Pete Who said there was a problem? I just wondered what Riv got for their $9k investment. Idle curiosity, and zero conspiracy suspicions here. I worked long enough in the bicycle retail business to be curious about the business side of these things. Did Riv just shell out 9- grand as charity to the cycling community? Did they pay the $9k out of the goodness of their hearts for the privilege of buying shifters at wholesale, a privilege that every other retailer now gets for free? Maybe. Or maybe they get a slightly better price, or maybe they got a window of exclusivity.
VO doesn't make anything either, but they talk to manufacturers and get them to make stuff, investing substantial funds, and getting exclusivity on the supply channel. There is no way to buy a VO- branded product (none of which are made by VO) without it going through VO's hands. If VO had to pay DiaCompe thousands of dollars to get them to make that gorgeous centerpull brake, then I'd imagine that Chris negotiated a way to get paid back on the success of the product. If Chris paid a ton of money to get that brake re-made, then as a consumer I'd be more apt to buy that product from Chris than from a retailer who didn't invest in the existence of that product. That's just me. I've exchanged a few emails with VO about various topics like this. The impression I get is that each of these manufacturers is a little different. Some will eat the tooling for free if you can convince them that the volumes are there. Some will absorb the tooling if you financially commit to volume. Others will make you eat the tooling and provide cliffed pricing to get it back with volume. SOMA works a little differently than Riv or VO. Everything branded SOMA gets distributed through Merry Sales. I don't know the details of that business relationship either. I buy Soma products through Riv, and through my LBS, but have never bought directly from SOMAs webstore. I don't know if buying a Soma product at my LBS gives any money at all to Soma, but again, I'm curious about these things. On Feb 24, 2:08 pm, Peter Pesce <petepe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Well, Dia-Compe is openly selling the silver shifters to other > vendors, so it's not like VO, Ben's or anyone are "stealing" them. I > don't see them claiming to have designed or commissioned them, either, > so I don't know what the problem is. > If Riv didn't have an exclusive deal, or it expired, than that was > part of the bargain they struck. > Tektro doesn't sell 556 brakes as "the brake Rivendell asked us to > make." > I think VO recently asked Dia-Compe to re-make one of their "grand > comp" centerpull brakes, and D-C agreed. When that brake shows up > elsewhere, I wouldn't expect it to be called the "VO brake" or the "D- > C brake commissioned by VO" or any other such thing. > > I personally have never actually bought anything "made" by Rivendell - > my Sam, Sackville, Mark's rack and MUSA stuff was all made by other > companies, to Riv's spec. (Seems that a substantial part of the bike > industry works this way, and everyone seems OK with it.) Some stuff is > branded Rivendell or a Riv house brand, but the rack, for instance, is > branded Nitto and is available from many other vendors. Maybe custom > bikes are actually made there? I honestly don't know - never been to > Riv HQ and I'm not in the market for a custom. > > I think it's great that more companies like Riv - VO, Soma, Herse, etc > are getting great bike parts made (or re-made). The more the merrier, > I say. > > -Pete > > On Feb 24, 3:11 pm, William <tapebu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I've bought two of the five "best sellers" and none of the five "worst > > sellers". The thing I found interesting was the Silver Shifter story, > > and that Riv shelled out the $9k for tooling. Other retailers sell > > the Silver shifters, and all of them call them "Dia-Compe Silver > > shifters" with no mention of Rivendell. Ben's Cycle sells them, > > doesn't mention Rivendell, and copies verbatim Velo-Orange's > > description of them. I wonder if Riv gets a royalty when VO or Ben's > > sells a set of shifters, or if the $9k just gave them temporary > > exclusivity with Dia Compe which has since expired. I have one set of > > Silvers, and a stockpile of the original Suntours. It's a great > > shifter design, and despite what Chris at VO says, I'd run suntours or > > silvers over the Simplex/Mavic ones any day. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
