On Thursday, October 24, 2002, at 05:54 PM, The Maaslands wrote:
> Richard is very much correct. Almost all teh builders that I know treat
> their production as simply their livelihood, not an art.
When I started in the industry I was surprised at how much stuff was farmed out. Were we not just this morning discussing how FB made Campagnolo hubs? I think most of the non-industry list members would be shocked at how much stuff is made by other companies than they believe. I can't count the times I've looked at some need part and heard, "Oh yea that's made by Ofmega" Replace Ofmega with Sunshine or random foreign and domestic machine shop and you've got the idea. I'm sure Chuck can, but how many people can list all the companies Campy contracted parts from?
With frames the water gets even murkier. There are many reasons things are farmed out for other folks to build. One is demand; not only is the bike industry seasonal but it's fickle. This means that demand for your bikes can fluctuate violently. The options for the manufacturer is to lose sales or farm out work. Ask yourself what you would do? I remember talking to a friend of mine who's been building almost as long as I've been alive and talking about the early mountain bike boom of the early 80s. I was talking about a company who's bikes I liked and was very popular at the time. He spoke up and said, " You know I built a ton of those bikes right?" Er. . . . no. . . . "Oh yea when sales went up all the lower end frames went to Japan and the high end bikes were built by about 6-7 guys around the US." Not too long after that I was talking to another builder friend who was talking about how their new "custom" frames were using pre-made chainstay/seatstay assemblies made in England. Both of these were done because of demand for the product.
The second main reason is price. Anyone on the list has been a business owner has been faced with this debate. If you read a young mans ordeal on the Framebuilders list you can see the downside of this debate. Before around 1985 it was cheaper to build in Japan then in the US or Western Europe. The main issue was labor costs. In the US labor is very expensive. Some builders will buy sub-assemblies from Asia or Europe and change to make their own. Some will just design a bike, have it build somewhere else and put another name and their stamp of approval on it. The idea is to get people involved in your budget frames and build some name recognition.
Add all this to the times where companies were moving factories, had
employees on strike, or had other problems they couldn't control and
you have a lot of farmed out frames. There is no shame in building or
buying contract work. The only thing you can hope for is that the
company respects the customer more than margins. The view of the
general cycling public is such that we're lucky that there are more
than a few people doing their own work with their own name on it the
product. Personally I look at each item and judge it on the merits it
holds before me. I've owned bikes with major players names on them
that I thought were questionable, and bikes by mass producers that I
said "WOW" too. Every time I think can write something off I realize
the there's more to it. Just like in life beauty is more than skin
deep.
enjoy,
Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
SB, CA