If you’ve been reading the news lately you know staple food item prices are way up: the price of corn, for example, has risen 30 percent in the last year. There seem to be a number of reasons for the price increases, including increased demand for corn to produce ethanol and the higher fuel costs to transport crops, and it doesn’t look like there will be any relief from high prices in the near future.
All of this got me thinking about the cost of mountain bikes and whether we’ll start to see prices increase for new rides (it always comes back to bikes for me 😉 ). Anyway, these days bikes are being used as substitutes for motorized transportation: more folks are commuting to work via bicycle and in some places they’re even using bicycles as delivery vehicles. So if we follow the corn example, increased demand from a different market segment (commuters) may increase the price in our market (hard core mountain bike junkies). Add in the increasing fuel cost of transporting bikes and components from Asia plus the recent jumps in steel and aluminum prices and we may be facing a steep increase in mountain bike prices.
If you think about it, though, mountain bikers have had it pretty good all these years. The cost of bikes has been relatively steady while the technology and quality of our rigs have been increasing over time. I remember when people first started putting front shocks and their bikes in the 1990s and a crappy spring mounted shock would set you back $500-$600 and $1,000 would barely get you a hard tail with Y-brakes and a chromolly frame. Today you can get a solid dual suspension rig with disc brakes(!) and an aluminum frame for under a G – and the thing will last you for years!
Hopefully we won’t see any major price increases in the mountain bike market this year but if you’re thinking about buying a new rig this might be the right time.
