New Decathlon adventure bike

Cycle-touring, Expeditions, Adventures, Major cycle routes NOT LeJoG (see other special board)
scottg
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Joined: 10 Jan 2008, 8:44pm
Location: Highland Heights Kentucky,, USA

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by scottg »

markjohnobrien wrote:[snip]
Maybe Decathlon are trying to copy - especially as Trek had a 920 steel bike in the 90’s and the top of the Range Decathlon tourer off-road/gravel is the 920.


Trek just discontinued the latest version of the 920.
Replaced by the 520 Grando (The Fashion forward have moved past Gravel to Gravel-Rando ?)

920.jpg
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Sweep
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Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by Sweep »

Astrobike wrote:Don't see what the problem with decathlon bikes I own 3 of them , and they
are my first choice when I need any Bike and camping gear all of which is of
Better value and quality than what can be purchased from Halfords.
I have a 6 year old triban on which I have toured carrying 12 to 16 kg of luggage
And clocked up thousands of miles with no problem,s

Am not keen on the bike but agree about decathlon stuff very often being excellent value - well designed and well made. And i like the store atmosphere.
Sweep
pwa
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Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by pwa »

Gravel bikes are not my thing, but I can see why some people gravitate towards them. And any bike that has lots of potential for racks and other add-ons is to be commended. I'm a bit sniffy about aluminium frames, and even more sniffy about carbon forks on bikes supposedly designed for rock-strewn surfaces. But I am sure there are people who feel differently and who will see this bike as a good package. The thing about it that mystifies me is how you are supposed to get your hands comfortable on brake hoods designed to be at a particular angle when the bars chosen put the hoods at a radically different angle. I'd love to sit on that bike and try that to see how (if at all) it works.
Jamesh
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Joined: 2 Jan 2017, 5:56pm

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by Jamesh »

To me it just seems too expensive for a decathlon.

It maybe a bargain but I see decathlon bikes as being between £300 and £800!

More than that I'd get a Ribble or Boardman ...

Also Alu for a long distance touring bike???

Just my opinion.

Cheers James
thelawnet
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Joined: 27 Aug 2010, 12:56am

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by thelawnet »

Angstrom wrote:Fascinating thread. There's a new bike line from Decathlon which took several years to design and manufacture, and folks who've only read a web page and seen a photo comment on design issues, sturdiness etc. THere's even a criticism that the pricier version (although never seen before at that price point) being rigged with many parts that are considered on the websphere as being excellent, is less good than the cheaper version!!!!


This is a rather obtuse response.

The pricier version is, er, pricier, and contains a lot of Marmite parts such as SRAM 1x and a pricey canvas saddle.

The cheaper version is well, cheaper, and since money doesn't grow on trees, it's much more appealing to most people for that reason.

Decathlon has become the #1 bicycle seller over the years and in markets they serve. THere is a good reason. Their recipe has been the same from the start:
1) design their own products by people who practice the sport
2) determine the value proposition including price point which will make a market segment reach way beyond what it is currently. In other words, sell products that grow the market significantly beyond its current base (which explains that other competitors usually benefit too)
3) not let themselves be bound by the established conventions in that sport
4) not only design products, but work with manufacturers on the manufacturing process to reach the specified outcome, both technical and business
5) commit on the long term to ensure products are improved over time

They have started to do this on bikes and they have very quickly become in France (where they started) the #1 volume seller. Their 90s Rockrider MTBs (steel frame) is still very sought after on the second hand market for building heavy duty touring bikes.

They have done it in so many sports but the iconic product they have done it is camping with their "2 seconds tent".


Decathlon are not the #1 seller in all the markets they serve at all. They are present here in Indonesia but their products are very uncompetitive compared to Indonesian-built MTBs, which are better than their not particularly inspiring MTBs, and indeed tend to be more appealing than Decathlon's offerings in the UK as well (via retailers such as Halfords and Go Outdoors, who have put out some very good keenly priced MTBs)

In the UK Decathlon sold a slightly random collection of hybrids including at one point a hub gear offering, most of which were not particularly inspiring to UK consumers.

OTOH their sub-£1k road bikes have been very appealing because they were cheaper than other options.

Their stuff will always sell because it's cheap, but most of their bikes are uninspiring and other shops such as Evans have offered better hybrids for the UK market. Most of their models are generic aluminium hybrid/MTB-alike, which is entirely uninspired and interchangeable with any other generic bike.

They are now coming to bike touring and bikepacking.
Just like before, people who consider themselves "experts" are nit picking and criticizing. Decathlon couldn't care less because they never focus on the existing niche's specialists. They care about reaching new customers. And I believe they will change the market with this offering again.


Maybe, maybe not. The idea that they will inevitably dominate with each new launch is rubbish, frankly, and proven to be false by some of their past efforts.

The next step: bikepacking bags and panniers
That is excellent news. I've been mortified by the prices asked for good and durable panniers and bikepacking gear.


Decathlon pretty much sell everything, including as people have noted here, tools for French hunters. I looked at their panniers in the shop a couple of years ago, and they were plainly not nearly as good as Ortliebs, so I bought those instead. And they were substantially more expensive than generic cheap panniers.

My wife has had several of the cheap Chinese panniers, which are good for looking cheap and not being stolen. They don't last that long, which is fine because they are cheap.

I did the math once on the whole bike price issue. I checked back in time and compared how much bike the minimum wage monthly salary could get me. The result is stunning. In the seventies, the relative quality (comparison between entry-level and high level) bike one could get was far better back then than now. This in spite of the work being mostly done in far-away cheap labor countries, robots, CAD systems and all sorts of innovations that make manufacturing a bike easier, quicker and cheaper. The reason is very simple: money goes elsewhere: executives, marketing etc. Decathlon is good because it brings volume into the equation and prices their products n a way that expands the market. But it also helps because by doing so it makes other brands get their acts together.


Not sure what you mean by 'entry-level vs high-level' being better then, but a 70s bike is a different thing - worse shifting, tyres, brakes, etc. Perhaps more appealing as an object of fetish in terms of 'a craftsman made this', but a modern entry-level bike is very good.

In 1973 you could buy a bike from Argos with 3 gears or 5 for £30:

https://issuu.com/retromash/docs/argos-no01-1973-74 (p225)

A woman's FT weekly wage was £20 https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... erage-wage

Today MW is £350

I think it would be difficult to argue that a modern £525 bike is not very much better than that.

And of course all the cheapness you refer to exists. You can buy a new bike from Argos for £100. It won't be very good, but the fact it exists and is very much cheaper than the cheapest bike in 1973 makes it difficult to argue that somehow marketing is making things more expensive.

It's not as if Decathlon are alone in making cheap bikes that aren't £100 rubbish, either. Halfords have made various grades of 'cheap bike', ranging from 'cheap and nasty' to 'good value' for decades.

I will not buy Decathlon's new line because what I have is just fine for me to enjoy bike touring. I don't need more. But I think it's fantastic for people getting into bike touring. My son wants to get into MTB Bikepacking and he could not believe the prices of the rig from the Apidura's of the market. Neither could I.


With all your talk of marketing you seem to have missed the real purpose of 'bikepacking', which is to sell new product, be it odd shaped bags, or bikes. The Decathlon bike here is more expensive than it needs to be because the manufacturers are charging a premium for hydraulic brifters. The fact that this makes a £1400 bike 'good value' is only really because SRAM/Shimano charge so much in the first place, not particularly any inherent value proposition that makes a hydraulic road bike hundreds of pounds more expensive than a flat bar one.

There's many millions in marketing into such genres that is underpinning the fact that Decathlon are selling this at all, and essentially Decathlon benefit from the marketing that has gone into creating all these products that consumers wish to consume. You don't go to Decathlon to buy a wetsuit because they had anything to do with the development of scuba diving, but because other people did and they sell it cheaper.

Same applies here. They don't create niches, just sell things cheaper. Not a bad thing, and there is some engineering effort into cutting costs. (And of course their tents appeal because they are much cheaper than lighter better stuff from other manufacturers).
thelawnet
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Joined: 27 Aug 2010, 12:56am

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by thelawnet »

nsew wrote:Four years in development and they came up with a 12.5kg coke can bike for the obese that you can screw thirty two M5 bolts into. Then the marketing crew opted to call the range “Riverside”, presumably as that’s where it will be thrown from in a few short years. So much of their product range refers to “our designers” and “our testers”. They copy stuff, produce it for pennies and sell it to the walking dead that populate shopping malls at the weekend.


They have used that name for many years.

I'm not sure it's good for them to re-use it here, as it shares its name with some very cheap bikes

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/riverside ... 98&c=BLACK

and the name sort of makes sense on a £200 bike for alongside a towpath, but 'adventure' surely demands something a bit more aggressive sounding.
Angstrom
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Location: Montpellier, France

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by Angstrom »

thelawnet wrote:
nsew wrote:Four years in development and they came up with a 12.5kg coke can bike for the obese that you can screw thirty two M5 bolts into. Then the marketing crew opted to call the range “Riverside”, presumably as that’s where it will be thrown from in a few short years. So much of their product range refers to “our designers” and “our testers”. They copy stuff, produce it for pennies and sell it to the walking dead that populate shopping malls at the weekend.


They have used that name for many years.

I'm not sure it's good for them to re-use it here, as it shares its name with some very cheap bikes

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/riverside ... 98&c=BLACK

and the name sort of makes sense on a £200 bike for alongside a towpath, but 'adventure' surely demands something a bit more aggressive sounding.


Agree. They've chosen to use "Riverside", a longstanding product line name, but I think it's a very odd idea.
1) they continue to sell Riverside products that are for the casual rider. Clearly, the new line is aiming for a different use case and the customers they target are different.
2) The bike itself is radically different. It will be very hard for their average sales staff to properly explain the differences and the reasons behind those.
"A cycle tourist doesn't have a track record. Just memories". Jean Taboureau
Bonefishblues
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Location: Near Bicester Oxon

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by Bonefishblues »

I think their marketeers will have given this significant thought. They may have calculated that many/most of their sales will come from long-standing customers of the brand who are trading up.

For sure there's a class of rider who wouldn't dream of buying Decathlon, being 'brand conscious', shall we say. They're irrelevant.

And then there's the new Decathlon customer, attracted by price vs spec vs reviews, to which Riverside will simply be a name, without any connotations good or bad.
thelawnet
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Joined: 27 Aug 2010, 12:56am

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by thelawnet »

Idk

Most companies tend to treat a brand such as 'Madone' or whatever as all having the same geometry and often the exact same frame.

I suppose this is 'riverside touring', which probably fits in with their other branding, where there's a brand then a generic term following it, but I actually hate it, in that if you want to buy a pair of shoes, say, and search for the brand name, which is an apparently random set of letters like Foetaz or something, then 'Foetaz' is actually used for a bunch of different products and it can be difficult to work out if the thing you've been told to buy and the thing in the shop are the same thing in a different colour or a completely different product with a different use case.

I believe IKEA tend to use a different name for each product, which makes more sense really.
Angstrom
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Joined: 21 Nov 2018, 6:57am
Location: Montpellier, France

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by Angstrom »

thelawnet wrote:Idk

Most companies tend to treat a brand such as 'Madone' or whatever as all having the same geometry and often the exact same frame.

I suppose this is 'riverside touring', which probably fits in with their other branding, where there's a brand then a generic term following it, but I actually hate it, in that if you want to buy a pair of shoes, say, and search for the brand name, which is an apparently random set of letters like Foetaz or something, then 'Foetaz' is actually used for a bunch of different products and it can be difficult to work out if the thing you've been told to buy and the thing in the shop are the same thing in a different colour or a completely different product with a different use case.


I had never thought of that.

Here is the reason behind that. A bad reason, by the way, as you've just explained.
The short answer:
"Forclaz" (not Foeclaz) is a branding term that DKT uses throughout their hiking/trekking product range. It spans camping gear, clothing, etc.
The long answer.
Forclaz is an extremely widely-used toponym in the Savoies (meaning "fork", used as a term for pass; there are several "Col de la Forclaz" in the French northern ALps. Decathlon has their mountain store where they design all their mountain-related gear near Mont-Blanc (Passy, Haute-Savoie). They used this local toponym a bit wildly initially: for tents, for boots, clothing etc. I think they realized it and have since turned it into an umbrella brand like Triban for cycles. It's odd because they don't gather all Forclaz branded gear in one place in their stores. And they also own/sell other brands that are used for mountaineering,which is pretty close to trekking, in those same areas in the store. Also, their Forclaz tents could be used in bike touring for instance.
"A cycle tourist doesn't have a track record. Just memories". Jean Taboureau
simonhill
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Location: Essex

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by simonhill »

This has been an interesting in depth analysis (assassination) of this new range of bikes, albeit read from my 26" flat bar steel frame, pannier using bunker. Given my age and investment in my kit, I doubt I will be buying.

What I wonder is how many of the purchasers of these bikes will ever use them for their advertised purpose. I rather suspect a few may go off road, a lot less may do some overnighters off road and very few will be seen cycling round the world. I'm not saying they couldn't, it's just that they won't. Pretty much like the average buyer of a Range Rover.

Maybe a question is called for. If you were cycling to China/Africa/S America, would you buy one?
markjohnobrien
Posts: 1037
Joined: 4 Oct 2007, 8:15pm

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by markjohnobrien »

Yes, I would, as I rather like the look of the 900 which has XT triple and racks front and rear with frame, racks, and handlebars, having a lifetime warranty. I also like the XT dynohub.

The only element I don’t like is the TRP spyke which I’m not sure about.

Price - 1299 euros when released next year.

Still, as I have superb touring bikes already I don’t need to buy one but if I was in a market for a new machine, I really would be tempted by the 900.
Raleigh Randonneur 708 (Magura hydraulic brakes); Blue Raleigh Randonneur 708 dynamo; Pearson Compass 631 tourer; Dawes One Down 631 dynamo winter bike;Raleigh Travelogue 708 tourer dynamo; Kona Sutra; Trek 920 disc Sram Force.
nsew
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Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by nsew »

The issue I have with DTN and others is the business model. They strip the wealth from an area while providing low paid often part time jobs. So local communities are poorer and consequently shop for cheaper goods at the store that made them poorer.
Astrobike
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Joined: 5 Jan 2019, 11:50pm

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by Astrobike »

Would the local comuniies not be worse off with no decathlon stores and no jobs ?
the employees do not have to buy in store
thelawnet
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Joined: 27 Aug 2010, 12:56am

Re: New Decathlon adventure bike

Post by thelawnet »

nsew wrote:The issue I have with DTN and others is the business model. They strip the wealth from an area while providing low paid often part time jobs. So local communities are poorer and consequently shop for cheaper goods at the store that made them poorer.


How do you work that out? People in small shops are paid minimum wage and likely worse conditions than Decathlon. In theory the owner might accrue wealth, but in the covid-Amazon era, one might visit Decathlon to buy a snorkel or whatever rather than buy it from Amazon, then your thinking looks rather outdated.

The fact that there is ANY kind of physical retail presence is no longer to be taken for granted.
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