Should you buy a bike built or build your own?

Want a bike that meets all your specific needs or happy to go down the ready-made route?

- James Bracey

In many ways, the experience of buying a new bike is very much like visiting your favorite restaurant (for those of us who remember that feeling): do you go set menu or a la carte? In other words, do you follow the chef ’s recommendations and maybe not eat exactly what you really desire but save money, or do you mix and match, cherry-picking each part of your meal to your specific taste?

Buy ready to ride or build bespoke? It’s a question I faced countless times during my years working in bike shops and one that every cyclist has spent time deliberating.

Buying built, why it makes economic sense Buying a complete bike from a manufacturer is very much like opting for a set menu. Now, this might sound like a negative compared to having free reign over the menu, but the experience usually comes at a very attractive price. For many of us, the ‘p’ word holds considerable sway over our choice. Invariably, the larger buying power of a bicycle company will enable it to produce models at prices that would be impossible for an individual to recreate.

Take Decathlon for example, it produces the Van Riesel Ultra CF bike, with a carbon frame and full Shimano 105 groupset for just £1,099.

Now if you tried building this yourself, the frame alone would cost £799, leaving you just £300 for the rest of the build, an impossibility for any of us.