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Don't disagree with the sentiment of this thread, but feel it's not entirely black and white. Tyres and brakes - I would not want to go back to my bikes from 15 years ago - UK conditions being what they are 90% of the year. Also, maybe some proportion of tech advancements are genuinely stuff that bike enthusiasts came up with, and not consciously driven by the planned obsolescence strategy.
chris0
I've fairly recently become a lot more interested in planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence, all from Louis Rossmann on YouTube, where he was going for the jugular with brands like Apple for purposely making their products hard/impossible to repair.
I'd really like to have a conversation around how this is in cycling, everything from tyres to brake pads and the perception that "my bike isn't good anymore" because 12 speed, disc brakes, aero advancements etc.
I've worked in marketing for the last 10 years, and I see through some of the utter BS that comes out of some of the brands in the cycling world. 'Reviews' which are advertorials, 'latest model' which is fundamentally the same as the previous one, and not to mention private equity getting their hands on established brands.
Looking to have a conversation around this, but also where brands might be cheating us into consuming more, not just in the cycling world.
For those of you who haven't came across this before:
Planned obsolescence: "a policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of non-durable materials."
Perceived obsolescence: "Perceived obsolescence refers to a situation where a customer believes they need an updated version of a product even though theirs is working just fine."