BOULDER CITY, Nev. (BRAIN) — For the first time in about 15 years, Ritchey Design is offering dealers complete bikes, which it showed to retailers at Interbike's OutDoor Demo on Monday and Tuesday.
Complete bikes are a natural for Ritchey, since the brand designs virtually every part on a bike, except the drivetrain and brakes.
"We are able to offer a really light package of parts with our tires, bar tape, saddles, seatpost, grips, wheels, tires ... since we do it all ourselves we can give ourselves really good pricing and we can offer a completely competitive blue-collar race bike for under $4,000, from a brand you can feel good about," said Sean Coffey, the company's global marketing director.
Coffey said dealers have requested complete bikes for several years. The complete bikes are assembled in Taiwan and will ship direct from Ritchey to dealers. The company will not sell the complete bikes on its website nor will it allow its dealers to sell them online, he said.
The four models are the Swiss Cross Disc, a $3,800 Ultegra-equipped cyclocross bike; the Timberwolf, a $4,500 hardtail 650b trail bike with a 140mm travel RockShox Revelation fork; the Road Logic, a $3,500 Ultegra-equipped road bike; and the P-29, a hardtail 29er cross-country bike, retailing for $3,800.
All feature Ritchey steel frames, with size-specific components. Coffey noted that when you are looking at a $4,500 complete Ritchey bike, you are seeing the brand's top-of-the-line model, instead of just a mid-range model offered by some larger companies that focus on five-figure carbon wonder bikes.
