Good morning
I share your hope, but not your optimism.
I remeber when Boardmans first appeared, it quickly became obvious that if there was Boardman in your list of possible purchases then the Boardman was obviously going to be the one to buy.
Over recent years it has appeared to me that
Halfords' Boardmans were slipping into a way of just selling Carreras at a high price, at one stage there was a £1K CF Carrera
This bike looks very much like a return to old days, although personally a pair of £1k Zipp wheels would be offputting, so saving that chunk of money and stepping down to the 105 one would be much better for me.
I have posted this picture on another thread but an LBS has had this up for a while
View attachment 766995
This represent the bike industry to me to a tee, it has become self deluded, £9k for a second hand bike! The trouble is that whilst £10k-£15K bikes were always going to be a small market, what seems to have happened is that
£5k is only one third of the price of our most expensive bike so it is pretty cheap. Whereas "just" £3.5k for a bike for a non elite athlete is a staggeringly large amount of money to all but a few.
Halfords and
Decathlon realise this and offer great value good, quality bikes under one brand (Carrera/Triban) and then still great value but higher priced and presumably more profitable under another brand (Boardman/Van Rysel).
The customer has a choice, but Specialized want £1k for a Claris drive trained Allez and the prices soar upwards from there.
Of course all of this is moot unless you are willing to pay now and wait until June when new stock is scheduled to come in, no good if you need the bike now, but not long to wait if you don't.
Bye
Ian
