I hope not. Once they aren't made in england anymore they would start to lose their appeal.

Actually one of the reasons asians love them is because they are "made in england" it's the mystique of it all. Once they find it's made in their own backyard they'll lump it together with the rest and not expect to pay such a price for the item. At that point you'd better have some awesome component groups hanging off your bike and better frame technology to stand out instead of just the name.

Brooks itself has been trying to move alot of their other items back to europe because some questions on their website asked why are they paying european prices for asian manufacturing which is much less.

It would need to be tightly controlled after their Neobike experience. They are focusing on factory expansion in Brentford West London. The recent increase in prices isn't helping but this seems to be symptomatic across the sector.

Did you expect the topics or style to change just because you recently joined this forum?

Apparently we are by far the best behaved of all the sub-forums so there you go! :D

How could something that's never been sold retail become 'no longer available'?

Just a guess: the Curl is in the pipeline, but NYCEwheels jumped the gun by listing it for delivery.
Know for sure: the Curl continues its 5+ year odyssey of not being ready for prime time.

Asia? They could do that by moving the factory from London to Belfast or Glasgow, and still keep their manufacturing in the UK.

I think you made some very good points However the Brompton frames are extremely well made under the local process. When Brompton had a brief foray with Neobike in Taiwan, the quality was never quite the same. You would need some premier league Taiwanese manufacturer like Pacific making the frames and then they wouldn't be that cheap in the end with the repatriation of transport costs to ship them outside of Asia.

Lol at Kammie!

I would take nycewheels stock status with a grain of salt. I ordered this item twice in the last year, in both cases it was not available despite the permanent "usually ships in the next business day' status.

http://www.nycewheels.com/brompton-a-seatp-alu.html

Their videos and Brompton selector are great though.

I don't know why Dahon gave up on the Curve SL 8 speed hug? That was a good bike but it had a poor choice of color. The new Curve has a great color scheme but it appears Dahon was not able to keep the price down.

There's no reason for Dahon to make a Brompton size folding bike that only has 2 speeds. The Curve 8 speed was a better bike.

I like the color scheme of the folded Curl a lot, but I think the color scheme of the unfolded curl looks like a cheap big box bike.

In my opinion, dahon company is disgracing herself by 'copying' brompton.
Curve sL, igh 8sp or 9sp capreo is a better 'working' bike.
Yet brompton still holds its mystique. The appeal is because it's made in england, and because it is expensive.
A lower price curve sL would reach a wider market..

well said +1!

There is no mystique to the Brompton. Like Bike Friday in Oregon, Brompton makes very good quality bikes for their purpose. Their brand is not purely based on mystique and 'made in Britain'. For example wealthier Asians in Singapore, Taiwan & South Korea appreciate its quality and fold. They don't just buy into British mystique, I'll give them far more credit than that. Their are some great inventors and designers in this country and I'd include Alex Moulton, Andrew Ritchie, Mark Sanders and James Dyson as just a few examples. A brand needs more than mystique to grow at 25-30% per year! And While I'm happy to buy a British product, I did not spend £750 on my original Brommie merely because it was made here! People buy it because of its fold, acceptably good ride and reliability. It's a great commuting bike, especially in urban areas and it has a payback. One can argue about some components being better or improved but the core frame and components are very durable. I have used the analogy of an IBM laptop keyboard. After decades it still has the best ergnomics on the market so why change it to a chiclet keyboard?

Dahon are entilted to benchmark the Brompton, it is nt a carbon copy like the Merc. I think the chain on the outside and Dahon Steve's points above sum up the shortcomings of a bike that should have promised much more. Dahon have made some very original bikes in their time just maybe too many models, that's all really!

I think companies are letting down consumers by not copying the Brompton fold. It's the best, but there's more to be done in terms of the implementation and that's where I'd like to see competition in the folding bike industry: refining the details are aspects pertaining to ride quality (which Brompton aren't concerned about since they have no direct competition).

Do you really feel Brompton parts are that poor a quality? I find the bike gives me few problems with original component parts or am I just lucky?

PS Do you really think Brompton are in a blue ocean position? I'd agree with you about the UK but not in some other markets. E.g. US and Bike Friday Tikit or the Strida in Asia?

Component quality seems fine-ish. Lots of people complain about the brake levers. . . they're sort of OK. I think the brakes are still under-powered.
My feeling about the bike is that I can't get over the amount of flex there is, I can't enjoy the bike as much as I think I would if there were some changes made, and it's certainly true that stiffness is a quality that a lot of people appreciate. Tern are trying to differentiate themselves from Dahon and other companies with regard to that aspect of the design. Dahon had already made steps in that direction. Once those (or similiar) design solutions are applied to a bike that folds like a Brompton then you have a superior product, assuming you retain other key characteristics like long-term reliability. Basically, my Dahon plus thudbuster rides better than my Brompton in most ways but that's not due to an inescapable compromise of the Brompton fold. In fact the rear suspension is a big advantage IMO for small wheels. But the Dahon will never be as useful as the fold is crude and other aspects badly thought-out. There's certainly potential for a next generation product but so far not the competitive scenario that'll bring it about.

My impression is that the problem is not with the levers but with the brake arms. Try this experiment, while stopping, press the front brake lever until the pads touch the rim. Keep pressing slowly and observe the brake arms. On my B I can see a clear flex that absorves the extra force. On our other bike, with low end V brakes, I see virtually no flex in the arms.

There is no disgrace in 'copying' Brompton. Was Toyota making a disgrace of itself when it copied GM? Was Samsung making a disgrace of itself when it copied Apple's design aesthetics and took up Android instead of making its own special OS from the start?

Did those two 'disgraceful' companies die a terrible death or are they laughing all the way to the bank? Maybe those posters should go back to using Nokia who stuck firmly to their guns till they were bought over by MS.

I'm just gobsmacked by how many people think the bicycle industry is some unique fish where integrating great and well-proven features is considered silly and uncreative.

Rather than innovating as an entire industry to move closer to the perfect bike, why anyone would want the rest of the industry to resist incorporating and improving existing great ideas is beyond me.

Did it take you two years to write that post?

Copying a distinctive idea or design feature, though unprotected, is an undisguised way of grabbing market share using ideas put into the market in the first place by innovative competitors. That happens all the time. Though it be standard practice for companies trying to grab customers, it remains a disgraceful practice. That said, I bought an Asus Zenbook. Afterwards I found out it was a copy of the Mac Air. I wasn't impressed.

So in other words, you'd rather be paying double or triple for a Mac(book) Air? I guess that's would be my textbook definition of a first-world problem.

In case you did not know, the recently crowned world #1 manufacturer of mobile phones is XiaoMi, a China-based company who sells cheap, low-to-mid-specced Android phones in a rather unique way. One of the guys hired to head its overseas expansion is an ex-Google VP, and they show no sign of slowing.

Few people are going to mourn if Apple or Samsung loses out because they blinked. The same should apply to Brompton.

There's a very good reason why copyright has a time limit. Being stubbornly subservient to the concept of it only serves to keep prices high and innovation low.

To be clear; I think we're discussing patent infringement (not copyright)?

In either case, how much longer does Brompton hold an active patent? Is it a design or utility patent (or both)?

They don't have active patents and the only prior copyright case that I'm aware of was won on the basis that their designs were straightforwardly cloned, i.e. with no further active input into the design process (to the extent that the manual illustrations were also stolen).

The Dahon bike takes the basic fold but rethinks every detail in line with Dahon's existing technology, and the frame is substantially different.

Brompton has employees that were born after their utility patent expired.

A Dutch court held in 2006 that Brompton has some sort of copyright on the curved top tube.