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Before this creates any more misunderstandings allow me to clarify this matter, we have never enforced ‘price fixing’ to any of its resellers. We have never discussed or agreed any retail prices with Wiggle and Wiggle has always been free to set the retail price it sells our product to its customers. We were clumsily making the point that Wiggle is a good distribution outlet for our brand and that other retails should not consider Wiggle in a negative light. Wiggle has never discussed retail price setting with us and any implication that it might have done so is erroneous, for which we apologise to all of you.

Before this creates any more misunderstandings allow me to clarify this matter, Foffa has never enforced ‘price fixing’ to any of its resellers. Foffa has never discussed or agreed any retail prices with Wiggle and Wiggle has always been free to set the retail price it sells our product to its customers. Foffa was clumsily making the point that Wiggle is a good distribution outlet for the Foffa brand and that other retails should not consider Wiggle in a negative light. Wiggle has never discussed retail price setting with Foffa and any implication that it might have done so is erroneous, for which Foffa apologises to all of you.

Actually über_grüber, after speaking to James from the Hackney Peddler (who worked as a manager for BLB for many years) who bought some of the last deep Vs we had, he confirmed our rims are EXACTLY the same as the H+Son. So our previous supplier was right afterall.

BoyleAndDoyle, I am not sure why mine should be as you put it 'another futile attempt to rescue a brand which (not to everyones opinion) is notoriously unreliable' while we built over 4000 bikes and had very few issues with them (except the vintage bikes which I already said we stopped doing many years ago for exactly that reason).

Some people keep making a lot of false accusations based on facts that happened over 5 years ago, and I appreciate that initial errors haunt brands for the rest of their lives, but if you had a brand and saw some people that keep being utterly unfair to you, you would certainly do the same as we do, especially since you would have rectified EVERY single issue that was raised as part of this thread.

And it s a big shame that you get the feeling from our brand that our staff doesn't like riding bikes since it is far from accurate, and if you actually even came to our shop or talked to any of us you would have a different opinion.

And Chris Borneo, I appreciate you taking your time to justify the price difference between the Charge and our bikes, while some of the things you said might sound sensible, unfortunately I am not sure why you would say some of the other things, since you wouldn't be in a position to be able to state them:

• How would you have checked the welding of our frame sets if our bikes haven't arrived in the UK yet?
  
• How would you know whether they are not that light if you wouldn't have had the chance to pick one up and be able to tell?
  
  

To be fair the new frames won't be the same quality as our previous Maxway frames (which clearly used to cost considerably more) but we showed samples to the new range to many mechanics and potential resellers which checked it thoroughly and have all confirmed that these are some of the best Chinese frames they have seen (unless you were one of them in which case I am surprised you didn't tell us your thoughts directly when you had the chance) and the fact that we spoke to over 100 established Far East suppliers, got samples from the top 5 ones and picked the very best one, should give people the peace of mind that the quality at the £350 price point is much higher than many of the brands selling at the same price point.

As for componentry, the only points I might agree with you is on the Charge saddle which might be more comfortable than ours and the headset (which will also be improved on the new range) since I am well aware that Ahead won't need to be adjusted as often, but we have on purpose sticked to threaded (while most other brands go for thread less these days, which actually has a lower cost price) to offer more adjustability on the stem height and give that retro look (which are personal preferences of course).

As for the rest: the seat post is the exact same model, the chrome cable clips we frankly find them aesthetically unappealing (which is why we went for inner routed brake cables) but again that is personal preferences, and if you want to talk about little details then I certainly prefer the metal front badge we use as opposed to a stickered logo.

So overall it is pretty obvious that better welding (if this is even the case), sealed bearing hubs and a more comfortable saddle doesn't cost a brand an extra £100 (considering they also save money on other very important parts like non puncture protection tyres), and I am sure I don't need to tell you that for the £100 you would save on one of our bikes you could grab yourself a Brooks saddle and brooks tape if you so wish, making our SS model a far superior bike than the Charge.

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 this 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, we 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 our brand 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 our bikes 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

Gargenville, thank you for ordering one of our bikes and as Kboy mentioned I hope you ll find yourself riding many happy miles with it.

I am not sure whether assuming already that it is going to 'fall apart five minutes into its maiden voyage' puts you in the right mind frame to fully appreciate a very good bike for that price point, but I look forward to hearing your honest thoughts on it.

All the best

I am afraid all tools have already been sold to a bike shop. Everything we have left is on the list above (except some various bits like brake cables and spares) and images are on www.foffabikes.com/saleaccessories

Quick update on what we have left on clearance since we have cleared out most of the stuff, so I finally managed to make a definite list of what's left, and here it is (images on www.foffabikes.com/saleaccessories):

• BAGS & BACKPACKS
  
  

CHROME METROPOLIS BAG (grey and black) - £80 (RRP £160)
CHROME MESSENGER BAG (navy blue / red) - £40 (RRP £80)
CHROME YALTA RUCKSACK (olive) - £60 (RRP £120)

• STANDS & STORAGE
  
  

TOPEAK TWO UP STANDS - £70 (RRP £160)
PARK TOOLS PRS2 OS2 DUAL STAND - £350 (RRP £700)
UNIVERSAL BIKE STAND - £5 (RRP £15)
BIKE STAND x 3 - £15 (RRP £30)
BIKE STAND x 5 - £20 (RRP £44)

• HELMETS
  
  

LAZER ARMOR RED (medium) - £20 (RRP £60)
BELL FACTION BLACK (large) - £15 (RRP £30)
BELL FACTION WHITE (medium and small) - £15 (RRP £30)
HARDNUTZ CHROME (medium and large) - £15 (RRP £35)

• VARIOUS
  
  

KNOG USB BOOMER WHITE - £30 (RRP £60)
FULL WINDSOR MUDGUARDS RED - £5 (RRP £16)
SEALED UNIT BOTTOM BRACKETS (Various sizes) - £5 (RRP £15)
BELLS (black and silver) - £5 (RRP £12)
MICHE SUPERTYPE 27.2mm SEATPOST SILVER - £25 (RRP £55)
CHROME MIDWAY GREY SIZE 9 - £20 (RRP £60)
SHIMANO SORA 9 SP REAR DERAILLEUR - £10 (RRP £27)
DICTA FREEWHEELS (16 and 18t) - £4 (RRP £8)
7 SP SUNRACE CASSETTE - £5 (RRP £12)
DIMENSION LOCKRING - £2 (RRP £4)
17T FIXED COGS - £3 (RRP £8)
NITTO BLACK STEMS (80mm and 100mm) - £10 (RRP £20)
ZAFFIRO PRO II TYRES (SET) - £15 (RRP £30)
LEZYNE DIGITAL FLOOR PUMP - £30 (RRP £80)

• CHROME FORKS (1’’ THREADED, VARIOUS SIZES) - £30 (RRP £80)

• BAR GRIPS & TAPE

OURY LIKE (BLACK, BLUE, PURPLE, PINK, RED, YELLOW, GREEN) - £5 (RRP £12)
BAR TAPE (YELLOW, RED, PALE PINK) - £5 (RRP £12)
BROOKS LEATHER TAPE (BLACK, WHITE) - £25 (RRP £50)
MICHAUX CLUB REFLECTIVE LEATHER TAPE (HONEY, BLACK) - £25 (RRP £50)

• BRAKES & LEVERS
  
  

CYCLOCROSS 22.2 LEVERS (SET) - £8 (RRP £20)
TEKTRO RX4.1 TT LEVERS (SET) - £10 (RRP £20)
DROP LEVERS (SET) - £10 (RRP £20)

• SINGLE SPEED CHAINS (BLACK, SILVER, BLUE, YELLOW, AZURE, GREEN, PINK, RED, WHITE) - £4 (RRP £8)

• HANDLEBARS

RISER BARS 480MM (25.4MM CLAMP) - £8 (£16)
FLAT BARS 420MM (25.4MM CLAMP) - £6 (£12)
GUSSET STASH BLACK 630MM (31.8MM CLAMP) - £10 (RRP £26)

• PEDALS
  
  

FOFFA SEALED BEARING CITY PEDALS - £10 (RRP £20)
TOE CLIPS + LEATHER STRAPS - £5 (RRP £12)
WELLGO MG1 (BLACK, WHITE) - £20 (RRP £45)
WELLGO PLATFORM BMX (BLACK, WHITE) - £10 (RRP 20)
GUSSET PLATFORM (BLACK, CLEAR) - £10 (RRP £25)
GUSSET RED STRAPS - £10 (RRP £20)

• SADDLES
  
  

FOFFA TRACK (BLACK, HONEY, WHITE) - £8 (RRP £20)
FIZIK ARIONE WHITE - £60 (RRP £100)

• WHEELSETS
  
  

LOW PROFILE CHROME RIMS WITH TRACK HUBS (FLIP FLOP) - £70 (RRP £100)
LOW PROFILE CHROME RIMS WITH 2 SPEED STURMEY ARCHER (S2) - £100 (RRP £140)
FOFFA CHROME DEEP VS - £100 (RRP 195)

As part of our clearance we are now giving away our trusted Park tools deluxe PRS-2 OS-2 at £450 (including base)

For full spec and pics visit
http://www.parktool.com/product/deluxe-double-arm-repair-stand-prs-2-os-2

As part of our shop clearance we have a couple of slightly used Topeak Two Up stands.

We are giving them away at £80 each (usual RRP £169.99) or £130 for both.

Great way to store your bikes (if you have space in your corridor which I don't!)

For full spec and pics check out http://www.topeak.com/products/storageanddisplay/twouptuneupbikestand

Like when you advertised your wheels by saying that the company that supplies your rims are the same people making H plus Son's?

If this is what our wheel supplier has told us then not much we can do about it. Although once again we have acknowledged the point raised as soon as we researched on the matter.

Just to reiterate Punkture, our frames are made from the same guys in Taiwan that supply for Surly and Cooper. I have mentioned this a few times in the past but you must have missed this, so before you state something which might defame a genuine company make sure you know what you are talking about.

And MDCC is right, people still struggle to realise that some of the Far East made frames are as good as some Italian ones. There must be a reason why Bianchi closed down their factory and get all their steel frames made in taiwan these days.

And Toby, I appreciate your input on the forum, you are more than welcome to give an honest review of your new bike after a few months of riding it, as the problem we have had for a long time here is that a few people on this forum made a lot of defamatory accusations without never bothering to come and try one of our bikes out despite the fact that we offered it many times.

DancefloorTerrorist, sorry but we dont have any Campag brakes nor gipiemme stuff. We do have some bits from a couple of Campag group sets though. too long to list everything so pop by the shop if you get the chance.

that's right Bangz.

.A. they are built in Taiwan

Colin the Bald, Weight: 1250g (rear); 1190g (front) but no separate weight for the rims I am afraid.

Nutsjesmoar, there is some aerodynamical benefit of the 43mm rims but mostly robustness (they are triple wall as well). We sponsor Matti Hemmings (BMX flatlander, holder of a couple of Guinness world records) who has been doing tricks on these wheels for over a year now and is super pleased with them.

mussulo, I am afraid all our non deep v's wheelsets are gone. We do have one non deep V with a 2 speed Sturmey Archer though going for £70 for the set (usual RRP £130).

bajenleker, sorry, no Campa Aero/triompe toe-clip size XL

giloscope, we have plenty of decent 17t fixed cogs going for £4 (very much like the Halo ones)

Finger_jockey, you got a deal! Feel free to pop by our shop and we ll sort you out with a bike for 3 months so that finally someone in this forum will be in the position of talking good (or bad) about our Bikes. Would you mind sending me a private message with the frame size you ll need?

And a big thank you to those that supported our brand, it is reassuring to see there are still many people with a good dose of common sense on this forum.

All the best

Point taken ExTra, I can see that my belief is based on perception and not knowing the facts and I am sure that some working conditions are still better in China than some Taiwanese factories. I did use the word 'usually' not 'always', so I wasn't trying to generalise.

Just to let you know though that I have never tried to deceive any of you, our Taiwanese factory told us that they worked with H+Son in the past (which may or may not be true) and we have only found out yesterday after doing some research that H+Son rims are made in China these days.

it might be worth mentioning that the rims come from the same factory that produces rims for H+Son

This should be edited if it isn't the case.

Done:)

chickenleaverpuller, we have hundreds of different products that it would take forever to list or price them all up. I can ensure you they are all going for trade price (so usually 40% off the standard RRP), so we do encourage everyone to come down and see for themselves.

I know I said it was going to be my last post but I just can't resist the temptation to ask any of you then if we can't use the words 'bespoke' or 'custom' as we don't customise frame geometries (which is a fair point), but don't do off-the-shelf bikes as we offer millions of combinations, nor colour coded bikes as we offer plenty of different parts, then what words are we allowed to use before causing a riot?

Not sure how all of this is relevant since we will stop offering options anyway, but I just want to be clear as to why some people keep getting so upset for simple semantics.

Aroogah, I am really glad this community site worked out for you, unfortunately this is not our case as whenever we would try back in the days to ask for some feedback we simply would get people slagging us off and saying how people with expertise, tools and plenty of time to search for Ebay deals can build better bikes. We have given the public the chance to help us shape a company which started pretty much from scratch and that was willing to listen to other people's options (something that not many companies are open enough to do) and there have been very helpful people along the way, but that was the minority. And yes I have been to track days at Herne Hill and Polo events in the past which were actually quite fun. With a young son and a time-consuming job I simply don't have the time that I used to any longer.

ExTra, I am not sure how I have insulted you (I certainly didn't mean to), I have many good Chinese friends but from what I read it seems that Chinese working conditions are usually not as good as Taiwanese ones.

And PQR, we have suggested many times for anyone to come down to our shop and actually try the bikes out. Strangely enough in 5 years nobody has actually done this yet which certainly makes people think. We have also asked for feedback to keep improving our bikes and all we keep getting is a 'your bikes are too expensive and of poor quality' which clearly is not very constructive.

Let me say this again, if anybody would like to come down to test one of our bikes out and write their honest review on this forum so that everybody can have a better idea of what our bikes actually are like based on facts and not perception, they are more than welcome to!

Ah yes, I forgot that some people here are very sensitive about using the word 'bespoke'. Because letting customers choose between Brooks, San Marco, Fizik, Shimano, Campag, Wellgo, Miche, Nitto, Cinelli, Schwalbe, Halo, Vittoria and Continental components is all about the colours.. Let alone different types of bars and frame geometries..

To clarify to those that are being misdirected by JamesSW false accusations, on one thing he is right, after he called us 'liars' on another thread since our company told us that they worked with H+Son in the past, we did do some research and actually H+Son rims are made in China, ours are made in Taiwan where the quality is usually higher.

Our wheel are far from the quality of budget wheels like Espresso or Mango, and you can clearly see for yourself:

http://foffabikes.com/cnt/EF.jpg

This is clearly a thread which will never get to an end so this is my last post on the matter.

Chris Borneo, the prices for our wheel sets are not the same as H+Son so clearly we are not trying to put ourselves at the same league, however it amazes me how some people can still believe the level of 'innovation' that can be applied to a RIM, make it twice as expensive as ours and still get their respect while our brand is still getting slagged off. Well guess what, the quality of our wheels is exceptional too (isn't it strange that everyone that keeps trolling about us has not even seen or ridden one of our wheels?) and we have not picked them out of a catalogue but have selected and designed each component carefully. So the same old problem here is that people make a lot of assumptions without actually knowing what they are talking about.

And Tibbly, I am not asking the approval from this community (which many people would doubt it can even be called one), I am simply protecting our brand from some of the defamatory accusations that have been made here, since this still appears in the first page of Google so I have every right to educate people of the facts, which some of you keep ignoring.

Everyone working here is very passionate about cycling and we are not here to exploit a market boom, but to make a living doing something that we like.

We have worked very hard to get to where we are today, we have admitted we had a few issues in the beginnings (like every other start-up company) and have rectified each one of them in the last 5 years.

The closing down of the shop and the phasing out of our bespoke bikes marks a big step for us. We ll be able to expand our range based on a lot of feedback we received from many industry experts in the last few years. We ll be able to improve the quality further and make our prices a lot more competitive, and I will keep checking this thread to see what some of you will have to say on the new model in the next 12 months or so.

All the best

William1984, you are right, I keep having hope in people's common sense but after reading some of the responses here it is obvious that even after our shop will be closed and we ll only offer bikes of the same level as Charge at £100 less, people will still find something to troll about.

And JamesSW you might have ridden an early version of the Ciao (since it had just come out when we did the Sky Ride event) which is only one of the many products we offer, this doesnt mean that all our bikes are poor. It amazes me how easy is for some to generalise accusations so easily.

Also you keep referring to H+son, but what do you know about how we approach our manufacturers and work with them?
On what grounds do you base your 'there's a million miles of quality between our products and H+son's' comment when you have not even ridden or seen our wheels? Do buy some and try them hard and you ll either change your mind (which is very likely considering we have not had one complaint after selling over 500 of these in the last few years) or at least will be in the position to make these defamatory accusations.

Chadders81, I think you are asking the wrong type of people whether our bikes are nice. You are welcome to come to our shop to see for yourself, or check some of the testimonials from people that actually rode these bikes (http://www.foffabikes.com/press, http://www.wiggle.co.uk/foffa-bikes-one-black-wiggle-exclusive-2014)

linefly93, we have Knog Boomer (black and white) for £35 (usual RRP 65), Knog frog at £10 (usual RRP 20) and some other spares at half price.