Buy a fake, risk death, support slavery – says bike industry

Buying fakes and buying legitimate gear online are very different things regardless of how they might affect your job security. The pros and cons of online shopping are a completely different argument.

How did this turn from an advisory article to an attack on a particular brand that once sponsored one of many hundreds (if not thousands) of cheaters...Oh that's right we are on the internet . (as a side note, I have a particularly high level of hate for Armstrong for personal reasons)

I have to agree with the Trek Lady, and I suggest some of you need to listen to what she said on Velo Cast (I think it was velo cast) first before making further digs. Furthermore if we stopped buying products from companies that sponsored cheats the whole industry would collapse and we would be getting around on roller skates.

I have been a victim of counterfeit products, and I tell you its heart wrenching when your item arrives after months of saving and scraping only to find its a cheap knock off.

Same thing happened to Schwinn with Giant.

It's worth reminding people occasionally that cheap knock off goods subscribe to the rule of 'theres no such thing as a free lunch' - someone ends up paying, be it the employees in crap conditions, the intellectual property owners, or the end consumers.

Ironically, we are conditioned to want want want by the very companies that are complaining about people buying the counterfeit versions of their goods.

It doesn't make it right to buy those knock-off goods, but as a society we want everything now, and the big brands add their weight to that.

Carbon frame manufacture is not a cottage industry. Even under sweatshop conditions, it would be more expensive to make counterfeit frames than to buy mass produced frames at the factory gate. The vast majority of branded frames come out of a small number of factories in the Far East and are re-badged by the suppliers. The 'counterfeiters' simply rip-off the branding. If you buy an un-branded frame, or a lesser known brand, it will have come from the same factories but you are not paying for a name. Perhaps the answer is to buy your frame and components separately and build your own bike from scratch.

There are two sides to this whole question - one is about the actual technologies that may be found in fake frames and the economics of their manufacture - that's the area in which I have some knowledge.

The other is the legal and quasi-legal question about how buying products branded to a company but which have no provenance from that company - these are also moral questions - and in these areas I can only comment that I abhor fakes as they are theft, for all of the reasons outlined in many of the posts above.

On the materials side of life, though ...This an old, old debate when it comes to composites.

The plain fact of the matter is, until it fails, the only guy or guys who knows what was under the pretty composite skin and the paintwork, is the dude or dudes who put it there. It's extremely difficult to determine the exact composition of these types of product post-manufacture. Of course, if the design and manufacturing are done correctly and useage is within the specified purpose & limits of the item, only a fraction of a percentage of the production are ever likely to fail ... and then, it is yet more unlikely that the failure will be catastrophic, as correct design addresses this.

The bigger producers, making under contract to the Treks, Specializeds and Pinarellos of this world will have QC staff from within those companies looking over their shoulders with great attention to ensure that their design and manufacturing criteria are followed. The shop floor will actively feed back in these areas, too. These QC and compliance guys will also do their best to prevent knock-offs appearing from out-of-life or otherwise unsatisfactory moulds or through any other source / route.

These guys are not omniscient however, so we do see, from time to time, fakes of many very good products (and it's not just frames), made with very questionable lay-up schedules, from material that may and may not have been correctly stored for indeterminate periods of time ... and the processing in terms of exactly how the product has then been autoclaved, purged of excess resin etc may and may not have followed the original designer's schedules.

With the advent of 3D printing, there are even ways, now, in which access to a mould can be drastically cut cost-wise BUT ... the structural integrity of a composite product is a function of shape, material and lay-up ... so failures in copies, as they may be deficient in one or more of these areas, are, relatively-speaking, common.

How do I know this? I've seen frames fail and sawn them up and looked at the jointing techniques - these were definitely NOT out of any credible factory, certainly not the one that they purported to come from. I have seen others where a simple volume and displacement test (never mind the evidence of my own eyes) showed to have very high percentages of glass fibre and I have seen catastrophic failure that could not happen were the lay-up schedules as prescribed by the frame's original designer followed.

Yes, all manufacturers will test the envelope with retail price - but understand this - they are businesses and it is their job to make as much money for their shareholders as they can, whilst holding onto their intellectual property, reputation and customer base in the process.

Frame manufacture if it is done correctly, no matter what the material, is no licence to print money - the bigger brands know this and manage their profitability to give an acceptable overall ROI whilst creating, through sponsorship and other marketing channels, the aspiration to own their product. What the knock-offs do is to undermine this as well as potentially (and that is one thing that has to be stressed) endangering life and limb.

If your "Brand Whatever" frame fails due to manufacturing or material defect and puts you in a wheelchair, you may have some comeback. Good luck to you if it's a copy ...

This article presupposes several premises but fails to state them explicitly.

1. That the products refer to the High-End bike/frame/wheel market. Typically carbon products.

2. That the buyer is looking for value (a deal perhaps) and opting to spend the least amount possible.

OK, fair enough. It's possible to have a good bike with moderate modification by simple and effective adaption of an Entry-Level platform. The utmost High-End market is a newly "invented phenomenon" which has seen unreasonable price escalations.

Equipment failure is a possibility across an entire spectrum of products regardless of the back-end reputation of the fabricator. Once goods pass into third-party hands, discorded from history or maintenance logs/schedules/procedures or mere unwitting abuse, the reliability of the product becomes a toss-up.

Bold claim though to link Alibaba to Money Laundering et al.

Basically, get a cheap bike and be happy with it.

Great to see that at least some people supply good bicycles at a reasonable price.
About the only "R&D" the labelled manufacturers have done in the last fifteen years is to work out how to get more people to buy sub-standard, cheaply made, expensively sold, short lasting, throw away crap full of so called "developments" that do nothing at all for ride quality or enjoyment - or indeed racing times (check out the non-improvement in Tdf times from 1960 to the present).

Yea sorry as someone that works in the bike trade, people that buy fakes and everything online aren't helping the trade or my job.

Seems a bit harsh but if you knowingly buy a fake and it has a fault, you won't get any sympathy from me, in fact you won't get any of my time either.

We are in a society nowadays that what's the best of everything and we don't want to pay for it. If you want the £5000 dream bike but you only have £2000 don't buy a fake just be more realistic and buy what you can afford from someone that loves bikes and who will look after you in the future

Well said mythbuster and LinusLarrabee, nothing worse than industry groups treating the public like morons.
On a more positive note look at the effect counterfeiting had on the price of DVDs.

ah, I misread the title. I thought he was asking us to buy a fake bike and support slavery. got it. my bad.

All the comments posted lead to the same conclusion: the marketplace works pretty well, everyone seems to be able to purchase a product that fits his/her needs/lust at his/her price point. In fact, the choice available in bikes, components and clothing is bewildering and so are the materials used. I personally ride a titanium bike: make bikes, not bombs!
Counterfeit destroys the marketplace: gone is the choice, gone is the development, GONE IS THE SAFETY, GONE IS THE VALUE FOR MONEY.
Counterfeit is a lose lose situation: consumers lose out, counterfeiters lose out (there is always a cheaper one).
The marketplace ensures continuing development, 99% to the advantage of the consumer. I still ride my 1980's steel Giant bike, completely original, a magnificently comfortable ride, but I cannot get it up the mountains...
The marketplace funds athletes and the grand spectacle of sports inspires millions of people (I keep my distance because of the secret race).
The marketplace is flexible, adaptable, responds to changing perceptions, corrects excesses over time.
And above all the marketplace, through amazingly complex mechanisms, improves products by making them lighter, stronger and cheaper, in one word: safer.
The marketplace, complete with its forest of regulations and legal protection of brands and but also brand liabilities, is the place I want to be.
Counterfeit has no place in it, because counterfeit destroys it from within.

I don't care that my frame was built in a smoky hell hole of a sweat shop, with appalling conditions, zero health and safety, and for slave wages of pennies an hour.

Because in 1953, that's the way all bikes were made in Glasgow!

Like the a Trek man says, potentially a frame lasts a lifetime, even the most confident rider must occasionally worry that their chervelo, chinarello or whatever might not be up to that big descent.......especially after that pothole....was that a creak or did I imagine that......

And can someone tell me what a drive chain is? Heard this a few times today.

A lot of opinions in here would be very different if the poster had ever had a half decent idea to sell once upon a time and made some money out of it. How dare bike companies make a profit, indeed...

"lance took drugs so buying a chinarello is fine" is a bit of a leap, no?

I look at all the eye candy and dream / drool over it. I wonder how much better it would make me go?

Then I get on my Ribble I bought throught the cycle to work scheme, true I've invested in better wheels (Kysrium Elite) and saddle (Fizik or however they spell it), and think WOW this bike really suits me, shifts well enough, and decends down the Lake District passes with supreme confidence. Do I need a £4000 super bike..... no not really. If I won the lottery would I buy one anyway..... definately.

Ribbles in the shop for a drive chain upgrade this year. It'll be fantastic, if we get some good weather again.

Can you tell me the gross profit trek made internationally last year?

Can you tell me the gross profit trek made internationally last year?

I don't condone or support the idea of ripping off any company or purchasing fake products, but the fact that these companies treat their customers like mugs with their inflated prices and this kind of BS scaremongering really diminishes any sympathy I might have for them. It also doesn't help that the press fail to question the assertions made by these industry bodies because they don't want to bite the hands that feed them.