Dragons Sports Refreshed by New Investment

[News bot]

Dragons Sports has been a mainstay of the South African cycling industry since 1989. For 32 years the company has imported and distributed brands including Giant and Liv Bicycles, Cadex, Mavic, ENVE, SR Suntour, Santa Cruz skateboards in addition to their proprietary brand Avalanche Bicycles and accessories which was started in 1992. In September 2021 Dragons Sports is set to begin a refreshing process, which will see the company reinvigorated as they institute a long-term succession plan.

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[ChrisF]

Sounds good ....

 

Now if only they would "invest" in proper workshop staff at their authorised dealers ....

 

 

Such nice bikes.

 

Such cr@p service ....

[bodger]

19 hours ago, ChrisF said:

Sounds good ....

 

Now if only they would "invest" in proper workshop staff at their authorised dealers ....

 

 

Such nice bikes.

 

Such cr@p service ....

Try out William's bike shop in Somerset West. The workshop expertise are second to none.

[Hairy]

5 minutes ago, bodger said:

Try out William's bike shop in Somerset West. The workshop expertise are second to none.

Williams Bike Shop = Rock and Roll service and knowledge.

Edit: But I agree RE investing in the LBS workshops and sales staff to further carry the brand forward.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Hairy

[ChrisF]

On 9/18/2021 at 11:56 AM, bodger said:

Try out William's bike shop in Somerset West. The workshop expertise are second to none.

 

I do understand the business model ...

 

Still a pity they refuse to allow customers to go to the likes of  Knipe_Racing or Mark's Workshop, AND keep the warrantee in place.

 

 

Just to add some context - New bike bought at Giant dealer in the Northern Suburbs.  After a 1 000km the brakes were not working properly.  I took it back no less than five times to have the brakes sorted .... eventually I had enough, took it to Mark who got it SORTED in a single visit.  2 000 km later still no issues with the brakes.  ZERO quality control before calling the client to come collect the bike at the dealer....

 

 

Dragon Sports needs to do step up their dealer workshops .... "word of mouth", be it positive or negative is way more powerfull than any media launch they can ever put out there.

 

 

PS - YES, I have spoken to and emailed Dragon Sports about the service levels (or total lack thereof) at this dealer.

 

 

EDIT - 21/9/2021 - Dragon Sports have contacted me, and are following up on the service level at this dealer.  They have also assisted with some outstanding issues.  Dragon Sports certainly did their bit to assist. 

Edited September 21, 2021 by ChrisF
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[StevJam]

Great for the future of SA Cycling ! Now Micheal Hirschfeld will have too cycle from his home in Llandudno, to the new office/warehouse in Paarden Eiland.......???? #ebike #giantbikes

[Hairy]

4 minutes ago, StevJam said:

Great for the future of SA Cycling ! Now Micheal Hirschfeld will have too cycle from his home in Llandudno, to the new office/warehouse in Paarden Eiland.......???? #ebike #giantbikes

Best he avoid death alley, the cycle lane from woodstock station to p/island ... unless he can ride in a group that is.

[PhilipV]

On 9/17/2021 at 4:53 PM, ChrisF said:

Sounds good ....

 

Now if only they would "invest" in proper workshop staff at their authorised dealers ....

 

 

Such nice bikes.

 

Such cr@p service ....

Authorized dealers are still independent, in a setting where qualifications are a swing and a miss. So it will boil down to Dragons training the workshop staff in stores on Giant products. Which won't be a bad thing.

But you won't service your Suzuki at Mark's Indy and expect Suzuki SA to honor a warranty?

 

That being said, I concur with Bodger above, take your bike to Williams for a Giant issue. 

Edited September 19, 2021 by PhilipV

[Zebra]

5 hours ago, Hairy said:

Best he avoid death alley, the cycle lane from woodstock station to p/island ... unless he can ride in a group that is.

Or he can try and get a Harbour access card, then he can enter commercial Harbour next to V&A, and exit exactly at Paarden Eiland, maybe he will join me on a ride, and I can give him some ‘Specialized’ advice on how best to achieve this…????

[Hairy]

11 hours ago, PhilipV said:

Authorized dealers are still independent, in a setting where qualifications are a swing and a miss. So it will boil down to Dragons training the workshop staff in stores on Giant products. Which won't be a bad thing.

But you won't service your Suzuki at Mark's Indy and expect Suzuki SA to honor a warranty?

 

That being said, I concur with Bodger above, take your bike to Williams for a Giant issue. 

what if it is a small issue?

[Jewbacca]

12 hours ago, PhilipV said:

 

But you won't service your Suzuki at Mark's Indy and expect Suzuki SA to honor a warranty?

 

That being said, I concur with Bodger above, take your bike to Williams for a Giant issue. 

Hasn't a bill recently been passed or proposed that you CAN do this, provided Mark's Indy has the relevant papers and fits genuine parts?

It's a bit different on a bicycle as you cannot warranty a Bicycles motor, you need to take care of that yourself. But faulty parts etc are easily identifiable.

IMHO this is where the whole 'concept store' buy in becomes relevant. If you et terrible mechanic service at a concept store, GIANT as a brand are implicated as it IS up to them to make sure it's up to scratch. 

So use the concept stores, buy into a brand and then see how things go. 

Stand alone shops are accountable for their own work and are not really the responsibility of the brands they sell. How would all the different brands at Olympic divvy up the costs/responsibility of the training and workshop?

[Shebeen]

12 minutes ago, S&V said:

So a few years ago I owned a Giant Trance X Size Large (the one with the curved top tube) – as was very typical of Giant bikes at that time the bike developed a serious crack between the top tube and the seat tube – I made my LBS aware and within a week the bike was replaced via a warranty claim but the new frame was the Trance X with the straight top tube also size Large (I had to pay R125-00 registration fee). This new bike developed a similar crack within a year but this time around Dragons refused to warrant the bike as I have now become too tall for the bike (if they rejected the claim because I am to fat, I might have understood) – the bike had a 400mm Thompson seat post with about 30mm left before min internal space could be exceeded. Fortunately the LBS helped me by paying 50% for a new Giant frame (used this to upgrade from 26” to 29”) – I still had to pay almost R8k for the new frame – so I build this frame and sold this bike immediately as I had zero trust in Dragon products (and I still don’t have)… Giant for example has a pretty nice gravel bike, but I will not buy it as for sure one cannot trust that Dragons will honour Giant bicycles warranty agreements and for a bicycles of this nature you require the need to be sure that true warranty claims will be honoured without silly reasons for not doing it.

Not really the place for this as it's new management so maybe be a bit more openminded going forward. However I think you'll find a lot of people  have had Giant anthems in particular successfully warranteed by dragons in the past.

[splat]

17 minutes ago, S&V said:

So a few years ago I owned a Giant Trance X Size Large (the one with the curved top tube) – as was very typical of Giant bikes at that time the bike developed a serious crack between the top tube and the seat tube – I made my LBS aware and within a week the bike was replaced via a warranty claim but the new frame was the Trance X with the straight top tube also size Large (I had to pay R125-00 registration fee). This new bike developed a similar crack within a year but this time around Dragons refused to warrant the bike as I have now become too tall for the bike (if they rejected the claim because I am to fat, I might have understood) – the bike had a 400mm Thompson seat post with about 30mm left before min internal space could be exceeded. Fortunately the LBS helped me by paying 50% for a new Giant frame (used this to upgrade from 26” to 29”) – I still had to pay almost R8k for the new frame – so I build this frame and sold this bike immediately as I had zero trust in Dragon products (and I still don’t have)… Giant for example has a pretty nice gravel bike, but I will not buy it as for sure one cannot trust that Dragons will honour Giant bicycles warranty agreements and for a bicycles of this nature you require the need to be sure that true warranty claims will be honoured without silly reasons for not doing it.

Minimum insert for a Thomson seatpost is in the region of 60 to 70mm.
Not sure what the guideline are for the Giant frame itself.
Perhaps your LBS should have helped you with that (and its probably why they 'helped' you with 50% of the cost)

[Kom]

This seems like the right place to ask for an opinion on some work that was done by dragon sports.

Long story short, i asked Giant Cape Town to replace a rim on my Giant Propel (SLR 0 65mm deep section). These wheels have been awesome, but after some damage, decided to replace.

On the 15-Feb i was invoiced R5500 for a complete set of spokes and the rim, but have not felt comfortable with the work done by Dragon who themselves carried out the work.

I got the wheel back after being with them for two weeks, and from the video am slightly disturbed at just how untrue this wheel is.

I asked Gert for comment, and am quite surprised:

"In my view the rim is well within spec. The deviation is slight and mostly the result of imperfections inherent in the complexity of producing carbon rims. The overall dims and wall thickness always have slight variances. The deviation you see there will not impact the ride quality as the centreline is stable."

Any wheel builders out there with experience with the P-SLR product care to comment?

[Kom]

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[Mtree]

@nick_the_wheelbuilder would be the person to ask on this.

For me, personally, that seems a bit off...