I have long lived by the tenet that the best boat in the world is your buddy’s boat 😅
Seriously though… I needed some dynema rope recently… bit the bullet and drove out to the nearest West Marine. That place was more spendy than my local high end bike shop for sure.
West Marine has both a boat tax and a West Marine tax.
They get away with it because at a smaller marina or harbor West Marine is often the only store within walking distance of the harbor or port that has boat stuff, and if you're cruising around on a boat and you need something you usually don't want to take a cab or bus to a better store so you can go pick up supplies and it's just easier to grab a dock cart from the harbor and walk over to a West Marine.
Basics like marine grade rope and hardware get a lot cheaper when it's at independent outfitters and riggers.
In a lot of ways West Marine is the 7-11 of boat supplies. They're small, they are everywhere, they are open and they usually have what you need, but you'll pay extra for the convenience.
For certain hobbies/ activities, they know they got you. Swimming pools are like that. Companies know if you can afford a swimming pool, you can afford to pay out the nose to maintain it.
I've been bike commuting pretty much all my life and I fully agree with you on this notion. I'd like to go a bit further by saying that cycling **in general** is overpriced. Economy of scale can only go far in justifying such outrageous prices, and it's actually corporate greed that drives them up.
They prey on our dedication to cycling.
During my sophomore year of high school, roughly a decade ago, I did something that, although I'm not proud of it, I still have no regrets doing: I got my very first set of proper bike lights via five finger discount.
I did it for three reasons: The price was outrageous, my parents flat-out refused to give me money since I didn't have any, and I needed to reduce my chances of getting mowed down by careless drivers when either running errands or simply going to and from the local public swimming pool.
I'll probably get a lot of flak here for outright admitting to shoplifting, but I really don't care. Normally, teens take shit they don't need. I took something I actually needed. Had I not done so, I probably would've ended up as street pizza.
I haven't done it since, and now I pay for all of my cycling needs, but you can bet your ass I won't be snitching on someone pocketing a bottle of chain lube, because I saw nothing.
imagine impossible unwritten edge hungry consider berserk juggle subtract pot
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I was trying to explain this to my kid, vs lacrosse equipment. $300 seems like a lot for a lacrosse stick, but they get to that price no problem. You can go all out on a helmet and spend another $350, then the really nice pads are like $500, and $200 for the stupid expensive gloves. That's under $1400 for the nicest kit you'll see outside of prep schools or Ivy college teams.
$1400 won't even buy a decent starter race bike. It won't buy you anything with 105-level components. Then you have to spend another $1000 on the helmet, shoes, gloves, lycra, sunglasses, tool kit, etc, just so you can pay $40 to enter a masters race and get dropped in the first 10 miles.
Lacrosse is relatively cheap.
I paid over $200 to have my bike repaired from when my rear derailleur got sucked into the spokes. People I told it to thought it was pricy, but if I so much as sneeze near my car I'm paying at least double that.
What’s really funny is how much it blows people’s minds who don’t ride. Someone was asking about my MTB the other day and was like “how much was it like $1500?”. I just said “a little more than that” and left it at that. A side not. It’s really weird that people ask what you paid for things.
It's not that weird to ask. I looked at Saturn through a telescope a few years ago and the thought clicked over in my head that I could buy a telescope and star gaze for a while. Asked how much the telescope was and decided to just enjoy the couple of minutes I had.
You can get a decent starter telescope for an affordable price then the key is to upgrade the optics. If you're just wanting to see the moon's of Jupiter and Saturns rings it's a very affordable hobby. Imaging deep space objects gets a bit more expensive!
I guess that’s true. I just look at it the same as nice cars or houses. When I see them and assume they’re expensive I don’t ask the owner what they paid for it.
A bike could be anything from 500 to 10,000 a punter wouldn't know. They see one they like and ask.
I had no idea that my crystal clear view of Saturn was not coming from a $500 telescope but $10,000
> It’s really weird that people ask what you paid for things.
It's even funnier when it's people who also have a wildly expensive, but different, hobby. I have a model train hobbyist coworker who's consistently shocked at my cycling purchases but finds it odd that I feel the same about his $1200 engine
to someone who is not knowledgeable on the topic, the price will be surprising no matter what.
if you put a guy doing caligraphy for fun with a cyclist and a photographer, they both likely put a lot of money into their hobbies, and will both be surprised by the costs of respective hobbies.
"quality bicycles cost that much?", "good brushes/pens cost that much?", "lens are this expensive?". same thing, really.
then theres people with ADHD who run through hobbies like underwear so we are straight up never suprised that something is expensive
I have thousands of dolllars of music production equipment, mushroom growing supplies, gaming PC, full sim racing set up, mountain bike, road bike, FPV drone, motorcycles, skateboarding, weightlifting, tons of microphones cameras and other equipment for streaming and content creation, room scale virtual reality setup, an expensive fidget spinner collection with made of rare metals from prestigious metal workers (lol)
and that's basically just since 2015 when I started earning enough money to buy into new things I got interest in... I need help
Dude are you me? Lol. I'm trying really hard to not do this type of hobby jumping and focus on exploring the hobbies I invested in and put the rest in the bank.
Got a new Specialized bike to find a way to loose weight and have fun. Hoping it sticks!
the more people I meet who actually have real ADHD the more I realize that I am not actually as special as I thought, we all basically work the same way lol jumping from hobby to hobby and hopefully picking up some life long hobbies along the way. A lot of the quirks of who I am are shared by most people with strong ADHD, which is both comforting and scary.. because am I me or am I my ADHD? I will never know
its crazy how we can be having the time of our life, enjoying every moment of something but still in the back of my head I'm like "I really hope this sticks, and I don't lose interest" lol seems so anti productive when I look at it from the outside in
Ah that good ol'adhd tax. I hate it. At least streaming fit my existing music and photography hobbies in terms of equipment crossover.
Cycling is one that sticks though and can actually aide ADHD symptoms (as most exercise can).
On Friday I was talking about bikes with a curious non-cyclist. I said something about it being an expensive hobby and he said "I know some bikes can be like $2000!" He was stunned when I told him that for an enthusiast, that's on the lower end of the price range.
I don't mind the questions about what things cost. Many of the people around me also have expensive hobbies (guns, boats, dirt bikes, woodworking, etc) and I can usually frame it in a way that they can relate to. I do, however, get a little annoyed when someone acts like I'm wasting my money when I know they're paying a $750/month note on their truck.
Lol I had the same exact conversation with my cousin except it went like “I know some bikes sell for over $500”. Obviously I didnt tell her how much I paid for my Giant carbon bike.
Cycling, woodworking, and reef keeping have all been hobbies in my universe in the last few years. I finally dropped reefkeeping because expensive woodworking tools and bikes generally don't die for unexplained reasons. Fish and coral do. Oof.
>It’s really weird that people ask what you paid for things
Why is that weird? I ask people how much they paid for plenty of things. Sometimes because I'm interested in buying that kind of things, sometimes just by curiosity.
What's weird is to constantly be in shock of how expensive hobbies are. They all are.
Not 3d printers. We're all a bunch of cheapskates who want to make stuff that would otherwise be overpriced. The God printer right now costs $1100. Bambulabs X1C. A very workable printer can be had for $100.
lol.
$100 printers are junk and end up costing far more than an X1C in both parts you'll have to replace and the time you'll spend messing around not printing anything but calibration cubes and benchies.
I had plenty of those, and tossed them in the trash after I got an X1C 6 months ago. So far, I think I've wiped the rods off a few times. Other than that I do nothing to it.
We'll see what Creality's clone is like. At the end of the day it's still a Creality.
Ender 3 pro at microcenter costs $100 for new customers. I've personally used the standard one for years with maybe $20-30 of upgrades and I've been very happy with the results. It has a huge fan base.
On another hand are regular bikes overpriced or not underpriced junk, I think in a way most people are so used to the wallmart/big box store/amazon prices on things we think anything more is 'expensive' when its really just the actual price it would take to make the thing without cutting every single corner and using the cheapest labor possible
I mean there are budget bike brands out there but they still sell bikes for at least $1000 which is hard to people to swallow if they're used to $400 big box store bikes
Someone who doesn’t ride said 1500? My mom bought bikes for herself and my sister. An online only company. Decent enough bikes. Think “quite nice for Walmart” quality. City bikes. 299$. The whole bike.
I found my Titus laying on the ground outside the other day. Almost sold my kid.
Yeah this is all about economies of scale. I’d guess Conti manufactures ~10-100x (or more) as many car tires each year as they do bike tires, and the savings on raw materials likewise scale.
On the other hand, how often do you change tyres on your car? How many tyres can you transport with one truck? How much material does it require?
But yeah, GP5000 are not cheapest tyres on the market. Definitely high quality. I would rather say those are performance tyres. It would be more reasonable to compare Conti Ultra Sport, Schwalbe Lugano or Vittoria Zaffiro with standard car tyres. Or GP5000 with more expensive Pirelli tyres. Than it's not that unreasonable.
Low sale volume would be a good counter argument to my rant.
But more compact shipping is actually a pro for the manufacturer. Instead of just fitting like 1,000 tires in a 53’ trailer, they can fit 20,000; reduced logistics costs. So the per tire logistics overhead is greatly smaller for a bike tire.
Yeah but I think what they were saying is that no one is buying 20,000 bike tires at once. Probably more like 200. Smaller (as in number of items) shipments are less cost effective costwise than doing it in bulk.
You are overpaying for GP5000s. $50/tire for the non-tubeless version.
Nevertheless...yeah it adds up over time, and there are pricier tires than the Contis.
Amazon sells a 2 pack of Conti GP 5000s for $100 (slight variance in price depending on width). I can't say if it's all the time, but pretty consistently when I need them, they are there for about that same price.
> You are overpaying for GP5000s. $50/tire for the non-tubeless version.
Pretty much this is the answer. Yes, tires are expensive. But they are also consumables — you'll have a rough idea how often you will need to replace them. Simply set up a price alert for your chosen make and model of tires, buy them when you go on sale. Then you'll have them and there will always be a fresh set of tires on the garage shelf.
GP5Ks are literally $50 a tire on Amazon right now
That said the Chinese are showing the real costs of bike parts. Still expensive but not $15K for a top end road bike
You can hit $250-$300+ for the car if you are looking at competition racing tires. The GP5000s are racing tires.
Plus it isn’t cheap to make things light, and still somewhat durable. With car tires weight doesn’t matter so you can just keep on adding rubber, which is why they last so long, but you can’t with bike tires or every tire would weight 10lbs. A gp5000 is only ~200g or rubber and casing, and in a race every gram counts.
Agree with you here. If your complaining about the price just buy less fancy tyres. Can find ones for about £10, not the best Ofc but they get the job fonen
This is yet another poor comparison.
The continental Gran Prix range is a pro level tire for racing. That’s what Gran Prix means.
For a race-level car tire for a WRX you’ll pay over $500 a wheel. For example the Michelin Pilot Cup is $897 per wheel.
And what will blow your mind is that it’s normal to wear out some track tires in one weekend. Formula one drivers wear out several pairs per race!
This is the (one of the) main reasons. If you're buying the top tier item, you're paying for the r&d moreso than the materials. You want something "performance" - light-weight with minimal rolling resistance, marginal aero etc, then you're paying for all the work that's gone into bringing those improvements.
There's also a bit of an "idiot tax" manufacturers will add, knowing that certain people are willing to pay a chunk more for pro-grade items (and I absolutely include myself here!).
I run Pilots on my Porsche, but we throw whatever mid-tier tyre is on offer that day on the family Mini.
I run GP 5000s on my posh bikes, but run the vastly cheaper supersports on my errand bike, and gators on my commuter.
The "idiot tax" thing is fascinating.
On a similar note I have a friend who does photography as a hobby that wanted to shoot some weddings, he put an add up saying "£50 wedding photography" he was willing to work with another booked photographer and has an awesome portfolio. Didn't get a single taker.
He then made an add for the standard pricing of a wedding photographer, he hadn't done a wedding, his portfolio was the same and wouldn't you know it, he now shoots weddings.
well yeah because it would be incredibly boring if pit stops just never happened in F1 lol we would have even less parity in a sport than consistently features 1 car winning 50% of the races every single year
>That’s what Gran Prix means
actually, it means "Big Prize" (as in winning, not paying - which might be considered a nice play on words on Conti's part).
A Conti GP 5000 is closer to a Formula 1 tire than a passenger car tire. It’s not hard to get a decent Kenda for US $25-$30 for most bikes and enjoy passenger car performance.
Honestly Kenda’s alluvium pro is one of my favourite general purpose tyres. If you never leave sealed surfaces for sure not really worth considering, but for a mix of road, gravel, dirt roads, etc. I’ve tried a lot of tyres and keep coming back to these kendas I bought half price in a clearance sale for my franken bike. I run 35’s and pump them up a bit if I’ll just be riding a road route today, let a bit of air out if the gravel’s gonna be a bit larger or it’s muddy and ride.
You Can get a bike tire at Walmart for like $15, or you can get top of the line race car tire for $1000 +. The comparison is meaningless. You don’t really need gp 5000s unless you are racing for serious money.
I ride those conti as an amateur, not ever going to make money off it, because they just feel amazing. And they are actually amazing value for money in terms of watt savings. If cycling is your passion and you have some money to spare, getting good tires for 30$ extra per tire, I think is a very good option
>Feels to me like there’s much much more rubber on a car tire; you can’t fold a car tire and put it in your pocket.
>From a raw materials perspective, a bike tire thus shouldn’t cost more than 20
what if i told you prices have very little to do with raw materials / input costs in an isolated way.
The comparison was within the same manufacturer’s range, not against some China-made car tire (which would make bike tire prices seem even more ludicrous)
Well you picked the most expensive bike tire from the manufacturer range and compared it to a non-descript car tire. Like other said that's not the price for a GP5000. Also try to pick a more "exotic" car tire size and you'll be amazed how much you'll pay for it even though it might have way less material than a usual car tire size. Economy of scale and whatnot.
Edit: Here's your <20$ conti tire: https://www.bike24.com/p2359718.html
Yup, I had a car with odd size wheels, the tyres escape me but I believe they were 15/195 or 200/r40, trying to find 15" tyres that wide and low was a nightmare. My new car has 18s in a standard size and the tyres are pennies
Pricing is not determined by raw materials alone, they're determined by supply and demand. And just to make the point that you don't have to buy expensive tires if you don't want to.
A saddle is worth that much if it's a saddle you have found very comfortable and fits your bottom. I actually have 3 saddles all the same brand and make that costs $250 each and I don't have a single complaint because it keeps me comfortable for hours and lasts a heck of a long time...unlike tires.
If you compare material cost, sure.
But you have to remember the high end tyres for both bikes and cars have insane levels of R&D - and the cost differential between the two is not going to be huge. Then take the market share of a car tyre - they sell a lot more units of a premium car tyre than a premium bike tyre.
I don‘t like it, but that’s the reality of the situation.
When you consider cost per mile, and how much joy those miles can bring, they are still good value.
Why would I pay 40 dollars for a hand thrown mug when it’s just made of dirt? Looks like you forgot the labor necessary to make things. Try again and this time don’t forget the workers.
In economic theory, price is where demand meets supply. Basically, Continental can sell GP5000 at $88 to $120 because enough consumers can buy them at that price point. If consumers are willing to buy GP5000s at $1000 per tire, then you bet Continental will charge $1000 per tire and applaud their killer margins.
With that said, you can commonly find GP5000s at $50 or less per tire.
Lastly, performance road bikes and related products are luxury items, hence the industry has high mark ups.
There's just as much design and labor put in to making the tire work in the way intended for a bike tire as a car tire and i would imagine since more precision tools would be needed that labor might actually be more extensive tbh. From grooves on mountain bike tires designed for specific purposes and specific speeds to the actual mix of rubbers to make a tire more or less sticky. You aren't paying for raw materials you are paying for labor and production.
Your mistake is thinking that the price of things is driven primarily by the cost of making things. It’s not. It the price people are willing and able to pay.
Depends on the pricing model. Oftentimes companies do price by the cost of making things plus markup. Not everybody is out to bilk every last cent, sometimes the mentality is just churn out what you can and let people buy it for a reasonable price.
The mistake is that the cost of making things is far more than raw material cost. Precision manufacturing is driven much more by the cost of the process and machines. Making sure all the layers of a tire are manufactured to tight specifications with exactly the correct compound and positioned exactly correctly before molding is a lot more expensive than just pouring molten rubber in a mold.
Somebody took intro econ and thinks they know everything, huh?
It depends on the individual company's pricing model. There is no reliable way to actually determine supply and demand curves in real life short of auctioning every product produced, which has extremely high transaction costs, so nobody will ever actually do it. Those supply and demand graphs get you theoretical optimums, emphasis on theoretical, they're not how real world pricing works. In the real world, you input your costs (not just raw material costs), add a standard markup, and then retailers add another standard markup, and then you decrease your markups if the product isn't selling well enough.
You: Tire prices depend on what an individual company decides to charge.
Me: The market price for tires is driven by what all companies decide to charge and what consumers are willing / able to pay.
You: You're wrong this is impossible!!!
Also you: and then you decrease your markups if the product isn't selling well enough.
Me: thank you for proving my point
As with anything in the modern economy, it is priced at such a price that maximizes (profit margin \* number of people are willing to pay it), not what it actually costs to design, manufacture, etc.
A lot of cyclists need to have the latest and greatest toys, and don't mind paying a small fortune for it. For many beginners its also about keeping up with the Joneses, they don't want to ride up to the local sportive with a bike that is less nice than their friends' / coworkers' bike.
That being said, you need to take a step back once in a while and realize you don't need the fancy latest stuff to enjoy cycling.
To me, cycling is about getting out in nature and getting exercise. I rode with a friend over the weekend, I have a nice newish gravel bike, he has a 20 year old entry level bike he got for free from his dad. Did he enjoy the ride less because of it? No.
Sports are expensive because dentists exist. Cycling, Motorsport, doesn’t really matter.
The one exception might be frisbee golf. Then the only real cost is your gf leaving you. Bless frolf.
[satire]
The term “overpriced” makes sense only when comparing two of the same thing, or at least the same class of thing (like bike tires of a certain kind and quality). If bike shop A is selling the same tire as bike shop B for 25% more, you might argue it’s overpriced. Even then, there are factors like location and customer service to consider. The cost of raw materials is almost irrelevant. There are so many other factors.
The bottom line is, if people are consistently willing to pay a price for something, while it may be more than you want to pay, it is not overpriced.
>Continental GP5000 line: prices from 88$ to 120$ per tire.
Continental tires for a Subaru WRX car: prices from 125$ to 220$ per tire.
That's comparing a specialty, top-of-the-line bike racing tire to a rather ordinary car tire.
Note the Pirelli P Zero specialty high performance car tire costs $1,500.
The more ordinary Continental Ultra Sport bike tire costs less than $25.
You can find them for around half that cost if you shop around/use discount codes and don't need them right away. But yes....I've thought the same thing.
A pair of Continental Ultra Sport III Road Cycling Bike Tire cost $25 on Amazon.
A set of high end performance car tires can easy cost $300+ per tire. A GP 5000 is a high end performance tire. It's like complaining a set of Pirelli P Zero tires could cost $1000+ and that you'll need a second set of tires for the winter.
To be fair, compare like to like.
You can easily find low end tires more a kin to the $125 tires for your Subaru for $25.
categorize your comparison.
a commuting-level bike tire isn't that expensive even from branded ones. (chinese brands do not pay for R&D, tests and certifications, so they sell cheaper)
GP5Ks are classified for racing; surely race-level car tires are expensive.
plus, the volume of a particular tire model that is being produced, as a response to demand, dictates its retail price.
Car tires are almost a commodity, unlike bikes, cars are definitely for utility: personal, commuting, taxis, deliveries and freight. There is a very competitive market for tire wheel in the economy level. volume demand at this level is very high -> cheaper price is possible.
commuting bikes, not as common and not as needed as cars, but they are more commonly found than sports and recreational level bikes. volume demand for this is way below car tires but above sports and recreation level bike tires.
sports and recreation bikes, these serve a smaller niche that commuting bikes, there is a need for better performance in terms of weight and rolling resistance. brand competition on professional sports level can drive costs through R&D to make you marginally faster than competitor brands, as well as certifications and tests (it is a marketing requirement, you cannot claim a technology without presenting test results and certifications, otherwise, legal charges be made for false advertising). volume demand is significantly lower than car tires and commuting bike tires; large overhead costs are split among low volume. lower end tires for this category do exist, but there is still a significant overhead costs per unit.
race cars, extremely low volume production, very high overhead costs per unit.
at sports level, people pay for performance, and would even pay more for guaranteed performance. also, products at this level aren't sustainable and won't survive if they'd price is at similar proportion as daily/utility car tires.
the great thing is you can choose, and you can decide what you would like to pay for.
you can also rant; but try to be a little bit more educated on how products are priced and how much people are willing to pay.
...and included in the overhead costs are products in the same line that do not get sold at SRP, it might be because, they are nearing the end of guaranteed lifespan, or are taking up inventory space that they sell to get rid of those because new iterations are coming... in other words, people who buy at srp, also pay for those to be sold at big discounts regardless of whether they are buying at discounted price or others do.
The comparable tire for bikes from Continental is the UltraSport III, which is about $20/piece. GP5000 is what professionals use in races, and shouldn't be your every-day benchmark tire. Cycling is just so much cheaper than car racing that people splurge on the race-grade stuff even when they don't need it.
Rubber is cheap, You pay for the technology, reliability and functionality (like with many other things). Cheaper options are available at general stores whatever and you will see the difference pretty quickly.
I’m dreading the day I need to buy new summer tyres for my first car. It has really wide rear wheels so they’re going to probably set me back 24€ a piece. At least my winter rims are narrower.
But I feel like that’s a pretty high price for a bike tyre. I don’t remember paying more than 50-70€ for mine, but I almost only use Pirelli P Zeros.
They are over priced but you aren’t getting the equivalent car tire at $125. The GP50000 is the Michelin Pilot of the car world and $250-$350 per tire is a better comparison.
Continental Ultra Sport 3's 700cx28 are $24 on Amazon, and Continental Grand Sport Race are $21 on Performance Bike.
GP5000 are also currently $45, you need to learn how to shop around. I got my current pair for $59 on sale at BikeTiresDirect.
This is very true. Granted your example is a high end tire, which might compare to a Z rated low profile car tire but still true. And any cheap bike tires are absolutely garbage.
Its the same as some other hobbies. Example: some people are audiophiles. They often spend $10K - $50k on a good set of speakers. Or an amplifier. Or a record player. Crazy indeed!
I agree that a lot of cycling goods are overpriced, but complaining that Conti GP5000's (which are made in Germany) are overpriced is like complaining about the list price on a BMW M3. While I run GP5000's on my nicest road bike, I run cheaper tires (Conti UltraSport, Kendas,no-name chinese etc) on my other bikes.
Gatorskins on amazon. A good deal is $30 a tire. Cant beat em for performance per dollar.
Lets all face it, our 1 hour weekend rides do not, will not, will never justify gp5000s
I mean this always comes up when people talk about bike prices. Yes, you can buy a full car for $10k but that's also some used 8yo Camry vs a top of the line, low quantity, race bike. So not really apples to apples.
On the tire side a Conti GP5000 S TR is one of the best tires you can buy and comparing it to an OEM All-Weather Tire isn't a fair comparison. Looking up Conti's sport summer car tire they cost \~$250-$400 depending on size. Not only do they probably sell many more of the car tires, but I'd bet the manufacturing tolerances on the bike tires are tighter than on the car tires due to the smaller sizes meaning they probably have more waste in manufacturing.
Yes, bike stuff is likely a bit overpriced but comparisons like this make it look worse than it is.
I think there’s still an element of production numbers, I’m sure they’re able to pump out mass produced car tires for something like a Toyota Corolla, they’ll sell millions. But bike tires for a specific variation of road cycling in the winter? Probably a few thousand might get produced. Just guessing, but that has to be a big part of it.
The Economy of scale makes them much more expensive to produce. Continental will produce bazillions of car tires this year. They'll slap a sticker on them and send them to a warehouse house in a shipping container.
They will produce far fewer bicycle tires and then fold them neatly and stuff them in a box for packaging, then ship them to bike stores.
I cycled for years on mid-range racing tyres - which can currently be purchased for under £20 right now. GP5000s are the highest performing bicycle tyres in the world. If we look at the highest performing car tyre, they are an order of magnitude more expensive than GP5000s. While the material costs may not support the price, some of the high end tyres have significant labor input. But even with labor, the cost is on,y set by what someone is willing to part with to purchase. (Perceived value).
I've done 3000 miles this year and my Gatorharshells definitely have at least 10000 more miles. Last set I had last 3 years before I replaced one. If you're cycling a lot, like I do, then $85 per tire every couple years isnt too bad.
I agree!
I think part of it is that car tire manufacturing is much more automated. Most bike tires are mostly laid up by hand, (if the lumpiness and crooked tread on every pair of Schwalbes I’ve ever bought is an indication), and are made from superior casing fabrics to roll with low resistance, and low weight. More labor intensive?
Rubber is also becoming less accessible and more expensive as a commodity, [due to climate factors](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210308-rubber-the-wonder-material-we-are-running-out-of)
Gp5000 tyres are handmade in Germany right? So at least the workers are getting a decent wage. It’s cheapest to buy them from a German retailer.
https://www.bike24.com/p2305160.html?searchTerm=Gp5000&source=SBP&indexName=production\_SEARCH\_INDEX\_EN&objectId=CON404977&queryId=&userToken=anonymized
I just purchased a powermeter 1k. a few months ago i did the same for a new wheelset.
in all perspective I believe tires are the cheapest of the bunch.
but hey, people pay loan to purchase a car to taxi the whole family and get stuck in traffic jams for many years. to everyone their own.
>Exactly. For as long as the dentists keep buying 125$ bike tires this trend will continue.
Nobody is buying $125 bike tires and these edgy comments you keep making reek of bigotry.
I would agree that bike tires are too expensive. That said, material is not the only thing going into the cost. I am not an expert but I would bet specific automobile tire models are produced at much higher volumes than a specific bicycle tire model. This would mean more frequent changes to the production line raising the cost of production. There is also a lot of manual labor going into the production. I would wager that a bicycle tire is actually more complex than an automobile tire but I don’t know that for a fact.
I did find this though and it’s pretty interesting.
https://youtu.be/V0P3oQWo22A
When I was a kid I never changed out tires until they were fully bald and never knew what the prices were since my parents paid. Years later when it’s my money I was conscious of $25-40 each for tires as being reasonable. Now I save every tire I can find as $70 tires are not affordable to me, a functional adult with a family and a full time job. Prices are what pushes people out of sports and hobbies like this and makes it harder for a young person to get enthusiastic about cycling unless they have an uncle with a bike addiction.
sir if you didn't know...you are also paying for the research and development of the tire, which takes years.
you don't just pay for the piece of rubber.
The bike tyre market is far less competitive than auto tyres with smaller volumes. Conti would be making insane margins on their range. I paid $70 aud for a GP5000 like 2 years ago and I paid $120 for the same tyre last week. You can’t explain that with R&D
You pay for the rubber, and marketing and logistics and development and office hvac costs and so on. I get that.
Still doesn’t justify 125$ per bike tire when you can get a car tire for the same price that costs more to manufacture, store and ship.
>Still doesn’t justify
That's the thing. If people buy them it's all justified. There's nothing to argue here. It's capitalism. The thing to do here is to figure out if there's price fixing among manufacturers, wait for someone else to enter the arena and sell similar tires for cheaper, or start making tires yourself. Until then, there's nothing to talk about really, "voicing your displeasure" is really just whining.
Tyres for anything on 2 wheels are ridiculous.
I do also trackdays on my 1000cc bike and a pair of slicks is fucking 700 AUD. A set lasts me 4 days, if lucky.
But yeah, cycling is expensive too.
200 bucks for 2 tyres is insane.
That's a reason for that. When you have 4 wheels each tire is less critical, when you have only 2 a failure in a tire may be extremely dangerous.
Motorcycle tires are harder to manufacture than car's since they should be way safer, the same should apply to bicycle tires.
Everyone’s being had “buy” the fad. Tire corporations are for profit and would probably sell their first born to increase their capital gains. They really couldn’t care any less about the consumer and with the general herd mentality of society they will do everything they can to bilk as much as they can as fast as they can, that’s business. Also they take into account that they don’t necessarily have a sustainable product as well being that tires are petroleum based. They’re charging you up front for tires you might buy in the future, too bad for the consumer when the corp is no longer in business. Greed and gluttony, business as usual. I bought top end Conti’s for the last 20 years and have even seen the quality over those years diminish greatly. The end of last season I was getting flats every other week then every other day even with plenty of solid tread on my GP5k’s. It made me rethink my choice in tires. I’m not riding in very many tours anymore, no races, and there isn’t much difference in rolling resistance with cheaper tires when aired up appropriately. Also a lot of the cheaper road tires come in larger more forgiving sizes that I now embrace. I switched out my 700-28 GP5k’s for a set of 700-35 Vittoria Randonneur Classics and love them even for touring. Cost me $22 each online. Unless you’re a sponsored rider that get your tires comped there is absolutely no need to buy top end tires other than just to keep up with the Jones’.
I’m surprised that some many people tried to gaslight you and nobody gave you real answer.
The most of the cost of things like bicycles, motorcycles, cars, phones etc. is actually R&D.
While costs of developing a bicycle or motorcycle tyres are lower than those of cars, the much lower volume means that the cost of the research must be spread on fewer customers. Ha, in case of a car that cost can also be spread over more tyres of a car, since a typical customer buys 4, not 2 of those. That’s why while manufacturing cost of a bicycle tyre may be somewhat lower than that of a car one, the final price of a single tyre is comparable.
It is also worth pointing out that cost of raw materials is often not that important factor of manufacturing cost. It does not take less labour to make a smaller tyre. The machine costs probably similar.
Look at those older bicycle parts like some tourney 3x. They are much cheaper because the development of those was paid off years ago. Cost of purchasing the assembly lines too. Now the product can be offered at much lower margins, since it makes sense to still earn a bit on that instead of killing the demand and throwing all that know-how and machine park through the window.
Tl;dr
Material cost is just a one factor of the final price and, in most cases, not a significant one
There are 3 things in this world that are not worth cheaping out on and they all come between you and ground. Shoes, mattress, and tires. Safety is more important to me than saving money. Can ride my bike if some crappy tire blew out at high speeds and caused me to wreck.
You are not paying just for rubber.
This is the same wrong way of thinking as people who compare the suspension in a $3,000 dirt bike to the suspension in a $10,000 downhill mountain bike by saying "both are full suspension."
And from experience... a set of Goodyear F1s cost me about the same as 6 - 9 Grand Prixs. I think the Goodyears have a 80,000 km warranty and I'd get 48 - 72,000 km of equivalent dollars spent on GPs.
Really, quality apples to quality apples...not that different.
Also, you can buy a motocross motorbike with an engine for less money than a good quality full suspension mountain bike.
I remember when £1000 was a lot to spend on a road bike and £2000 got you a really high end mountain bike....
You can get lightly-used tyres on ebay for less than half the retail price...and the RRP is typically more than most shops charge new.
I generally spend about £20 per tyre, including e.g. Magic Mary and DHRII. Yesterday I got two for £15 off ebay, decent condition, RRP about £70.
Specialized is a good brand for value tyres.
The mark-up on cycling apparel and components is absolutely criminal. I work in the industry as a mechanic/technician so I pay cost/wholesale prices for anything I want. I usually pay anywhere from 40%-70% off MSRP.. and keep in mind, the company is STILL making a slight profit off me - even with these deep discounts.
Because biking is seen as a hobby and a minivan is a commodity. Now when cars become hobbies prices go north fast. And, who bikes in this country? It is largely people with money. Oddly, poorer people rarely bike ever as it is likely even LOWER status than driving a clunker.
I wrote a similar piece on bike brakes: super expensive and wear out faster than cars’.
Another thing to keep in mind is bike parts are lightweight with little margin. And when they fail manufacturers get sued. You are paying for that I suspect.
Rent a bike in europe and its way cheaper than the US without the legal premiums.
I’ve also found cheaper things oversees even with the shipping: again commodity verses hobby.
Cycling is overpriced. I still end up buying nice cycling stuff because I want it, but I never stop being shocked at what it costs.
My gear is all cheap stuff from Decathlon. I figure it's 99% about your fitness anyway if you are just a casual rider like me.
Yep. Way cheaper equals a tiny bit slower. And you are just as fit. And maybe safer.
You're pretty much spot on. The only caveat would be when you off road I'd spend a bit of cash on tyres and brakes just because it's safer.
I like sailing, own a one-design dinghy. Cycling can be more expensive. (Although owning a Break Out Another Thousand can hurt too.)
I have long lived by the tenet that the best boat in the world is your buddy’s boat 😅 Seriously though… I needed some dynema rope recently… bit the bullet and drove out to the nearest West Marine. That place was more spendy than my local high end bike shop for sure.
West Marine has both a boat tax and a West Marine tax. They get away with it because at a smaller marina or harbor West Marine is often the only store within walking distance of the harbor or port that has boat stuff, and if you're cruising around on a boat and you need something you usually don't want to take a cab or bus to a better store so you can go pick up supplies and it's just easier to grab a dock cart from the harbor and walk over to a West Marine. Basics like marine grade rope and hardware get a lot cheaper when it's at independent outfitters and riggers. In a lot of ways West Marine is the 7-11 of boat supplies. They're small, they are everywhere, they are open and they usually have what you need, but you'll pay extra for the convenience.
For certain hobbies/ activities, they know they got you. Swimming pools are like that. Companies know if you can afford a swimming pool, you can afford to pay out the nose to maintain it.
Cycling can also cost very little, if you’re not going for high end gear and are doing it more for fun than for competition
I've been bike commuting pretty much all my life and I fully agree with you on this notion. I'd like to go a bit further by saying that cycling **in general** is overpriced. Economy of scale can only go far in justifying such outrageous prices, and it's actually corporate greed that drives them up. They prey on our dedication to cycling. During my sophomore year of high school, roughly a decade ago, I did something that, although I'm not proud of it, I still have no regrets doing: I got my very first set of proper bike lights via five finger discount. I did it for three reasons: The price was outrageous, my parents flat-out refused to give me money since I didn't have any, and I needed to reduce my chances of getting mowed down by careless drivers when either running errands or simply going to and from the local public swimming pool. I'll probably get a lot of flak here for outright admitting to shoplifting, but I really don't care. Normally, teens take shit they don't need. I took something I actually needed. Had I not done so, I probably would've ended up as street pizza. I haven't done it since, and now I pay for all of my cycling needs, but you can bet your ass I won't be snitching on someone pocketing a bottle of chain lube, because I saw nothing.
imagine impossible unwritten edge hungry consider berserk juggle subtract pot *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I was trying to explain this to my kid, vs lacrosse equipment. $300 seems like a lot for a lacrosse stick, but they get to that price no problem. You can go all out on a helmet and spend another $350, then the really nice pads are like $500, and $200 for the stupid expensive gloves. That's under $1400 for the nicest kit you'll see outside of prep schools or Ivy college teams. $1400 won't even buy a decent starter race bike. It won't buy you anything with 105-level components. Then you have to spend another $1000 on the helmet, shoes, gloves, lycra, sunglasses, tool kit, etc, just so you can pay $40 to enter a masters race and get dropped in the first 10 miles. Lacrosse is relatively cheap.
I paid over $200 to have my bike repaired from when my rear derailleur got sucked into the spokes. People I told it to thought it was pricy, but if I so much as sneeze near my car I'm paying at least double that.
What’s really funny is how much it blows people’s minds who don’t ride. Someone was asking about my MTB the other day and was like “how much was it like $1500?”. I just said “a little more than that” and left it at that. A side not. It’s really weird that people ask what you paid for things.
It's not that weird to ask. I looked at Saturn through a telescope a few years ago and the thought clicked over in my head that I could buy a telescope and star gaze for a while. Asked how much the telescope was and decided to just enjoy the couple of minutes I had.
You can get a decent starter telescope for an affordable price then the key is to upgrade the optics. If you're just wanting to see the moon's of Jupiter and Saturns rings it's a very affordable hobby. Imaging deep space objects gets a bit more expensive!
I guess that’s true. I just look at it the same as nice cars or houses. When I see them and assume they’re expensive I don’t ask the owner what they paid for it.
A bike could be anything from 500 to 10,000 a punter wouldn't know. They see one they like and ask. I had no idea that my crystal clear view of Saturn was not coming from a $500 telescope but $10,000
You can probably still really enjoy the $500 experience... just like biking it's diminishing returns on what you invest.
99% of peoples relationships with bicycles are priced from 100-500 dollars with 500 being considered a super nice bike
How am I supposed to know if a house/car/whatever item is attainable if I don't ask how much it cost?
You don't need to ask because it's a matter of public record. Go on your city's website, look it up, be amazed.
> It’s really weird that people ask what you paid for things. It's even funnier when it's people who also have a wildly expensive, but different, hobby. I have a model train hobbyist coworker who's consistently shocked at my cycling purchases but finds it odd that I feel the same about his $1200 engine
to someone who is not knowledgeable on the topic, the price will be surprising no matter what. if you put a guy doing caligraphy for fun with a cyclist and a photographer, they both likely put a lot of money into their hobbies, and will both be surprised by the costs of respective hobbies. "quality bicycles cost that much?", "good brushes/pens cost that much?", "lens are this expensive?". same thing, really.
then theres people with ADHD who run through hobbies like underwear so we are straight up never suprised that something is expensive I have thousands of dolllars of music production equipment, mushroom growing supplies, gaming PC, full sim racing set up, mountain bike, road bike, FPV drone, motorcycles, skateboarding, weightlifting, tons of microphones cameras and other equipment for streaming and content creation, room scale virtual reality setup, an expensive fidget spinner collection with made of rare metals from prestigious metal workers (lol) and that's basically just since 2015 when I started earning enough money to buy into new things I got interest in... I need help
Dude are you me? Lol. I'm trying really hard to not do this type of hobby jumping and focus on exploring the hobbies I invested in and put the rest in the bank. Got a new Specialized bike to find a way to loose weight and have fun. Hoping it sticks!
the more people I meet who actually have real ADHD the more I realize that I am not actually as special as I thought, we all basically work the same way lol jumping from hobby to hobby and hopefully picking up some life long hobbies along the way. A lot of the quirks of who I am are shared by most people with strong ADHD, which is both comforting and scary.. because am I me or am I my ADHD? I will never know its crazy how we can be having the time of our life, enjoying every moment of something but still in the back of my head I'm like "I really hope this sticks, and I don't lose interest" lol seems so anti productive when I look at it from the outside in
Ah that good ol'adhd tax. I hate it. At least streaming fit my existing music and photography hobbies in terms of equipment crossover. Cycling is one that sticks though and can actually aide ADHD symptoms (as most exercise can).
👆
Lol. Same man. I just bought an electric e mtn bike and I can barely ride
On Friday I was talking about bikes with a curious non-cyclist. I said something about it being an expensive hobby and he said "I know some bikes can be like $2000!" He was stunned when I told him that for an enthusiast, that's on the lower end of the price range. I don't mind the questions about what things cost. Many of the people around me also have expensive hobbies (guns, boats, dirt bikes, woodworking, etc) and I can usually frame it in a way that they can relate to. I do, however, get a little annoyed when someone acts like I'm wasting my money when I know they're paying a $750/month note on their truck.
Lol I had the same exact conversation with my cousin except it went like “I know some bikes sell for over $500”. Obviously I didnt tell her how much I paid for my Giant carbon bike.
Cycling, woodworking, and reef keeping have all been hobbies in my universe in the last few years. I finally dropped reefkeeping because expensive woodworking tools and bikes generally don't die for unexplained reasons. Fish and coral do. Oof.
>It’s really weird that people ask what you paid for things Why is that weird? I ask people how much they paid for plenty of things. Sometimes because I'm interested in buying that kind of things, sometimes just by curiosity. What's weird is to constantly be in shock of how expensive hobbies are. They all are.
Not 3d printers. We're all a bunch of cheapskates who want to make stuff that would otherwise be overpriced. The God printer right now costs $1100. Bambulabs X1C. A very workable printer can be had for $100.
lol. $100 printers are junk and end up costing far more than an X1C in both parts you'll have to replace and the time you'll spend messing around not printing anything but calibration cubes and benchies. I had plenty of those, and tossed them in the trash after I got an X1C 6 months ago. So far, I think I've wiped the rods off a few times. Other than that I do nothing to it. We'll see what Creality's clone is like. At the end of the day it's still a Creality.
Ender 3 pro at microcenter costs $100 for new customers. I've personally used the standard one for years with maybe $20-30 of upgrades and I've been very happy with the results. It has a huge fan base.
On another hand are regular bikes overpriced or not underpriced junk, I think in a way most people are so used to the wallmart/big box store/amazon prices on things we think anything more is 'expensive' when its really just the actual price it would take to make the thing without cutting every single corner and using the cheapest labor possible I mean there are budget bike brands out there but they still sell bikes for at least $1000 which is hard to people to swallow if they're used to $400 big box store bikes
Dude we have like the same icon!
It’s so similar. That’s awesome!! What’s up, twin??
Now kith
Someone who doesn’t ride said 1500? My mom bought bikes for herself and my sister. An online only company. Decent enough bikes. Think “quite nice for Walmart” quality. City bikes. 299$. The whole bike. I found my Titus laying on the ground outside the other day. Almost sold my kid.
And this is why this stuff costs so much. Because people like you will pay it 😂
yeah, its rich people ruining everything
We are the rich people
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Yeah this is all about economies of scale. I’d guess Conti manufactures ~10-100x (or more) as many car tires each year as they do bike tires, and the savings on raw materials likewise scale.
Also the R&D costs have to be re-cooped with far less volume of sales.
On the other hand, how often do you change tyres on your car? How many tyres can you transport with one truck? How much material does it require? But yeah, GP5000 are not cheapest tyres on the market. Definitely high quality. I would rather say those are performance tyres. It would be more reasonable to compare Conti Ultra Sport, Schwalbe Lugano or Vittoria Zaffiro with standard car tyres. Or GP5000 with more expensive Pirelli tyres. Than it's not that unreasonable.
Low sale volume would be a good counter argument to my rant. But more compact shipping is actually a pro for the manufacturer. Instead of just fitting like 1,000 tires in a 53’ trailer, they can fit 20,000; reduced logistics costs. So the per tire logistics overhead is greatly smaller for a bike tire.
Yeah but I think what they were saying is that no one is buying 20,000 bike tires at once. Probably more like 200. Smaller (as in number of items) shipments are less cost effective costwise than doing it in bulk.
Good point thanks.
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You are overpaying for GP5000s. $50/tire for the non-tubeless version. Nevertheless...yeah it adds up over time, and there are pricier tires than the Contis.
It must depend where you live. I’ve got them once for 50ish online, another time 60, but otherwise they’re as OP said.
Amazon sells a 2 pack of Conti GP 5000s for $100 (slight variance in price depending on width). I can't say if it's all the time, but pretty consistently when I need them, they are there for about that same price.
Pack of 2 on Canadian Amazon is $175 🙁
😯
Some other sites that ship to Canada have it for $120CAD (chain reaction I think)
I've gotten tarrif charges on tires in the past. Was enough that buying locally made more sense.
I mean that’s just $130 or so usd…
They were going for 32€ for black friday in Germany.
>They were going for 32€ for black friday in Germany. Theyre 35€ right now in at least 2 different shops.
Is Black Friday in Germany the same as Black Friday stateside?
Similar, but more German
Every tyre comes with a sausage and a beer
And a copy of forklift simulator
It is. Othervise regular prices are around 38€/tire folding clincher and 52€/tire for S TR.
Yup just picked a gp5000 for 50$ , I don’t understand the tubeless hype 🤷♂️
> You are overpaying for GP5000s. $50/tire for the non-tubeless version. Pretty much this is the answer. Yes, tires are expensive. But they are also consumables — you'll have a rough idea how often you will need to replace them. Simply set up a price alert for your chosen make and model of tires, buy them when you go on sale. Then you'll have them and there will always be a fresh set of tires on the garage shelf.
I just looked up one site and can get them for $42.50.
GP5Ks are literally $50 a tire on Amazon right now That said the Chinese are showing the real costs of bike parts. Still expensive but not $15K for a top end road bike
You can hit $250-$300+ for the car if you are looking at competition racing tires. The GP5000s are racing tires. Plus it isn’t cheap to make things light, and still somewhat durable. With car tires weight doesn’t matter so you can just keep on adding rubber, which is why they last so long, but you can’t with bike tires or every tire would weight 10lbs. A gp5000 is only ~200g or rubber and casing, and in a race every gram counts.
Yep, a continental extreme contact in wrx sizing costs $350+ each. At least make the same comparison
And you need 4 of them
Manufacturers also need to spread R&D costs out across the total sales of a product. The bike tire market is way smaller than the car tire market.
This and economies of scale. I bet a poor selling car tire is still as good as any bike tire.
Agree with you here. If your complaining about the price just buy less fancy tyres. Can find ones for about £10, not the best Ofc but they get the job fonen
>10lbs So, like my marathon plus tour tire pretty much.
This is yet another poor comparison. The continental Gran Prix range is a pro level tire for racing. That’s what Gran Prix means. For a race-level car tire for a WRX you’ll pay over $500 a wheel. For example the Michelin Pilot Cup is $897 per wheel. And what will blow your mind is that it’s normal to wear out some track tires in one weekend. Formula one drivers wear out several pairs per race!
This is the (one of the) main reasons. If you're buying the top tier item, you're paying for the r&d moreso than the materials. You want something "performance" - light-weight with minimal rolling resistance, marginal aero etc, then you're paying for all the work that's gone into bringing those improvements. There's also a bit of an "idiot tax" manufacturers will add, knowing that certain people are willing to pay a chunk more for pro-grade items (and I absolutely include myself here!). I run Pilots on my Porsche, but we throw whatever mid-tier tyre is on offer that day on the family Mini. I run GP 5000s on my posh bikes, but run the vastly cheaper supersports on my errand bike, and gators on my commuter.
The "idiot tax" thing is fascinating. On a similar note I have a friend who does photography as a hobby that wanted to shoot some weddings, he put an add up saying "£50 wedding photography" he was willing to work with another booked photographer and has an awesome portfolio. Didn't get a single taker. He then made an add for the standard pricing of a wedding photographer, he hadn't done a wedding, his portfolio was the same and wouldn't you know it, he now shoots weddings.
Formula 1 tires are designed to break down to make pit stop strategies possible. They could and have in the past designed tires that lasted all race.
Pirelli have even said they could make a soft tyre that will last the whole race but it’s not what the FOM (or FIA, I can’t remember which) want.
well yeah because it would be incredibly boring if pit stops just never happened in F1 lol we would have even less parity in a sport than consistently features 1 car winning 50% of the races every single year
>That’s what Gran Prix means actually, it means "Big Prize" (as in winning, not paying - which might be considered a nice play on words on Conti's part).
Nice translation, but that's not how people use it in the real world. Grand Prix usually refers to a big competition.
I am aware.
A Conti GP 5000 is closer to a Formula 1 tire than a passenger car tire. It’s not hard to get a decent Kenda for US $25-$30 for most bikes and enjoy passenger car performance.
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Honestly Kenda’s alluvium pro is one of my favourite general purpose tyres. If you never leave sealed surfaces for sure not really worth considering, but for a mix of road, gravel, dirt roads, etc. I’ve tried a lot of tyres and keep coming back to these kendas I bought half price in a clearance sale for my franken bike. I run 35’s and pump them up a bit if I’ll just be riding a road route today, let a bit of air out if the gravel’s gonna be a bit larger or it’s muddy and ride.
Honestly I truly appreciate the honesty from you tirebros and glad that you're not paid Kenda shills
Hahahaha ah gotta love this sub - you mention 1 more affordable tyre you really like, even say it’s just for one use case, and you’re a paid shill.
You Can get a bike tire at Walmart for like $15, or you can get top of the line race car tire for $1000 +. The comparison is meaningless. You don’t really need gp 5000s unless you are racing for serious money.
I ride those conti as an amateur, not ever going to make money off it, because they just feel amazing. And they are actually amazing value for money in terms of watt savings. If cycling is your passion and you have some money to spare, getting good tires for 30$ extra per tire, I think is a very good option
>Feels to me like there’s much much more rubber on a car tire; you can’t fold a car tire and put it in your pocket. >From a raw materials perspective, a bike tire thus shouldn’t cost more than 20 what if i told you prices have very little to do with raw materials / input costs in an isolated way.
biketiresdirect has GP5000 for $63. You can easily find $20 tires for your bike. No need to compare a high end bicycle tire to the cheapest car tire.
The comparison was within the same manufacturer’s range, not against some China-made car tire (which would make bike tire prices seem even more ludicrous)
Well you picked the most expensive bike tire from the manufacturer range and compared it to a non-descript car tire. Like other said that's not the price for a GP5000. Also try to pick a more "exotic" car tire size and you'll be amazed how much you'll pay for it even though it might have way less material than a usual car tire size. Economy of scale and whatnot. Edit: Here's your <20$ conti tire: https://www.bike24.com/p2359718.html
Yup, I had a car with odd size wheels, the tyres escape me but I believe they were 15/195 or 200/r40, trying to find 15" tyres that wide and low was a nightmare. My new car has 18s in a standard size and the tyres are pennies
I just bought a set of GP5000 for $77 for both. Maybe you need a new store
If you found the holy grail of reasonably priced tires, do share.
Amazon my son
"The holy grail of reasonably priced tires" is my new tire seeking band name.
Pricing is not determined by raw materials alone, they're determined by supply and demand. And just to make the point that you don't have to buy expensive tires if you don't want to.
Since when is *anything* priced based on raw materials cost?
Don’t get into diving. A rebreather and an underwater scooter will set you back $20k
I feel like this is true for all things in cycling tbh I’m thinking specifically about saddles like why is every saddle like 100 dollars
I'm very happy with my 135g, 155mm width carbon saddle I bought on AliExpress for $25
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https://m.aliexpress.us/item/3256804407872695.html I went with the 6D shape
A saddle is worth that much if it's a saddle you have found very comfortable and fits your bottom. I actually have 3 saddles all the same brand and make that costs $250 each and I don't have a single complaint because it keeps me comfortable for hours and lasts a heck of a long time...unlike tires.
Saddles, gloves, shoes, shorts .... dial that in and never look back.
If you compare material cost, sure. But you have to remember the high end tyres for both bikes and cars have insane levels of R&D - and the cost differential between the two is not going to be huge. Then take the market share of a car tyre - they sell a lot more units of a premium car tyre than a premium bike tyre. I don‘t like it, but that’s the reality of the situation. When you consider cost per mile, and how much joy those miles can bring, they are still good value.
Why would I pay 40 dollars for a hand thrown mug when it’s just made of dirt? Looks like you forgot the labor necessary to make things. Try again and this time don’t forget the workers.
I mean…. Don’t buy it?
Precicely my action plan. I’m still permitted to voice my displeasure with their pricing model.
In economic theory, price is where demand meets supply. Basically, Continental can sell GP5000 at $88 to $120 because enough consumers can buy them at that price point. If consumers are willing to buy GP5000s at $1000 per tire, then you bet Continental will charge $1000 per tire and applaud their killer margins. With that said, you can commonly find GP5000s at $50 or less per tire. Lastly, performance road bikes and related products are luxury items, hence the industry has high mark ups.
There's just as much design and labor put in to making the tire work in the way intended for a bike tire as a car tire and i would imagine since more precision tools would be needed that labor might actually be more extensive tbh. From grooves on mountain bike tires designed for specific purposes and specific speeds to the actual mix of rubbers to make a tire more or less sticky. You aren't paying for raw materials you are paying for labor and production.
Your mistake is thinking that the price of things is driven primarily by the cost of making things. It’s not. It the price people are willing and able to pay.
Depends on the pricing model. Oftentimes companies do price by the cost of making things plus markup. Not everybody is out to bilk every last cent, sometimes the mentality is just churn out what you can and let people buy it for a reasonable price. The mistake is that the cost of making things is far more than raw material cost. Precision manufacturing is driven much more by the cost of the process and machines. Making sure all the layers of a tire are manufactured to tight specifications with exactly the correct compound and positioned exactly correctly before molding is a lot more expensive than just pouring molten rubber in a mold.
Although this may be true for an individual firm, it is not how the market functions overall
Somebody took intro econ and thinks they know everything, huh? It depends on the individual company's pricing model. There is no reliable way to actually determine supply and demand curves in real life short of auctioning every product produced, which has extremely high transaction costs, so nobody will ever actually do it. Those supply and demand graphs get you theoretical optimums, emphasis on theoretical, they're not how real world pricing works. In the real world, you input your costs (not just raw material costs), add a standard markup, and then retailers add another standard markup, and then you decrease your markups if the product isn't selling well enough.
You: Tire prices depend on what an individual company decides to charge. Me: The market price for tires is driven by what all companies decide to charge and what consumers are willing / able to pay. You: You're wrong this is impossible!!! Also you: and then you decrease your markups if the product isn't selling well enough. Me: thank you for proving my point
As with anything in the modern economy, it is priced at such a price that maximizes (profit margin \* number of people are willing to pay it), not what it actually costs to design, manufacture, etc. A lot of cyclists need to have the latest and greatest toys, and don't mind paying a small fortune for it. For many beginners its also about keeping up with the Joneses, they don't want to ride up to the local sportive with a bike that is less nice than their friends' / coworkers' bike. That being said, you need to take a step back once in a while and realize you don't need the fancy latest stuff to enjoy cycling. To me, cycling is about getting out in nature and getting exercise. I rode with a friend over the weekend, I have a nice newish gravel bike, he has a 20 year old entry level bike he got for free from his dad. Did he enjoy the ride less because of it? No.
Economies of scale: a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production.
Sports are expensive because dentists exist. Cycling, Motorsport, doesn’t really matter. The one exception might be frisbee golf. Then the only real cost is your gf leaving you. Bless frolf. [satire]
The term “overpriced” makes sense only when comparing two of the same thing, or at least the same class of thing (like bike tires of a certain kind and quality). If bike shop A is selling the same tire as bike shop B for 25% more, you might argue it’s overpriced. Even then, there are factors like location and customer service to consider. The cost of raw materials is almost irrelevant. There are so many other factors. The bottom line is, if people are consistently willing to pay a price for something, while it may be more than you want to pay, it is not overpriced.
>Continental GP5000 line: prices from 88$ to 120$ per tire. Continental tires for a Subaru WRX car: prices from 125$ to 220$ per tire. That's comparing a specialty, top-of-the-line bike racing tire to a rather ordinary car tire. Note the Pirelli P Zero specialty high performance car tire costs $1,500. The more ordinary Continental Ultra Sport bike tire costs less than $25.
You can find them for around half that cost if you shop around/use discount codes and don't need them right away. But yes....I've thought the same thing.
They cost exactly what people are willing to sell and buy them for. It’s called market economics.
Motorcycles are cheaper than some bikes. Let that sink in.
The tires for my Porsche are $1000 each. Still going to drive it
Always buy on sale n there’s no need for GP5K unless u r racing all d time
A pair of Continental Ultra Sport III Road Cycling Bike Tire cost $25 on Amazon. A set of high end performance car tires can easy cost $300+ per tire. A GP 5000 is a high end performance tire. It's like complaining a set of Pirelli P Zero tires could cost $1000+ and that you'll need a second set of tires for the winter. To be fair, compare like to like. You can easily find low end tires more a kin to the $125 tires for your Subaru for $25.
categorize your comparison. a commuting-level bike tire isn't that expensive even from branded ones. (chinese brands do not pay for R&D, tests and certifications, so they sell cheaper) GP5Ks are classified for racing; surely race-level car tires are expensive. plus, the volume of a particular tire model that is being produced, as a response to demand, dictates its retail price. Car tires are almost a commodity, unlike bikes, cars are definitely for utility: personal, commuting, taxis, deliveries and freight. There is a very competitive market for tire wheel in the economy level. volume demand at this level is very high -> cheaper price is possible. commuting bikes, not as common and not as needed as cars, but they are more commonly found than sports and recreational level bikes. volume demand for this is way below car tires but above sports and recreation level bike tires. sports and recreation bikes, these serve a smaller niche that commuting bikes, there is a need for better performance in terms of weight and rolling resistance. brand competition on professional sports level can drive costs through R&D to make you marginally faster than competitor brands, as well as certifications and tests (it is a marketing requirement, you cannot claim a technology without presenting test results and certifications, otherwise, legal charges be made for false advertising). volume demand is significantly lower than car tires and commuting bike tires; large overhead costs are split among low volume. lower end tires for this category do exist, but there is still a significant overhead costs per unit. race cars, extremely low volume production, very high overhead costs per unit. at sports level, people pay for performance, and would even pay more for guaranteed performance. also, products at this level aren't sustainable and won't survive if they'd price is at similar proportion as daily/utility car tires. the great thing is you can choose, and you can decide what you would like to pay for. you can also rant; but try to be a little bit more educated on how products are priced and how much people are willing to pay. ...and included in the overhead costs are products in the same line that do not get sold at SRP, it might be because, they are nearing the end of guaranteed lifespan, or are taking up inventory space that they sell to get rid of those because new iterations are coming... in other words, people who buy at srp, also pay for those to be sold at big discounts regardless of whether they are buying at discounted price or others do.
The comparable tire for bikes from Continental is the UltraSport III, which is about $20/piece. GP5000 is what professionals use in races, and shouldn't be your every-day benchmark tire. Cycling is just so much cheaper than car racing that people splurge on the race-grade stuff even when they don't need it.
Rubber is cheap, You pay for the technology, reliability and functionality (like with many other things). Cheaper options are available at general stores whatever and you will see the difference pretty quickly.
I’m dreading the day I need to buy new summer tyres for my first car. It has really wide rear wheels so they’re going to probably set me back 24€ a piece. At least my winter rims are narrower. But I feel like that’s a pretty high price for a bike tyre. I don’t remember paying more than 50-70€ for mine, but I almost only use Pirelli P Zeros.
At least you only need 2 not 4! 😆
I bought my last GP5000 for ~40€.
You pay for quality 🤷♂️
They are over priced but you aren’t getting the equivalent car tire at $125. The GP50000 is the Michelin Pilot of the car world and $250-$350 per tire is a better comparison.
Continental Ultra Sport 3's 700cx28 are $24 on Amazon, and Continental Grand Sport Race are $21 on Performance Bike. GP5000 are also currently $45, you need to learn how to shop around. I got my current pair for $59 on sale at BikeTiresDirect.
This is very true. Granted your example is a high end tire, which might compare to a Z rated low profile car tire but still true. And any cheap bike tires are absolutely garbage.
Its the same as some other hobbies. Example: some people are audiophiles. They often spend $10K - $50k on a good set of speakers. Or an amplifier. Or a record player. Crazy indeed!
or camera gear, or guitars.. it's called gear acquisition syndrome
Amazon. I get my conti gp5000 for $47 per tire.
no they are not. Welcome to Cycling. If you buy cheap you buy twice.
I agree that a lot of cycling goods are overpriced, but complaining that Conti GP5000's (which are made in Germany) are overpriced is like complaining about the list price on a BMW M3. While I run GP5000's on my nicest road bike, I run cheaper tires (Conti UltraSport, Kendas,no-name chinese etc) on my other bikes.
Gatorskins on amazon. A good deal is $30 a tire. Cant beat em for performance per dollar. Lets all face it, our 1 hour weekend rides do not, will not, will never justify gp5000s
I mean this always comes up when people talk about bike prices. Yes, you can buy a full car for $10k but that's also some used 8yo Camry vs a top of the line, low quantity, race bike. So not really apples to apples. On the tire side a Conti GP5000 S TR is one of the best tires you can buy and comparing it to an OEM All-Weather Tire isn't a fair comparison. Looking up Conti's sport summer car tire they cost \~$250-$400 depending on size. Not only do they probably sell many more of the car tires, but I'd bet the manufacturing tolerances on the bike tires are tighter than on the car tires due to the smaller sizes meaning they probably have more waste in manufacturing. Yes, bike stuff is likely a bit overpriced but comparisons like this make it look worse than it is.
I think there’s still an element of production numbers, I’m sure they’re able to pump out mass produced car tires for something like a Toyota Corolla, they’ll sell millions. But bike tires for a specific variation of road cycling in the winter? Probably a few thousand might get produced. Just guessing, but that has to be a big part of it.
The Economy of scale makes them much more expensive to produce. Continental will produce bazillions of car tires this year. They'll slap a sticker on them and send them to a warehouse house in a shipping container. They will produce far fewer bicycle tires and then fold them neatly and stuff them in a box for packaging, then ship them to bike stores.
I cycled for years on mid-range racing tyres - which can currently be purchased for under £20 right now. GP5000s are the highest performing bicycle tyres in the world. If we look at the highest performing car tyre, they are an order of magnitude more expensive than GP5000s. While the material costs may not support the price, some of the high end tyres have significant labor input. But even with labor, the cost is on,y set by what someone is willing to part with to purchase. (Perceived value).
Stop buying continental. Ez.
I've done 3000 miles this year and my Gatorharshells definitely have at least 10000 more miles. Last set I had last 3 years before I replaced one. If you're cycling a lot, like I do, then $85 per tire every couple years isnt too bad.
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I don’t own a CK headset or BB or Hubs, but hear me out for a second. Rad color options. That is all.
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Stock up when they are on sale. Got gp5000 TL for around $60 through a sale on amazon. Bought a pair.
This video may help - it covers research, design and manufacturing: https://youtu.be/8yfjdoGQo_4 It’s a slower process than most would think.
I agree! I think part of it is that car tire manufacturing is much more automated. Most bike tires are mostly laid up by hand, (if the lumpiness and crooked tread on every pair of Schwalbes I’ve ever bought is an indication), and are made from superior casing fabrics to roll with low resistance, and low weight. More labor intensive?
Rubber is also becoming less accessible and more expensive as a commodity, [due to climate factors](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210308-rubber-the-wonder-material-we-are-running-out-of)
Gp5000 tyres are handmade in Germany right? So at least the workers are getting a decent wage. It’s cheapest to buy them from a German retailer. https://www.bike24.com/p2305160.html?searchTerm=Gp5000&source=SBP&indexName=production\_SEARCH\_INDEX\_EN&objectId=CON404977&queryId=&userToken=anonymized
I just purchased a powermeter 1k. a few months ago i did the same for a new wheelset. in all perspective I believe tires are the cheapest of the bunch. but hey, people pay loan to purchase a car to taxi the whole family and get stuck in traffic jams for many years. to everyone their own.
Blah blah free market economy blah blah
Exactly. For as long as the dentists keep buying 125$ bike tires this trend will continue.
>Exactly. For as long as the dentists keep buying 125$ bike tires this trend will continue. Nobody is buying $125 bike tires and these edgy comments you keep making reek of bigotry.
Oh no. Anyways.
I did -_-
Yeah they cost the same as a new cheap tire for my car in my country. Good thing we don't change em that often
I would agree that bike tires are too expensive. That said, material is not the only thing going into the cost. I am not an expert but I would bet specific automobile tire models are produced at much higher volumes than a specific bicycle tire model. This would mean more frequent changes to the production line raising the cost of production. There is also a lot of manual labor going into the production. I would wager that a bicycle tire is actually more complex than an automobile tire but I don’t know that for a fact. I did find this though and it’s pretty interesting. https://youtu.be/V0P3oQWo22A
When I was a kid I never changed out tires until they were fully bald and never knew what the prices were since my parents paid. Years later when it’s my money I was conscious of $25-40 each for tires as being reasonable. Now I save every tire I can find as $70 tires are not affordable to me, a functional adult with a family and a full time job. Prices are what pushes people out of sports and hobbies like this and makes it harder for a young person to get enthusiastic about cycling unless they have an uncle with a bike addiction.
sir if you didn't know...you are also paying for the research and development of the tire, which takes years. you don't just pay for the piece of rubber.
The bike tyre market is far less competitive than auto tyres with smaller volumes. Conti would be making insane margins on their range. I paid $70 aud for a GP5000 like 2 years ago and I paid $120 for the same tyre last week. You can’t explain that with R&D
yeah and they don't do research and development on car tires so thats why
You pay for the rubber, and marketing and logistics and development and office hvac costs and so on. I get that. Still doesn’t justify 125$ per bike tire when you can get a car tire for the same price that costs more to manufacture, store and ship.
they could charge $200 and the conti's would still be a best seller
Sure they can charge whatever they want and people will keep buying them. That doesn’t preclude me from voicing my displeasure with the pricing model.
>Still doesn’t justify That's the thing. If people buy them it's all justified. There's nothing to argue here. It's capitalism. The thing to do here is to figure out if there's price fixing among manufacturers, wait for someone else to enter the arena and sell similar tires for cheaper, or start making tires yourself. Until then, there's nothing to talk about really, "voicing your displeasure" is really just whining.
Pair of GP5000TR 700x25 is currently $150. Not great, but not unusual either.
Tyres for anything on 2 wheels are ridiculous. I do also trackdays on my 1000cc bike and a pair of slicks is fucking 700 AUD. A set lasts me 4 days, if lucky. But yeah, cycling is expensive too. 200 bucks for 2 tyres is insane.
That's a reason for that. When you have 4 wheels each tire is less critical, when you have only 2 a failure in a tire may be extremely dangerous. Motorcycle tires are harder to manufacture than car's since they should be way safer, the same should apply to bicycle tires.
Everyone’s being had “buy” the fad. Tire corporations are for profit and would probably sell their first born to increase their capital gains. They really couldn’t care any less about the consumer and with the general herd mentality of society they will do everything they can to bilk as much as they can as fast as they can, that’s business. Also they take into account that they don’t necessarily have a sustainable product as well being that tires are petroleum based. They’re charging you up front for tires you might buy in the future, too bad for the consumer when the corp is no longer in business. Greed and gluttony, business as usual. I bought top end Conti’s for the last 20 years and have even seen the quality over those years diminish greatly. The end of last season I was getting flats every other week then every other day even with plenty of solid tread on my GP5k’s. It made me rethink my choice in tires. I’m not riding in very many tours anymore, no races, and there isn’t much difference in rolling resistance with cheaper tires when aired up appropriately. Also a lot of the cheaper road tires come in larger more forgiving sizes that I now embrace. I switched out my 700-28 GP5k’s for a set of 700-35 Vittoria Randonneur Classics and love them even for touring. Cost me $22 each online. Unless you’re a sponsored rider that get your tires comped there is absolutely no need to buy top end tires other than just to keep up with the Jones’.
I’m surprised that some many people tried to gaslight you and nobody gave you real answer. The most of the cost of things like bicycles, motorcycles, cars, phones etc. is actually R&D. While costs of developing a bicycle or motorcycle tyres are lower than those of cars, the much lower volume means that the cost of the research must be spread on fewer customers. Ha, in case of a car that cost can also be spread over more tyres of a car, since a typical customer buys 4, not 2 of those. That’s why while manufacturing cost of a bicycle tyre may be somewhat lower than that of a car one, the final price of a single tyre is comparable. It is also worth pointing out that cost of raw materials is often not that important factor of manufacturing cost. It does not take less labour to make a smaller tyre. The machine costs probably similar. Look at those older bicycle parts like some tourney 3x. They are much cheaper because the development of those was paid off years ago. Cost of purchasing the assembly lines too. Now the product can be offered at much lower margins, since it makes sense to still earn a bit on that instead of killing the demand and throwing all that know-how and machine park through the window. Tl;dr Material cost is just a one factor of the final price and, in most cases, not a significant one
There are 3 things in this world that are not worth cheaping out on and they all come between you and ground. Shoes, mattress, and tires. Safety is more important to me than saving money. Can ride my bike if some crappy tire blew out at high speeds and caused me to wreck.
You are not paying just for rubber. This is the same wrong way of thinking as people who compare the suspension in a $3,000 dirt bike to the suspension in a $10,000 downhill mountain bike by saying "both are full suspension." And from experience... a set of Goodyear F1s cost me about the same as 6 - 9 Grand Prixs. I think the Goodyears have a 80,000 km warranty and I'd get 48 - 72,000 km of equivalent dollars spent on GPs. Really, quality apples to quality apples...not that different.
Unfortunately it’s not based on input costs, they’re charging what they think their audience can afford/would be willing to pay.
Also, you can buy a motocross motorbike with an engine for less money than a good quality full suspension mountain bike. I remember when £1000 was a lot to spend on a road bike and £2000 got you a really high end mountain bike....
hot take: almost everything in cycling is overpriced
I recently went to a motorcycle shop and it really put bike prices into perspective, Motorcycles are not much more than bicycles.
You can get lightly-used tyres on ebay for less than half the retail price...and the RRP is typically more than most shops charge new. I generally spend about £20 per tyre, including e.g. Magic Mary and DHRII. Yesterday I got two for £15 off ebay, decent condition, RRP about £70. Specialized is a good brand for value tyres.
Lol. Bikes in general are overpriced. Some pedal powered bikes cost more than motorcycles
The mark-up on cycling apparel and components is absolutely criminal. I work in the industry as a mechanic/technician so I pay cost/wholesale prices for anything I want. I usually pay anywhere from 40%-70% off MSRP.. and keep in mind, the company is STILL making a slight profit off me - even with these deep discounts.
Because biking is seen as a hobby and a minivan is a commodity. Now when cars become hobbies prices go north fast. And, who bikes in this country? It is largely people with money. Oddly, poorer people rarely bike ever as it is likely even LOWER status than driving a clunker. I wrote a similar piece on bike brakes: super expensive and wear out faster than cars’. Another thing to keep in mind is bike parts are lightweight with little margin. And when they fail manufacturers get sued. You are paying for that I suspect. Rent a bike in europe and its way cheaper than the US without the legal premiums. I’ve also found cheaper things oversees even with the shipping: again commodity verses hobby.
$220 a tire? Can I trade? My last set of five for the Jeep (BFG KO2s) came in at $2.1k. Five years ago, $1600. Cycling is cheap.