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JB
They probably cost £4.5k, because it reflects the time, effort, and knowledge that goes into each one, but more importantly, because that’s what people are obviously willing to pay for them.
There are a huge amount of middle aged men (and women, but in much fewer numbers) out there these days willing to sink vast amounts of money in to having a very fancy custom bike. I know this first hand, because they pay my mortgage.
There is clearly demand for high caliber bikes at this price point, and I’m guessing Tom Sturdy saw a gap in the market for extremely high end, UK made custom ti bikes, and decided to fill that gap. Seemingly quite successfully too by the looks of things.
It’s also worth noting that the use of 3D printed tube junctions will add a huge amount of cost (but also enables a huge amount of customisation, and very specific geometries) Bastion use the same process, but with carbon main tubes and cost north of £5.5k for a frameset. (and are incredibly ugly to look at)
If you’re gonna compare Sturdy to other top tier ti builders, you need to find out how much they would charge for a frame with a full set of 3D printed parts like Sturdy use (which none of them do, cos it costs too much). Firefly/Moots etc only use this process for their dropouts currently as far as I’m aware.
Nice bike. If you think it’s worth the cost, then who cares what people on the internet think. I’m sure it will bring many more years of use than your average £10k S-Works Venge chopper waggon.