am very disappointed and now I have more respects to Tern.

Originally Posted by MJBikes99

WiKi, anyone can edit that so you can't trust it

Originally Posted by Bonzo Banana

Anyone can edit it yes but I'd struggle to see their motivation to put in Macao as a assembly location if it wasn't true. Generally I find wiki pages good information often written by people who are close to the information provided. In fact the wiki page looks like it was written by Dahon themselves because contains much marketing nonsense. The first line is;

Dahon is the world's largest manufacturer of folding bicycles
[2] with a two-thirds marketshare in 2006

Dahon doesn't actually manufacture many of its bikes but outsources them and companies like fuji-ta in China make many more folding bikes than Dahon. Then you have the line 2/3rds marketshare of folding bikes in 2006 but where is this, I suspect the US because it certainly isn't the world even if that is its peak sales year. It's all manipulative marketing information meant to impress people and feel safe about their purchase but in reality complete nonsense to put it politely. You could come away from that wiki page feeling manipulated. Brompton sold 8.7m worth of bikes in the UK in 2016 in a folding bike market worth 15-20m so seems hugely successful compared to other brands maybe securing over 50% of market share but then you look at where was surveyed for this statistic and it wasn't the whole market where you can buy bicycles it was basically bicycle dealers including large chains but then you have large sports stores, amazon, ebay, direct selling etc and that figure becomes a farce. I've never seen Brompton use that figure and hopefully they never will but other companies seem happy to try to manipulate customers.

I'd be interested to know what the estimated global market for folding bikes was for 2006 and how many folding bikes Dahon actually manufactured themselves that year and see how their statistics stacks up. Seems like 125 million approx bikes were sold in 2006 and if the world market is similar to the UK market folding bikes make up about 4% so about 5 million bikes of which 2/3rds is about 3.6 million units. Dahon actually sold 290,000 bikes that year but how many did they manufacture themselves and how many were outsourced? On the Dahon wiki page they claim to have a factory in Bulgaria but that factory is maxcom a separate company to Dahon who assemble Dahon bikes so not their factory. Is the same true of other factories elsewhere?

I guess my point is I've developed a complete distrust of Dahon and their marketing information. I really don't believe any of it and when you feel a company has no honesty it has no integrity and then you wonder about the bike quality itself.