Hongfu FM-066/Chinese open mould frame thread

[BenCousins]

I think there's a reasonable chance the open mould youtuber-marketed brands do an Asus and move upmarket to disrupt the big brands. Canyon did this - moving up from a discount direct-to-consumer brand that used Tour Magazine tests and forums like this as marketing channels and ended up being almost as expensive as the US brands, and supplying the world champion. Eventually demographic shifts will mean most bike buyers will be in the YouTube or TikTok generation and discount codes will be way more powerful than pro sponsorship. This is already happening with the Instagram-marketed clothing brands like MAAP and Pas Normal who don't have much to do with pro racing.

[apr46]

Giant and Merida made that Asus-like move. Maybe Pardus too? But they never were open molds and were traditional contract mfgs. Winspace started with open molds but they have steadily moved away from them to their own designs. Shimano and Sram arent yet restricting innovation in the way that Microsoft did for PCs, either. I still think bike brands wont face an existential threat like Dell did with Asus from an open mold maker.

Canyon and Specialized going to D2C are a totally different conversation than open molds.

[Coriolan]

Not sure if it belongs here but here it is. Having a long and great love story with steel bikes, felt like riding carbon once again after some years. Unfortunately times aren't that great over here, so I tried to keep it nice and low cost hence this build.

It's a Speedercycle SCR48V with as much Aliexpress sourced components as possible. Actually, all of them except rims, spokes and tires. Turned out a pleasant build experience, not without a couple of hiccups but nothing remotely serious. I kept my expectations relatively low and they were exceeded by a seriously large margin.

Rides great and weighs 6kg sharp as pictured on this photo.