Archive-URL: http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=tandem.10702.0197.eml
From: "Mark Livingood" <mark(AT)werlivingood.com>
Subject: [T(AT)H] 2007 Tandem Owner's Survey (End of Week 3, Final Report)
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:14:47 -0800 (PST)

After three weeks I decided to take another look at the survey results
to see what's what.
http://www.opinionpower.com/results.cgi?id=388045412

There were 500 respondents in the first week, and an additional 65
during the subsequent two weeks.  Again, as a group, these folks
collectively own a bunch of tandems and bikes.

Ok, as to the numbers, as I said about 565 folks have taken the survey.

Bikes owned: 3,211+ 
That's still about 5.7 bikes per respondent, noting that 62 of the folks
who responded (11%) indicated ownership of 10 or more bikes.

Tandems owned: ~909 
That's 1.6 tandems per person, noting that 27% of the respondents had
two tandems (up from 21% in 2004), 9% have 3 (up from 5% in 2004) and
one had 10 or more (down from 3 in 2004). Included in there were 150
folks who said they owned S&S-equipped travel tandems (152 less the 2
folks who said they sold theirs) which, assuming they only own one-each,
represents about 16.5% of the tandems owned. What's noteworthy here is
that nearly 1/3 of the folks who responded during the last two weeks
(20/65) have S&S equipped tandems.  I haven't normalized the data but at
a quick look that's up 4% since my 2004 survey. Looking at the same 2004
data, Triplets, Quints & Quads are about the same, as are trikes,
recumbents are down, but semi-recumbents are up.  Enduro & Off-Road
tandems account for 17% of the types of tandems owned, with is up 5%
from what was reported back in 2004.

In looking at the "why we upgraded" it would appear that nearly 56% of
the survey respondents are on at least their second tandem, with about
24% of the folks who upgraded indicating that they moved up from a
'starter' tandem.  Almost tied at around 16% - 17% were: fixing problems
or replacing a damaged tandem, buying an S&S equipped model, and "just
wanted something new".  

How much are folks paying for tandems?  Well, once again there are some
interesting numbers here.  Rather than regurgitating the data that you
can see in the Web results I decided to group the 10 different
categories into four subcategories with a little bit of overlap that do
a better job of illustrating the trends:

43.5% Entry Level / Affordable ($0 - $3,500)
28.1% Mid-Level  ($2,500 - $4,500)
25.7% High-End / Exotic ($5,500 - $10,000)
6.9%  Boutique/Exotic ($10,000 - Up)

As for frame material:

57% Steel
35% Aluminum
4% Titanium
3% Carbon
1% Other

Once again, I'm waiting for someone to weigh in on what materials were
used to fabricate the "other" four tandem frames.  I'm hoping it's just
a labeling issue where a few folks didn't make the connection between
ZR9000 and aluminum, or Reynolds 853 and steel, etc.

OK, how about carbon forks? By process of elimination, about 25% of the
folks who responded to this survey indicated they had at least one
tandem with a carbon fork. You'll note that once again the last 65
respondents have had a big influence on these numbers which, after the
first week, were at about 33%. If I run the number of carbon forks that
were reported (129) against the numbers of tandems owned (909), the data
suggests about 14% of the tandems owned by this group have carbon forks.
Now, how did the various different brands of carbon forks break out?
Remembering that there were a total of 129 carbon forks reported, here's
the break down:

10.8% Reynolds Ouzo Pro
15.5% Santana V-Brake 
45.7% Wound-Up
17.8% AME/True Temper
10.0% "Other"

Now, here is what was reported on wheels. I looked at the data two ways.
One where I assumed that all of the wheels that were "we don't know or
care, but they work fine" were 40h or 48h wheels which suggested that
about 66% of the owners were riding on 40h or 48h wheels. When I
factored out those responses the numbers dropped to about 61%. 36h
wheelsets only represented 16% with AeroWheels accounting for nearly 23%
of the wheels owned. Those numbers seemed high and, if I looked at the
total number of wheels represented in the poll (576) I realized that I
had apples and grapes since there were 909 tandems out there. Therefore,
my gut tells me that there still are a lot of folks riding "conventional
wheels" but 15% (135) of the wheels reported out of the 909 tandems out
there were running "go-fast" wheelsets. Hmmm. 15%; that number sounds
familiar. Oh yeah, it's about the same percentage of tandems running
carbon forks. Given that the three major brands/models of paired,
low-spoke count wheelsets were a hot topic on the forums this past year
it was interesting to see what this group had to offer about them.

Here's how the 135 go-fast wheelsets reported under question #7 came
out: 

30% were Rolf Prima Vigor Tandem
27% were Shimano-Santana Sweet 16's
24% were Bontrager Race Lite Tandem
6% were some other non-tandem specific aero wheel
7% were "Aerospoke" wheelsets (no longer offered in 700c, but still
available in 26")
6% of some other non-tandem specific aero spoke / disc wheels.

Now, peeling back the onion a little and using the statistics reported
for question #8, here's the summary of how the 114 Rolf,
Shimano-Santana, Bontrager wheels represented in the data came out when
only compared to each other:

37% were Rolfs with about 29% of the owners reporting some type of
problem with all but 1 resolved satisfactorily.
33% were Shimano-Santana's with about 26% of the owners reporting some
type of problem, with 4 unhappy campers.
30% were Bontrager with only 15% reporting some type of problem, all of
which were satisfactorily resolved.

Well, that's about it for this year's survey. I'm sure there will still
be some added inputs but, if history is an indicator, the data won't be
changing all that much as the big "surge" always seems to come in the
first week.  However, the number of respondents to this year's survey is
up again from the previous year's surveys so perhaps the web-presence of
tandem enthusiasts is on the rise.

Regards,
Mark Livingood
Near Atlanta, GA (USA)
http://www.thetandemlink.com