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
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I would assume they’re importing all or most of their materials. Can’t be cheap to ship steel tubing to Namibia to build a bike and then ship it back to Europe or North America.
Still, unless they’re paying extremely generous wages by local standards I’d expect the cost of shipping to be small by comparison, for raw materials especially.
There was a mention (here?) in the last week or so of steel frames made in India somewhere that were remarkarky reasonably priced, not surprising given typical wages there.
I can’t speak to this topic for Onguza, but I would imagine their pricing (like most) is simply about where they want to position themselves in the market. The can only make so many per year, have a terrific story and mission of locally made etc and they only have so much capacity, so they are scarce. It has nothing to do with how much something costs to create. Pricing is one of the famous 4 p’s of marketing, and it signals value, status, positioning, etc and most pricing with discretionary products like this are based on those things. I’m no expert on this topic, but I discovered this really quickly when I worked for Rapha back in the day.
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Thanks Wade! I’ve worked in pricing and have banged the “cost is irrelevant” drum in far too many meetings 
I’m glad they’ve found the right price point that the market will bear for their target volumes, I’m just surprised it’s so high, given the boutique steel bike frame segment is pretty saturated and prices seem fairly well established.
I love seeing surprises like this though, it’s what makes pricing such an interesting discipline!
However, without a clear story about where the money is going (other than “every single dollar going back into the local Namibian community”), and seemingly quite high margins, my jaded mind is a bit suspicious (probably needlessly so, by all accounts Dan Craven is a great person). It’s great that ownership is shared with the two master builders, hopefully they’re making solid money and building a good life.
Looking forward to hearing the episode to learn more!
This thread has reinvigorated my motivation to do an epsisode with Collyn and Dan! Hopefully soon.
I’m heading back to South Africa this October for Gravel Burn. I’d love to see if I could get over to Namibia to see their operation and to visit the country. When else would I have that amazing opportunity???
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