Jan Begemann

I think you're right. Shall we meet at 13h00, have lunch and a beer? I'm german, I'm allowed to drink beer at any time .

Raleigh bashing competition: My first choice is still Tikki, nice pic and with a sense of humor. No. 2 is Chunky. He seems to be the classic Raleigh basher. Just negative statements without any reason or sense. Unfortunately I support drug-free sport...

Your pedal broke and it's Raleigh's fault? Didn't know that Raleigh makes pedals, mine are from Shimano...

I think I know who to look for now, and you did very well on the first day of this years crit. I will beat you on the bike, and after that Big Al will beat you in drinking beer, that I will buy for us .

We will offer RC Ltd, RM Ltd and MR Ltd framesets. I know you would prefer a red version instead of "MTN yellow". But we can't offer all colours. So we start with the top model frames this year, and if it works well, we'll increase the range of framesets in future.

Then you should give me your real name. I want to see your face when you get beaten by a fun rider on a Raleigh.

Hi, sorry for my late reply, but I'll try to answer all questions. Mampara and Tikki, the women's bike is not pink or baby blue, because if I did that my wife would kill me :-). Believe me there are women who don't want a pink flower design. The frame is actually the same frame as we use for the men's bikes, so it's not a women's specific geometry. I know, this is not perfect, but changing geometries on a carbon frame means opening new molds, and the quantities we sell are not enough to cover the costs just for one model. This is why only the big ones like Scott offer real women's specific frames, all others do the same as what we do. What is women's specific on this bike is the saddle, the stem lengths, handlebar shape and width, the shift/brake levers and the crank lengths. Stringbean, what you see on the chainstays is a pivot. It's a fully active real 4-link design with a Horst-link. And as long as we don't sell the bikes to America, Specialized can't do anything. Their patent is just an american patent, not worldwide. Regarding the discussion about the brand name unfortunately what masood says is correct. From the marketing and image perspective using the same brand name for very cheap and very expensive stuff does not really work. That is why Toyota created Lexus (and Toyota's image is still much better than many other car brand's image), why VW separates Seat from Audi and why Opel can't sell sports cars. We could built the best bike ever, if it would cost more than R 50,000 noone would buy it. If Specialized would sell the same bike for R 100,000 they'd sell thousands. I can complain about this, but at the end it doesn't help. I can tell the people that our enty level range has absolutely nothing in common with our Elite range (not even the screw supplier is the same), but at the end only a few people are listening, and there are only 2 options for us: Keep Raleigh as the number one value for money brand in SA and stay away from super expensive carbon fullsuspension designs or sell the high end bikes under a different brand name. We obviously choose the value for money option and I think there's nothing wrong with it. Creating a high end brand is very difficult and takes a long time to built that image. Maybe this is something we should think about for future, but so far I'm actually very happy riding my "bad" RC Ltd :-). And to those who still think that Raleigh builds bad bikes and the MTN riders actually hate the bikes and could win even more races if they would just ride better bikes: There is a Crit race series in PE in January, and I will take part. Come with your Cervelos and Giants and try to beat me!

Tikki, that one was already very good! But I see that some guys like Big H really like us and don't want to say any bad things. So for those guys we start a second competition now: We'll give a new MR 5.0 (complete bike) away. But you have to give us a reason, why you need this bike and why you deserve it. The one with the best story will get the bike as soon as it is available.

Ok, Big H, I found a translater. Don't worry, whatever bad things you say, we won't take it seriously. I think we better don't take any posts seriously in this competition. But even the fact that noone now really wants to bash Raleigh is very funny. We won't sue anybody here, we can laugh about it. Try your best, Big H, there will be no disadvantage for you, just because we know that you don't hate Raleigh.

Hey Big H, I am german, guess how good my afrikaans is... I would like to add 2 rules: 1. The language must be english 2. Please only bash Raleigh, not people working for Raleigh

I see that there are some people around here in this country who obviously don't like Raleigh. Or shall I better say they hate Raleigh? I also see different reasons. Some think a local brand can never be as good as an international brand, some others are just jealous of Raleigh's success, some don't like the designs, and some others (but just very few) had a bad experience with a Raleigh bike. There a few more reasons, but at the end bashing Raleigh seems to be some kind of national sport here. I must say I can actually laugh about it. And that's why I would like to start a competition here: Who is the biggest Raleigh basher on The Hub? Who does really hate us? Kick our arses, say the worst things you can about Raleigh! We'll read everything, and the Probike team (Robbie, Big Al, Brandon and I) will decide about who is the biggest Raleigh basher on The Hub. The winner will get a new Raleigh MR LTD frameset as soon as it is available (around October '08), but there's a rub in it: Who ever wins the frame must ride it for 1 year! And maybe Raleigh is not as bad as he always thought . This competition is not a joke, I want to see bad things, and the worst of you will get a frameset! Jan

http://www.raleigh.co.za/blogs.php?blogId=251&authorId=5

I will just give you one example: Look at the dropouts. One is using a "normal" dropout, made of alloy, pretty big and the seatstays are fixed with a little steel bolt. It's cheap, because you can use the same dropout for all frame sizes. The new RM LTD has much smaller dropouts with fixed angles. Saves about 80 grams, but means that you need different dropouts for different frame sizes. In our case with 3 frame sizes it means extra costs of ca. R 800 per frame. Jan

Hey, looks like Tikki was clever enough to see that Raleigh is not the same as Orbea, but he obviously doesn't read my blog. http://www.raleigh.co.za/blogs.php?blogId=247&authorId=5 There is a big difference between copying a design and sharing a design. Copying is what TokenFreak is trying by selling a non branded carbon frame for R 3950 and telling everyone it's the same as a Raleigh - in fact it is a carbon frame and it has a toptube, downtube etc, but I really hope that non of you guys are so blind that you don't see the difference. Listen to Sean, he mentioned just a few things that make the difference. What we do with Trenga DE is called "sharing" a design. So we put our ideas and thoughts together, and we share the costs for the development and the molds. We operate on different continents, so why not working together? Developing a frame like this - just to give you an idea - costs about USD 80,000. And then you have your very first prototype. After that you start with different frames tests (each test costs ca. EUR 3,000), you have to modify the frame, if you have bad luck you have to pay for some new molds etc. As Probike and Trenga DE both are no global players selling many thousands of bikes of the same design, the costs per frame become very high. Sharing the design for us means only 50% of the development costs and means being competitive to global players like Trek or Scott. This partnership helps both brands on the financial and the technical side, and at the end it reduces the retail price of the bike, which is very important for a local brand like Raleigh. I didn't move to South Africa to forget all I learned about bicycles and just copy other people's ideas. Raleigh is a brand focused on high value for money, and this is the way for us to offer a super high quality suspension bike and still being cheaper than others - wait until we've launched the 2009 prices! Raleigh is not a brand like Scott, so even if we have the ability now to build a super high end carbon frame, we still don't have the image to sell it. If we'd offer a bike like the Scott Spark, one of the most successful bikes of the year, we'd end up selling ZERO bikes. But let's see what the future brings, maybe in a few years we'll find a way . What we do is also not really a new idea. 50% of a Porche Cayenne is a VW Touareg. Citroen, Peugeot and Mitsubishi sell the same SUV (made by Mitsubishi) while Opel and Chevrolet also sell nearly the same SUV, made in South Korea. I think noone would really complain about this, as it makes the cars more affordable for all of us. So what's the problem if Raleigh does the same? By the way, Mampara, we'll have a red version of the road bike as well, but unfortunately this will be the women's version. If you want one, I can offer you yellow, blue (with white line) or white (with red line) Jan

Mampara is right, it's the same derailleur hanger. And regarding the price, I know it's actually too expensive. But it's not that we are trying to make "big money" out of derailleur hangers. I also get shocked when I see how much we pay for such a little peace of alloy to our suppliers. Eugene, we'll try our best to avoid competition between Scott and Raleigh, so Raleigh will definitely "re-become" the value for money brand. That doesn't mean that we reduce the quality of the bikes, but for future we are not going to spend money to have a big italian name on our frames.

Onetime, the reason is that we had a glitch in our system, and we apologise for that on our website. So what is your question? Maybe I know the answer.

Mampara, I see your concerns, but especially regarding brand managers things have changed at Probike. In January 2007 Probike had 1 product manager for all brands including Raleigh. Now there is me for Raleigh Elite and Trail bikes, Robbie Powell for Raleigh Sports, international sales and Intense, Albert Retief for aftermarket brands (by the way, we sell Uvex helmets) and since a few weeks a new brand manager for Scott. So I think even if we distribute more brands now than in the past we hopefully can do them more justice than in the past. Especially for Scott Probike will employ some more people in future, including a tech and warranty manager. If we can't do justice to a brand like Scott we'll lose the distribution immediately.