Rapha Archive Store - Shepton Mallet

[reohn2]

Discovered this store by chance a few months ago on a club ride, but haven't looked round it as yet. Must get out there sometime, though I'm not a huge fan of the whole Rapha cool thing.

it doesn't surprise me in the least bit what Rapha pay for theirs.

Except you don't know what they pay, what you know is what a stranger in a cafe told you.
If your stranger's story was true, it's hard to see how this one could be;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... tight.html

$1.25 might be the factory gate price, then there's shipping, insurance, customs on top of that before it gets here. But most of their costs will surely be in this country: wages, taxes, marketing, not to mention our high property costs.

I am not in business nor an economist so take this with salt.

My daughter and SinL are in the retail business,90%+ of their stock is imported from China.
Their running costs don't put a lot on the wholesale cost.They don't have Rapha's marketing costs though,which is probably their biggest outlay.
A similar company,Endura,don't have the high retail prices of Rapha but I'd bet the quality's the same.

[Sooper8]

Many years ago when I worked in a small chain of menswear shops, the rule of thumb was 120% mark up on cost price.
Not a useful comparison to Rapha I know, but just thought I'd throw it in here.

[PH]

Many years ago when I worked in a small chain of menswear shops, the rule of thumb was 120% mark up on cost price.
Not a useful comparison to Rapha I know, but just thought I'd throw it in here.

Many years ago I doubt much stock was coming from China, it really has changed things. It’s not just the cheap labour, it's the entire scale of some of these operations and the quantities that allows them to produce. And that's the thing, Rapha are not that much of a volume producer, their prices won't be anything like as low as a High St brand. I worked for Littlewoods from 2003 to their close in 2008, in that time I saw imports from China rise from around 20% to over 70%, I was involved with non compliant returns so have a little understanding of the product costs, margins way higher than the 120% from your time, but still far less than the margins rehon2 thinks there are.
In the case of Rapha, I'm pretty sure many of their fabrics are not Chinese produced even if the garments are and anyone who thinks Endura quality is similar to theirs hasn't done much of a comparison (Which isn't to say I don't like Endura kit)

[reohn2]

In the case of Rapha, I'm pretty sure many of their fabrics are not Chinese produced ......

How do you know that?

....and anyone who thinks Endura quality is similar to theirs hasn't done much of a comparison (Which isn't to say I don't like Endura kit)

Show me the difference

To widen the debate further:-
I have a Rohan technical T shirt bought when I had a rush of blood to the head on a carefree afternoon in one of their shops.It cost £28
I was in a Mountain Warehouse store and bought two technical T's for £20.
There's no quality difference,the material is very similar and unless the Rohan T has some magic quality I've yet to detect,in all fairness there's little difference.
In Lidl last week I bought another tech T for £4 it's as good quality and made just as well as the other two.

[PH]

In the case of Rapha, I'm pretty sure many of their fabrics are not Chinese produced ......

How do you know that?

In Italy, Rapha works with a highly specialist mill that produces the finest stretch fabrics available, including the Roubaix fabrics used in Rapha shorts, tights, arm and knee warmers.
Source - http://pages.rapha.cc/service/about-rap ... a-products

Other garments are made from Sportswool, which I believe is a trade name for a Danish fabric.

[Bmblbzzz]

SportWool seems to be a trade name which is licensed by the Australian developers to various fabric manufacturers around the world.

What Torm and Rapha had, and continue to have, in common is their use of Sportwool fabric, a blend of polyester and merino wool developed by the Australian company CSIRO.

If you're a manufacturer of [Sportwool] fabrics you have to license it through CSIRO, so it's not proprietary to any one firm.

http://www.theoutdoortimes.com/rns_torm.html

Just a blog so not definitive, but seems reliable.

[reohn2]

In the case of Rapha, I'm pretty sure many of their fabrics are not Chinese produced ......

How do you know that?

In Italy, Rapha works with a highly specialist mill that produces the finest stretch fabrics available, including the Roubaix fabrics used in Rapha shorts, tights, arm and knee warmers.
Source - http://pages.rapha.cc/service/about-rap ... a-products

Other garments are made from Sportswool, which I believe is a trade name for a Danish fabric.

That's fair enough,though I suspect it won't be for all their fabrics.