Yesterday I got back into cycling with a yellow Y1RS...
I'm writing a PhD dissertation in Science and Technology Studies (STS) about the Tour de France.
I saw discussions today in the forum about the Korean bicycle market and wanted to add my own thoughts.
To give the conclusion up front, I think the problem with the Korean bike market is that luxury goods aren't recognized as luxury goods.
And by "Korean bike market" here, as you know, I mean the road bike market, specifically the high-end brand segment.
You'll remember.
During Covid, a lot of people who'd been doing other sports flooded in, and parts supply couldn't keep up even if you paid a premium.
Then after Covid ended, importers kept changing, dealers couldn't clear inventory or resorted to shady tactics and got called out, and so on.
Let me start with my own background on this...
In my case, I got into it right at the start of Covid,
but not because I switched over from another sport—I got in right after finishing my master's in history, when my health had gotten really bad.
My dream bike going in was the Bianchi Oltre XR4.
I'd been lurking in cycling communities for years even before I got into it, which is partly why that was the case...
Most of the club etiquette, without even needing to spell it out,
was exactly the negative stuff that those channels churning out AI-generated "xxx is finished" videos these days point out.
You have to ride a certain brand,
you have to ride a certain way to be considered good,
these things aren't directly forced on you, but they're great for easily gaslighting newcomers.
Take it a step further and FTP comes up, how you're supposed to raise it, and then also "that's not the only answer~" comes up too,
but if you look closely, the people with that semi-professional knowledge tended to have deep ties to the industry, more than you'd expect from a pure hobbyist.
High-loyalty customers exist in every market, but you can't deny that the very act of evaluating bikes or skill level by certain standards is tied to capital.
Someone said something negative about MCT enthusiasts yesterday too,
but MCT riders are enthusiasts who, despite not being pros, are in a good position to have one foot in the industry.
And in exchange, they're responsible for sponsor promotion.
So personally I see MCT as a system that maintains, to some degree, enthusiasts' dependence on capital.
You can see the market structure where distributors use marketing tactics to popularize a product, MCT riders promote it, and regular enthusiasts, reacting to that, get pulled in without realizing it and open their wallets.
And that's why there's this ongoing debate in the community about whether MCT riders are athletes or hobbyists.
I don't mean to make this all about MCT—I brought it up only as a variable that needs to be addressed in the course of this argument.
Thinking about this structure, it kind of makes sense that during Covid each importer was selling tons of luxury brands,
and now it's a warring-states era where everyone's trying to sell Chinese-made value brands instead.
Of course, even those so-called Chinese value brands often need an investment of 5-7 million won to get a complete bike.
The people who got in during Covid ultimately left because it wasn't worth the money.
I've seen more than once or twice people opening an overdraft account or buying a luxury flagship bike on 24-month interest-free installments.
And in those moments, influencers and MCT riders were out there getting sponsored for something expensive and promoting it on YouTube.
Marketing and sales tactics aimed at boosting short-term results were the primary problem, but there's no point blaming spilled milk at this stage.
I think the more fundamental issue, as I mentioned, ultimately comes down to how we perceive luxury goods.
As everyone knows, a natural and desirable population distribution in the bike market should be pyramid-shaped.
Koreans just have this temperament where they can't stand seeing a bike that costs less than 1 million won.
Same as how hikers love brands like Arc'teryx or Patagonia.
But what do you all think luxury actually is?
Simply something expensive?
Something to show off with?
If you can't afford it, not buying it is the right call,
and being able to afford it shouldn't mean looking down on those who can't.
But throughout our country's history, we've never really had the chance to stop and think about what "luxury" even means.
After the Japanese colonial period, traditional handicrafts lost their lineage,
the Korean War tore down the industrial base all over again,
and during the development era, the priority was spinning up factories quickly to make money, rather than making things slowly and carefully.
In the end it's a matter of perception,
and lately, thanks to that kind of awareness, luxury goods carrying an artisan's story—like the 180-plus-year-old "Blacksmith of a Thousand Craftsmen" in the kitchenware world,
or the "Zenith" fountain pen that Trump reportedly liked—are getting attention in Korea too.
Recognizing luxury as luxury, I think, means being a consumer who understands the artisan's effort even if only one unit ships a month,
and even if it looks excessively expensive because of that, being able to spiritually connect with that artisan.
In the end, it comes down to learning how to live slowly... not the surface-level issue of riding speed, but the essence of slowness, the aesthetics of slowness, the golden mean of it—I think the road cycling industry as a whole needs to reflect on this.
Then, posting about buying something expensive wouldn't get met with "oh look at them showing off,"
and conversely, posting about buying something cheap wouldn't get met with "ugh, why would you even buy that."
Demand and supply forming a stable pyramid in the order of entry-level → value → mid-to-high-end → top-tier ultimately starts,
I believe, from all of us coolly (?) accepting among ourselves that not everyone can afford a Colnago or a Pinarello.
The scholars who've influenced my reflections here include Thorstein Veblen, famous for the theory of the leisure class; Werner Sombart, who wrote "Luxury and Capitalism"; Georg Simmel, who reflected on the history of material culture; and Pierre Bourdieu, known for the concept of habitus.
These are just my own reflections, so I'd love to hear your thoughts too~~
