Foffa Bikes

Since this thread is still in the first page on Google and keeps misdirecting people that don’t know enough about bikes to make the right judgement call, I think it is only fair that I raise a few important points.

Fibblesnork, it is amazing how brand perception makes people look at products in one way even if the facts show the opposite way. A few people keep referring to the Charge Plug as an alternative but clearly these people didn’t even bother checking the spec of the Plug compared to our new Single Speed range, otherwise they would probably realise they have very little idea as to what they are talking about. To demonstrate:

• Charge Plug frame made of Cromoly with Hi-ten forks, while the Foffa has a full Cromoly frame set
  
• Wheelset, basic branded double wall rims, while ours are triple wall and deeper
  
• Crankset, a standard track one, as good as the one we use
  
• Tyres, their branded Coaster which are not even puncture protection while ours are
  
• Bottom bracket, a Tange sealed unit which is not much difference than the sealed unit we use.
  
• Above all, price point, Charge Plug £450 VS Foffa Single speed £350.
  
  

The only thing that some of you might have a few objections about is the sealed bearings which we dont use on our hubs but will introduce in our next year’s range. Other than this the brakes are exactly the same, all parts (stem, bars, seat post, etc..) are alloy just like on the Charge Plug, so I am seriously curious to know how people will be able to justify the additional £100 on a bike which is heavier than ours, is specced just about the same (with the difference that some of the parts we use are actually better) and simply comes from a brand which has a lot more budget to spend on marketing than us so some of you can believe that they are actually selling a better bike when this is not the case.

This thread has been going on since our early beginnings where we clearly made some mistakes (which we have fully acknowledged a number of times), and the comment ‘Because they're over priced and shit’ refers to the custom bikes we have been building up to last year. I appreciate that nobody should be expected to go through 60 pages of posts to shed some light on everything that happened since 2009, so to sum up:

• we stopped doing vintage bikes 4 years ago because they were not 100% reliable
  
• we sacked one of our previous mechanics that caused some issues to us (which we always fully rectified) and made some of the people in the forum believe that we dont know how to build bikes properly
  
• we now even stopped doing our ‘non pre-built’ bikes (I am not allowed to use the word ‘bespoke’ here because this implies that you can also customise the frame and apparently choosing your bars, tape, wheelset, tyres, saddle, crankset and other parts (and not just colours but actually different brands and types) is not enough:)
  
• we even closed our London shop as that was the only way to cut down our overheads and start to make decent quality bikes at affordable prices.
  
  

And some people here on the Foffa thread still advise you to go for a Charge Plug? I think you can appreciate how someone like myself could feel about this.

The fact is that we have worked very hard to get our bikes right (also thanks to a lot of good feedback we got as a result of this thread), so if some of the people here are not able to start being fair to a brand that has clearly always listened and taken on board what the community had to say about our bikes in 6 years, then I will only assume that these people have simply decided that, no matter what, Foffa will always be the brand to slag off, and since this attitude is of a defamatory nature, if this carries on, even after all the transformations the company has gone through, I will need to request Velocio to remove this thread, something that I probably should have done years ago, but always decided not to thanks to a lot of the reasonable people reading this forum which have been very supportive and valuable to making Foffa what it is today.

In fact Fibblesnork, I would be tempted to offer you a £100 discount on one of our new single speed bikes, so you can ride it heavily and give it your honest review on this forum so that people know whether Foffa are actually worth buying or not. Let me know if you would like to take advantage of this offer.

All the best for now,

Dani

Oh dear - another futile attempt to rescue a brand which has long since established itself as being notoriously unreliable...

I'm assuming that you understand how important brand development is because apparently you've attempted it with yours. Small quantity manufacturing brands require many years of repeat business in order to bring long term success and encourage loyalty. The usual method is to manufacture the best possible product you can (in many cases without profit for years) and over a period of time, as your brand grows, slowly reduce costs by increasing manufacturing quantities without compromising on the quality of the end product. Your ramble claims that you've done it the other way around - not exactly the best of tried and tested business practices for a low-volume manufacturer.

Bespoke is an often misused expression - generally by people who're trying to sell a made to order service as opposed to bespoke which is a stage further than a made to measure service. If you need me to explain the differences then I happily will, but don't ever be under the impression that your product was ever bespoke.

You closed your store for much the same reasons as many other people who didn't make enough money in the face of rising rents. And if your brand is harbouring a tragic reputation for shoddy workmanship and Mickey Mouse manufacturing, then it really was only a matter of time. The irreparable damage that those initial years have done is something that will haunt any future plans you may have.

Whilst I haven't owned either a Charge Plug or any Foffa offering, I have ridden both. People on here who know me well will attest to the bikes I've owned over the years. I get bored very easily and have worked my way through a variety of manufactured frames and components over the years. My experience with the Charge was that it felt significantly more solid and generally sharper - I felt a lot more confident when I was flicking in and out of traffic. The Foffa (forgive me, I can't remember which model it was), wasn't particularly well built and didn't feel as "safe".

Lastly, there's just a different kind of feeling you get when you look at both companies - Charge gives me the impression that their staff actually like bikes and like riding them. Foffa makes me think that the owners couldn't give a toss about bikes and only considered the bottom line and their margins. Funny what a brand can achieve with some clever marketing...

For the record - I'd always go with a Charge. I don't have a lot of money, but if something is cheap then there has to be a reason. Also, I know that if I had an issue that I couldn't deal with I could take it to ANY bike shop in the known solar system and not have the mechanics look at me like I'd been smoking my socks.