Hello there,
Recently I read (they were awarded by Monocle Magazine in their annual design prizes) about Onguza bikes (https://onguza.com). These are made and shipped from Namibia. Any one any experiences with these bikes/company?
I don’t have any direct experience with riding Onguza, but I know a couple people who own them and they love them. I also know Dan Craven and his wife Collyn relatively well and they’re incredible people doing positive things for the locals who work in their business.
I’ll be doing an Overnight Success podcast with them soon!
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Hi Wade,
It’s a bit of a difficult topic to bridge, but I’d love to hear a bit about their pricing strategy, as the frames have always struck me as quite expensive, even though I love the brand story.
I’ve made my own fillet-brazed steel frame and have some understanding of the huge amount of work that goes into a bike frame, and I’m not expecting them to compete with mass produced frames (which are still handmade, just in a factory, but that’s a different topic).
But: I can buy a made-in-Germany Sour frame for less than half the price, or a full-custom steel frame with top-end tubing for a similar price, both within a train ride from me. There’s likely a larger workforce available in Europe for a company like Sour to tap into, and I’m sure it’s quite expensive to essentially build an industry from scratch in a country, but the price difference strikes me as quite large, even if they’re paying staff the equivalent of German wages (plus pension and healthcare contributions) which would be awesome.
Maybe the answer is simply that they have a good brand, the market will bear these prices, so they’re able to make a very solid margin, in which case, good for them! Or I’m missing some significant costs.
Thanks, looking forward to this episode!
-Joe