bigtea

I was curious what the current thinking is regarding house brand carbon fiber bikes (e.g. Performance Scattante, CC Douglas, etc.) vs the name brands.

Looking at the Douglas Matrix in the latest Colorado Cyclist catalog, it seems to be a great deal (monocoque frame, full Dura-Ace) and costing perhaps 30% less than a comparable brand name. Performance has their Scattante bikes on sale so often you have to wonder who pays full retail for them. They are nicely equipped but go for much less than a name brand.

Garfield Cat

What would be nice is if Performance and Colorado would offer their house brands in the naked version. That way I could make up my own decals, get them on, and then do the paint and clear coat. Presto, I will have a unique bike.

Coyote2

In this age of large-scale manufacturing and re-badging, it's lilkely that many no-name and off-brand items are actually identical to some more expensive name-brand items. In other words, I agree that some of those store brand frames are probably awfully good values. Shop carefully and you can get some good deals.

johnny99

Obviously, even the name brand bike manufacturers have cheaper and more expensive models. The mail order bikes are probably comparable in quality to the cheapest name brand bikes. I know some people with the Performance carbon bike and they seem happy with them. I have never seen a Douglas bike. Just beware of companies that use low-end frames and dress them up with high-end components and sell them at high-end prices.

Bike shops often offer nice discounts after Christmas, so look for bargains on name brand bikes then. The mail order bikes may not be much cheaper, and your bike shop will give you much better customer service.

sced

Why is this so?

brianappleby

Check out Phallenthoul and his neo exile in the for sale section. that seems like a pretty good deal on a non-name brand frame with subtle decals.

bigtea

I think the reason they don't offer just the frames is that they have no markup on the frames at all. Their margin is in the components.

Somewhat like razors and printers...the holder/printer you get at cost, it's the blades/ink where they make the profit.

Treefox

Very true. But then it's equally hard to figure out whose are whose and what's quality and what isn't.

That off-brand frame may be a Giant TCR. That Fuji might be some random thing tossed together as cheaply as possible without any thought put into design. Or something might look just like something else but be put together with cheaper carbon.

There are some very very good off-brand frames out there. There are also appalling ones and even a few death traps.

Though even name-brand stuff can turn out to be crap, of course.

henrythenavigat

Last time I spoke with a friend of mine who is a mech. at Performance, he told me that Performance bikes are now made by Fuji. But I would take this with a grain of salt. And I don't know if this applies to their alu and carbon bikes....

Treefox

Quite possible, but just because it's made by Fuji doesn't mean it's the same as the bikes branded as Fujis.

Giant makes heaps of frames for heaps of companies - some very very good, some very very poor - no doubt based on what the buyer is paying.

henrythenavigat

That's the kind of info I'd like to have. Which companies does Giant makes frames for? And which models are the same.... Obviously, we won't find out anytime soon.....

rmcnealy

but it could be...

henrythenavigat

kudude

useless addition:

nobody, and i mean nobody pays retail for a scattante.

acorn_user

IIRC Fuji has no factories. They buy them in like most other folk. Giant does own their own plants. But I don't think that they make anyone else's carbon frames.

cslone

I haven't checked recently, but Fuji used to be made by Topkey.

patentcad

The Motobecane Fly Ti MTB I'm riding may as well be a Litespeed. Good Taiwan factories are turning out world class products from iPods and iPhones to Giant bicycles, and it's perfectly possible to get a world class racing bike with a house brand label from Performance, Bikes Direct or Colo Cyclist in my view.