The Elite BMX brand hit the scene recently and many people are wondering “is this a good brand” So I looked into their company, completes and quality to decide if you should spend you money on their stuff. Here is what I found..
About Elite BMX Brand
So the Elite BMX Brand has been around roughly for 2 years.
That’s it. That’s all I got. I read different pages and researches for about 40 minutes and all that I really found was the Facebook page was started in 2018. I realize the website says 2016 but this doesn’t mean anything to me.
In reality it is really sketchy to me that I can’t find any more information. This is everything that I found:
Elite BMX is a brand that has been around for a few years selling really cheap bmx bikes with slight modern twists. Essentially taking Walmart quality bikes and adding things like 4pc bars or ‘oil slick‘ colors. The bikes are all very inexpensive and very low quality. On my site they would fall below “beginner level”.
Business Model
They encourage new and younger bmx riders to become ambassadors for them, thus becoming “sponsored” and promoting Elite BMX to their friends. It is a very good strategy. People who dropship or private label from China usually use these kinds of marketing tactics. Oh look, here I found an exact Elite model on Alibaba (Chinese wholesaler)
Here you can see that if you have the capital, you could buy a few 100 bikes like this for a very low price. Then sell them to people and flip your money.
Writing this makes me want to do a similar thing haha. This brand has absolutely no credibility and is just casually selling bikes for 200% what they paid. Wild.
Ambassadors
Aside from the kids that they “sponsor”, Elite has one known BMX pro backing them. Essentially becoming the face of the brand. A lot of companies do this, look at when Harry Main was repping Mafia Bikes. It was the same concept. The Pro repping Elite is Ryan Guettler, who was the team manager for Hyper and Snafu recently. Ryan has done some really cool things for bmx, but recently it looks like the years of concussions are getting to him. On a real note, it’s some really sad shit.
Elite BMX Warranty
A good brand always has a good warranty. Digging through the Elite BMX Website, I found that they do have a warranty. Let’s talk about it.
All Elite BMX forks and frames are warranted against manufacturing defects in materials and workmanship for the lifetime of the original owner. The warranty ensures that the material and workmanship of the frames and forks are free from defaults upon delivery of the bicycle. The warranty does not cover other bicycle components, unfortunately, pedals, cranks, and other parts experience a lot of normal wear and tear and cannot be covered. The warranty only applies to the original owner of the bicycle and proof of purchase is required for the warranty to be valid. All warranty items must be sent to our HQ and the owner is responsible for all shipping costs incurred. The return address is 1935 Santa Anita ave. South El Monte, CA 91733
Elite BMX warranty
Loopholes
Sounds decent right? Forks and frames covered? Wrong. Now let’s look at the loopholes.
Essentially here is what I got from it. The forks and frame is covered ONLY if:
- The bike is assembled by a mechanic
- You NEVER do wheelies, jumps or stunts. (how sad)
- You perform a mechanical check up before and after riding the bike.
Doesn’t sound like a very BMX friendly company to me.
Elite Bike Reviews
I have seen a ton of reviews. Since these bikes are really popular on Amazon, this gives me 100’s of reviews to shift through. I’ll pick a few good and a few bad.
Good
To be completely honest and transparent with you all, this bike has amazing reviews on Amazon. Most of the reviews are from parents who got the bike as a gift for their kids. Which doesn’t tell us much about the bike. A lot really mentioned the color. You can read the reviews for yourself here: https://amzn.to/39eFuop
Bad
The bad reviews with pictures were the easiest ones to take a screen shot. Most reviews talked about missing pedals, or cranks falling off. Nothing too crazy, but essentially it’s giving online bmx buying a bad name. Which is kind of sad considering where the world will be in 5 years.
Elite BMX Conclusion
Here it is guys really simple answer to the question. Is Elite BMX a good brand? No. Simply put it seems a little sketchy and from my research, they put absolutely nothing into growing the sport. With cheap BMX bikes, people try the sport break the bike, and give up. I mean hell, doing tricks voids your warranty.
I like the concept because in reality, we need a modern entry-level bike to spark the dream in new bmx riders. However, this isn’t the right way. The right way is to build a stable economic backing behind bmx so that real companies can give back to more riders and provide full-time incomes to those who have achieved the dream of becoming pro.
I could make a ton of money writing positive reviews for these bikes and linking them to amazon. But I won’t do that because it isn’t true bmx. They miss the whole bigger picture.
