New Road frame,its called NEO Exile!! - Page 3

LOL! Boy, you missed the boat on that one...Anyway and for your arguments' sake, add a fork to PedalForce's frame price and your frameset is still overpriced...

Good morning, Mr. Anderson. It was constructive. It was making fun of a trend in the industry: Fake manufacturers that are really just branding companies; their entire business plan consists of taking generic, usually Chinese made frames, and giving them what they consider to be a cool name and graphics then selling them for outrageous markups, perhaps while pretending to have better quality than everyone else.

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Hanzy

1) Don't bother arguing with alienator. Listening to what he saying and ignoring what you don't agree with is the best approach.
2) I called the spam thing early as well. I prefer it when people come straight out and say "I am going to start selling this, what do you think". I have no problem with people gauging interesting and gathering feed back. Be straight up about everything though when you do it. Otherwise it can back fire.
3) Weight and stiffness are selling points, but don't actually make a bike any better than another in isolation. Stiffer FEELS faster, but there is no proof that it is faster. I like stiff for out of the saddle, and I like light. But I'd take good fitting and strong any day. Stiff is no good if it is harh to ride.
4) I would say your design/layout was inpired by or bench marked on rather than based on.
5) You will find it hard to compete with people already in the game. Others will offer better value. Others again will offer better marketing stats. You need to find something you can offer that nobody else does. Photocromatic paint??

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Hmmm. So it's £850 from you or $US750 from here. Tough decision for sure!

Yeah, I know what your saying Bro, the same `copy and rebrand` ethic exsists in nearly all markets these days. This frame isnt a total copy of any Chinese or Asian frame, it has a few changes, otherwise it would sell for around £250-£400,as we can buy any frame from that area for that price.
We have made some changes, but maybe I have talked it up a little too much,and implied it is a radical,groundbreaking,major tour winning frame............I hope Ive not gone too far then, as this is simply a new frame, posted on here to get a few ideas from riders on styling/their needs etc.

Its a high quality frameset,just like most Asian frames, we felt it was well balanced in `not too much time and effort spent on poseing` and just making a frame capable of winning in national events, and possibly it may fall into the middle market.........not just another rebranded stolen frame design,and not a £2000 direct from an already established company.
Guys, we are here to listen, please dont take my replies with any nasty intent, keep the thoughts coming

Very ture, this is a tough decision for you ! lol

Seriously though, we are based in the UK, so we will be supplying this end of any market, so by the time the customer adds on our good old taxes that need to be paid for importing items, the price goes sky high. We currently have at least 3 extra taxes payable so our price is not that realistic, but as I mentioned before, the price is not yet set in stone.

Thanks Phil for the pointers, good advice indeed. The quality of the frame will only become apparent when a review can be displayed on its ride etc. The stiffness has been looked at, and the rear triangle has been put together with stiff yet not too harsh in mind...........but again this will be riders choice and how he/she felt on the thing......everyone is different, so remains to be seen if its been got right.

Thanks again,one of the few replies that isint a useless rant. No offence to the other useful replies Ive had intended, there just hasnt been many

The IMMORTAL SPIRIT Motobecane frameset (frame, fork and headset) sells for $780; very good reviews.

Yup. There are a host of "sticker" brands that are less expensive and are proven, excellent frames. You can go out and find any number of re-branded Fuji frames, that are top notch frames. As mentioned, the Pedal Force frames are universally acknowledged to be great frames, and they beat the NEO on price. It only takes about 5 or 10 minutes with Google to find frames that are cheaper and offer the same "features." Of course, the NEO's "features" have only been vaguely described. For a customer in the US, where to buy the NEO is a non-starter: $750 vs. $1400. IF these sellers are somehow business related, and IF this frame were actually "designed"--in full or in part--in the UK, it's even more suspicious that there'd be two widely varying prices.

One "feature" that hasn't been addressed is customer service and/or warranty. With Pedal Force and the others, there is at least a website and contact info. So far with this NEO, there are just two rather anonymous personal sites. They are far from having any professional appearance and give the appearance that the sites will be there at least until your check clears.

$1400 is ****load of money for a generic, "put your name here" frame. Moreover, marketing spray for such a frame is even more suspicious. With Scattante at least you get the generally "no questions asked" replacement policy of Performance Bikes.

Of course, people might be willing to pay for a no-name product just to get something "lighter" or allegedly "stiffer." Well, I guess then people deserve what they get if they don't ask what actually is stiffer, what is meant by stiffer, and where is the proof. Those same people, I guess, might just want to get the new Zipp stem that has the dimpled face plate. After all, dimples are faster, right?

Claims as seen with this NEO are just further proof that customers need to get off the "stiffer and lighter" propaganda train. Sean Kelly seemed to damned well with his whip-like Vitus frames. And there were frames, at the time, that were much stiffer.

It is important to keep these performance benefit claims in perspective. Just like how comparing the performance of a CF in the tailplane of an F-16 to the performance of CF in a Pinarello Prince is completely irrelevant, so is qualifying the performance benefits of increased stiffness in a bike with performance benefits of increased stiffness in some F1 component. In scientific or engineering parlance, such comparisons would be called "******* stupid." Similarly comparing the stiffness parameters and their performance influence on fully suspended mountain bikes to the same on road bikes is idiotic at best. It's not even in the ball park to draw even some very faint comparison. The same is true with weight comparisons. Weight doesn't appear to be a factor for most ProTour riders and teams, given the average bike weight in the ProTour is in the 17lb range.

As proof of how specious some of these claims are, at Weight Weenies, Mark McM, modeled a bike/rider system based on the appropriate scientific ideas, i.e. Newtonian Mechanics, on this page, calculated the form of the solution, and then ran values through the equation to find out how, in this case, wheel weight and a wheel's rotational moment of inertia affected performance. The answer oh-so very little. The equation is equally valid for the bike weight claims independent of rotational mass difference, in general. In fact that simplifies the equation and makes the answers even smaller. Those are facts that cannot be danced around whether your Stephen Hawkings or some guy working in some capacity on an F1 team. If you're interested in how stiffness affects bicycle peformance, well, you're gonna have to wait for answers because no one has done any study that showed that stiffness makes a substantive performance difference. Cervelo (leading stiffness snake oil salesman) haven't done it. Canyon--makers of some of the stiffest bikes in existence--haven't done it. No university has done it, and last I checked neither CERN, NASA, or the American Dental Asssociation was interested in doing it. Hopefully, the cutting edge stuff done in the creation of the NEO will be published in Science or Nature and the lead scientists in charge of said research and analysis will speak at engineering and science conferences so that other scientists and engineers can understand just how the NEO's creators were able to make such revolutionary improvements.

As usual, buying a NEO should really only be done based on four simple things:

1. You like the way it looks and gets you excited about riding.
2. It fits you.
3. You like the way things feel when you ride it.
4. You're willing to spend the money on it.

Any other reasons are likely the result of drinking the NEO koolaid.

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Too many slightly used CF reputable name brand frames on ebay can be had for $1400+/- that are presently seen on the road to take a chance on an unknown. Who knows, maybe someday we will see a popularity of NEO's out on the road.

For me I will just keep riding my mostly aluminum bike.
But I do have a new rear wheel coming that I am excited about and I hope it turns out to be a good purchase.

Kinlin xr-300 (niobium), Cxray spokes, powertap sl hub

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I've got a set of clinchers built around Kinlin niobium rims, CX-Rays, and WI H1 hubs. They're excellent: reliable; durable; and with a complete lack of decals, they maximize blackness as good wheels should.

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That is good to hear

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Hanky, I commend you for having a shoot as developing your own CF frame layout, but as everybody is pointing out you aren't doing anything different enough or better than people already out there.


You need to be different to have customer pay attension. Hence all the "marketing" that alienator loves where brands are pushing an idea that they claim thier designs excell at.

There are a lot of people doing cheap/mid price CF, very hard to make a big dent there.

I think you need to find a gap. Simple frame dynamics probably won't cut it. Custom paint finishes?? Get the frames sent unfinished and get them painted locally??
On WWs people are screaming out for a CAADX (10). With the way the world economy is going race worthy Al frames may become more popular. Intelligent tube shapes, made in asia finished locally, tapered steerer, BB30, half dozen frames sizes, anodized and custom paint finishes. That could be the way to be different.

BTW where are you getting the tapered steer forks from? I've not seen an after market source yet. All seem to be made for a specific brand not off the shelf.

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I'd get a couple of these babies right now except I'm too busy taking the podium on my ROI bike with Zefiero wheels and ...

Do you mean Zaffiro as in the tires made by Vittoria? I have never heard of Zefiero wheels before.

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