Perun Moto

5. Januar
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In advance, sorry for the long-ish write-up. I posted this on Advrider too. I tried to make the write-up as short as possible, but I couldn’t make it shorter and shed light on the entire subject. It is a complicated subject. And although this write up is about NiceCNC and Perun moto and about aftermarket moto parts, it can be applied to many other industries, so it may be interesting read even if you are not into adventure riding and all that.
Also, before you consider this as an angry rant, please know that my goal here is to exchange views and opinions with the educated members of adventure bike community and to maybe come up with some conclusions. Help a fellow rider who happens to have a business in this industry too (us from Perun moto) to better understand the situation and buyers’ perspective in these challenging times.
For anyone who doesn’t know me (Nikola), I am an owner of Perun Moto. It is a micro company focused on designing and manufacturing after-market parts for adventure motorcycles. I am a rider and moto traveler, and this business is born out of that passion. Recipe is simple – buy the bike I found interesting, ride it, see what we can improve, design a prototype, manufacture a prototype, test, improve, test, improve…until I am happy with the design – then manufacture it and sell the products through our online shop. Our designs are highly specialized, made from blank canvas for each bike, focused on adventure riding, and we test them thoroughly before we offer them for sale. We are mostly focused on luggage racks, and each rack is tested with various luggage systems riders use – Mosko moto, Giant Loop, Kriega, Enduristan etc. And “tested” means we (me and my colleague Gliga and my riding buddies) put the luggage on the bike and ride it like that on several gnarly trips, to see if everything works well. If we find we need to improve the design, we do that – until I am happy with the result. And all this for each luggage system we reference in our designs. This is a costly and slow process, but it yields great results. We know what we sell and we have a lot of experience with the everyday use of our products.
We do all in-house, from design to manufacturing. There are five of us, everyone receives a fair salary, we pay the taxes and follow the rules. Environmental, safety, tax and all rules related to manufacturing and sales. We use mostly EU made materials and we mill on US made CNC machines. We have an address, and we stand behind our products. If something is wrong and there are some issues, we are here to resolve it. If anyone has some questions about our products, we are here to answer. At the end of the year, we earn something, but we don’t make fortune, far from it. Most of that we reinvest.
Why am I writing this? If you are not involved in similar business, maybe you see luggage rack or similar product as a sum of its components – aluminum, steel or stainless steel, some bolts and washers. You also may be aware that there is some machining time involved, as well as some surface treatment cost (powder coating or anodizing). But there is another part of the price, and it is R&D – research and development – and I explained that above. If you sell thousands of items, R&D cost is divided, and it may not represent significant portion of the cost and eventually the price. But if you sell only few hundred items, through entire product lifecycle, R&D cost is significant part of the total cost, and it is reflected in the price. And products we design and sell are sold in hundreds (or less), not thousands. Simply, a limited number of bikes are sold each year and not everyone needs our parts. And there is healthy competition involved so they cover part of the market too.
Speaking of competition, it is very welcome. It makes us rethink some design choices and come up with better solutions for future designs. It pushes us forward. And end users benefit from this, as they get better products from each generation. That is, if competition is healthy – if they follow the same rules and put the similar effort into their work – design and manufacturing. We are even in constant communication with some of our competitors and we have respect for each other, even if we offer similar products for same bikes.
And now I am coming to the reason why I write this post. There are some companies who decided to skip the entire R&D part and just skim the milk – steal designs and just manufacture the copies of our products. Few years ago, those copies were sold on AliExpress and similar platforms and we just accepted that. After that, they started to sell through Ebay and Amazon, which was a bit more troublesome. But still those were no-name copies with very uncertain quality. It did affect our sales a bit, but we just accepted and moved on.
But 2-3 years ago, new company emerged – Nicecnc Store. Again, recipe was simple – steal our designs and manufacture the copies, but with a new twist. They put their brand on the products they sell, and they started to establish themselves as a legit part of the powersport community. Brand description they now use on Instagram is “leading powersports parts innovator”. Funny. Of course, their products are a lot cheaper than ours. That is for several reasons. First thing that comes to mind is the origin – and these products are made in China. Cheaper labor and all that.
But it is not the problem. It is just how things are and it is a legit advantage IMO. That alone doesn’t give them the advantage they have. Then there are materials and processes used.
They do use cheaper and less advanced materials. Where we use stainless steel, they use carbon steel. Where they use 4 mm aluminum, we use 6 mm aluminum. We use more quality alloys. Where they use waterjet and 2.5D milling, we use CNC mills and add 3D features. Where we use custom tooling for CNC bending, they use standard sharp punches. But even this is not the main thing – their products are inferior to ours, but I won’t lie and say they are total junk. They work, sometimes some DIY skills are needed to tweak them, sometime everything fits well. There may be some sharp edges or powder coat chipping, but they will do the job in most cases.
The real reason they can offer their copies of our products at much cheaper prices than we sell them for is because they have zero R&D costs. NiceCNC probably never saw a bike they sell the products for. No countless hours in front of the new bike, staring at it and thinking where to start. Not a single prototype made and tested and then redesigned and made and tested repeatedly. No scraps. No design dead ends and starting from the beginning. No time on the bike testing it and thrashing it. They just get our products, do a 3D scan and reverse engineering and manufacture it.
Until recently, they used only our photos to advertise their products (copies of our products). Photos from our workshop, with blurred background and with photoshopped NiceCNC logo on the products. Even now, unless a customer sends them a photo of their product on the customer’s bike, they don’t have any real-life photos of their products on the bikes to show. Try asking them how, i.e., Enduristan Blizzard XL fits on their T700 rack and if it will touch the silencer and let me know if you believe the answer you may get.
Now, before I go further, I need to add that Perun moto is just one of many affected companies. I won’t mention other legit companies who got robbed by NiceCNC. Reason is simple – I don’t want to publicly state where can you get the cheaper copies of their products. I know that some of the legit company owners are reluctant to put this on the internet as they are afraid that uneducated customers just won’t care and will go for a cheaper product, so they see this kind of a write-up as a free ad for NiceCNC.
And this adds another layer to the problem – NiceCNC has a huge portfolio of products, most likely all copied designs from some other companies. With such a huge portfolio, their internet presence is huge, and they can afford much bigger GoogleAds budgets then we can. So, they are increasingly present in search queries, even more pushing original designers out. And then things spiral out – original designers sell less, so they are forced to charge more per product to cover R&D costs so the difference in NiceCNC price and price of the original parts is even more pronounced.
To illustrate all this, here are some examples – original Perun moto designs are on the left side of each photo and #Nicecnc copy is on the right side.
Ducati DesertX top rack.
Ducati DesertX GPS holder.
KTM 890 / Husqvarna Norden top rack.
KTM 690 Enduro top rack.
Husqvarna 701 top rack.
Yamaha Tenere T700 top rack.
2021+ 1290 top rack.
890 Adventure Rails.
And now to the heart of the matter. Is there anything to be done here?
Legally, it is very hard to fight and NiceCNC is aware of that. We have a registered trademark, but they sell under their name. We could protect the designs, but it is very costly, and small companies can’t do that. Even if we do that, fighting against companies registered in Asia is very difficult (I won’t get into details, but we are on this).
We try to offer added value to the customers, showing various luggage options on bikes with our products and providing tips and insights. But our reach is limited.
We support legit influencers, people who really live for adventure riding and provide us with photos and videos from places we probably won’t ever visit. We support some small-scale events, like Noobs Rally and such. We support some major forums.
We try to explain to customers that we use better materials and surface treatment and our attention to detail is better, but all this may still not be a deciding factor for many buyers.
We will soon officially offer something like limited lifetime warranty and crash replacement policy (although we actually do this since the beginning of our business) and this should help a bit to differentiate from copycat companies.
I also felt the need to explain the entire situation to the educated buyers, like most of inmates here are, so you can make your own educated decision. There are some small companies that have gone out of business in recent months. I can’t be certain, but it is very likely that intellectual property stealing companies contributed to this. Many of us business owners (especially us who own the manufacturing facilities and have machining skills) have an opportunity to focus our efforts on some other businesses. In the long run, all this will affect the quality of aftermarket parts, as only generic parts will be left on the market – NiceCNC can’t design anything new, they don’t even have these bikes.
And in the end, I would really appreciate the honest feedback from the community here – do you see the NiceCNC as a parasite company and avoid them even if that means paying more to the original designers or you don’t really care about this and just go for cheaper products. Please, if you are in the second camp, let me (us) know and it will be helpful – I would like to know how buyers really feel about this. I don’t think anyone can judge people on the second camp; we all should be free to decide what to do with our money.
Also, at the very end, I would like to address NiceCNC too (although I tried to reach them in the past, with little success). I would really like to see their manufacturing capabilities put to the good use – I hope they will start making their own designs and help us to improve the entire aftermarket parts offering in an honest way.
Peace and love to all, have a wonderful Holidays!

KTM hat den Motor lizensiert und dafür von CFMoto den 450 Paralleltwin bekommen. Es ist nicht so als würden die den Motor einfach 1:1 nachbauen.

Da kam die Insolvenz dazwischen 450'er