Bike Availability Update
Quick update on the state of the cycling industry and availability of bikes and components. Short story: it’s ugly and getting worse. The disruptions to supply chains and manufacturing have been massive and continue to ripple like waves through the industry. Factories in Asia continue to be shut down at random times indefinitely. Shipping (on real ships) is an utter mess. This is what happens folks when govts randomly shut things down. No amount of stimulus will help this – the second and third-order effects are just getting revved up. This is coming to many other industries as well if it hasn’t already. Massive preorders of bikes are getting canceled. We may well see folks going out of business soon.
- Argon 18’s factory has been closed for more than 45 days. There are no 2021 bikes unless you ordered long ago, and even then the outlook is uncertain. We are looking at 2022. Maybe.
- Shimano and Sram – many components are not showing availability until mid-late 2022. Yes you heard that right.
- Some frames are available, but I can’t find parts to build them in most cases. For example, I can (or will be able to soon) get Factor frames. I can get some road and gravel frames from Open. If you have parts, I can swap them onto a new frame.
- The big winner so far is American Bicycle Group: Quintana Roo and Litespeed. I can get these bikes, road and tri, and they still have components. For example here is an SR5 road bike I just built.
We do have a single Argon 18 Gallium CS disc Ultegra road bike, size M (~55cm) in stock for 2900.
We also have Lis’ lightly used Ventum One long course tri destroyer for sale. 51cm, Dura-ace Di2, Look Aergo bars, <$4k.
Side note: Many folks ask me where I get my cool die-cut TTBikeFit Human Missile Factory frame stickers. They come from Sticker Mule and are very reasonably priced (they run a lot of specials). I like them because they are high quality, stick well yet can easily be removed without damaging bike finishes. I get them on a roll and individually, but they have tons of vinyl decals.