Cycling UK Forum

when STI straight bar shifters are £16 on ebay?

A cynic might suggest that they charge what they can get away with!

However, the workings of flat bar STI are a little simpler as even in the combined units the gear shifter is seperate to the brake lever.

Si wrote:A cynic might suggest that they charge what they can get away with!

However, the workings of flat bar STI are a little simpler as even in the combined units the gear shifter is seperate to the brake lever.

As a cynic, I question are they are 625% simpler and less costly to produce?

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You can pick up Campag 10sp for less than £50 and the perfectly adequate Veloce 10sp for £63 (both from Ribble) and that includes a full cable set!

Not wshing to resurrect an old argument, but I've no idea why the Shimano equivalents are so much more

philg wrote:You can pick up Campag 10sp for less than £50 and the perfectly adequate Veloce 10sp for £63 (both from Ribble) and that includes a full cable set!

Not wshing to resurrect an old argument, but I've no idea why the Shimano equivalents are so much more

I have Shimano STX 7 speed rear and 3 speed front mechs - Will campag work?

Dunno, try here

(front should be OK)

It's difficult to see a materials cost of more than £5-10 per side and maybe even lower (spanning Sora to Dura Ace) when bought in the volumes they produce......must be in the millions world-wide? Assembly will be either largely automated or in a low-cost economy. Or both. So I'd assume a 'works' cost of labour and materials of £8-15 per side, or £16-30 per pair absolute tops. And that seems generous although I will defer to any production engineers amongst us. So then you have the add-ons....overheads, taxes, shipping, R&D recovery, profits at the Shimano corprorate level. Then the various regional Shimano companies take their cut, then the main distributors (in UK it used to be Madison) add their mark-up (these last two also have to hedge currencies which costs money). And then the person you buy from takes their cut and, of course, there are things like VAT and import taxes and surcharges. That, gentlemen, is why a £30 cost at the factory becomes a £250 cost to the consumer. Rip off? Of course but if you knew how much a car actually costs at the factory you'd be even more staggered.
Neil

All what neilob says - and the mark up on Shimano stuff even once in UK is staggering (try and sneak a look at the 3-4 tier price list!). But I would put the factory gate price lower.
If compare prices here and say Germany it is pretty clear that the UK is far more relaxed about allowing restrictive pricing policies. I suspect that Shimano "enforces" Recommended Retail Prices with some vigour. Possibly.

neilob wrote:That, gentlemen, is why a £30 cost at the factory becomes a £250 cost to the consumer. Rip off? Of course but if you knew how much a car actually costs at the factory you'd be even more staggered.
Neil

Apologies to the ladies out there for an uncharacteristic lapse into sexism......

Having given up my car, with no intention of ever buying another, I'm quite happy to be staggered - just how much does a car cost at the factory?

djnotts wrote:All what neilob says - and the mark up on Shimano stuff even once in UK is staggering (try and sneak a look at the 3-4 tier price list!). But I would put the factory gate price lower.
If compare prices here and say Germany it is pretty clear that the UK is far more relaxed about allowing restrictive pricing policies. I suspect that Shimano "enforces" Recommended Retail Prices with some vigour. Possibly.

That would be illegal, Ted Heath banned the practice back in the 70s.

rbrian wrote:Having given up my car, with no intention of ever buying another, I'm quite happy to be staggered - just how much does a car cost at the factory?

It's a widely-held opinion that the original MX-5 saved Mazda as a company.

It cost 2/3 the money to build compared to the contemporary 323 hatchback and sold for 50% more!

"That would be illegal, Ted Heath banned the practice back in the 70s."

Indeed (except for the Net Book Agreement and other minor exceptions), as I well recall!

But then maryjane was made illegal in the '30s and acid in the '60s, ain't made a lot of difference!

rbrian wrote:Having given up my car, with no intention of ever buying another, I'm quite happy to be staggered - just how much does a car cost at the factory?

More to the point, how many lives does it cost once it's on the road? - and especially in the hands of drivers who can't keep their hands off their mobiles.

To go back to the original question - the combined gear/brake levers do seem to be about £100 a pair, and not able to be mixed and matched if one changes just one component in the gear chain - I know that's a generalisation and not 100% true, but near.

Traditional downtube gear levers and a pair of decent brake levers will cost about £40, if you're buying new, but nothing if you've been cycling for a while and have a bucket full of decent quality spares. The 50 gear wonder pre-selector systems are ok for competirion riding, but for touring, Audaxing, utility riding, they're not necessary - just invented to make the tackle that we were using obsolete, so that the manufacturers could get more money out of us.

Time was when Campag tackle lasted for years and thousands of miles - now we don't know how long tackle will last, because it's out of fashion and/or obsolete long before it's worn out. Ok, an exaggeration, but you'll be getting my ghist. Same with everything really - there appears to be no virtue in long term and long lasting serviceability.