Hey all,
I'm with Richard here. We CR collectors and enthusiast shouldn't over romanticize the bicycle "industry". Those guys were, for the most part, just trying to make a living at it. They were pumping out "product". The more they could get out the door, the more money they could make.
I'm sure there were a lot of folks in the big companies like Schwinn and Raleigh who loved hand made bicycles and the artistry of custom bikes, but those two factories, in their heyday, made most of their money by hiring hundreds of assembly line workers to build thousands of common-place, utility and kiddie bikes. Their factories weren't charming little village shops but huge facilities covering a couple of city blocks with huge, dirty, smoke-belching, brick buildings. (I'm a little nostalgic now that those factories are gone and replaced with housing projects) Each Company had little custom shops, but when it comes right down to it, those parts of the operation were more about publicity and advertising than they were about adding to the profitability of the operation. I would guess that the racing departments and light weight divisions lost money much of the time. It is no coincidence, that for a few years in the '50s-'60s, Paramounts were built in the lobby of the gigantic Schwinn facility in Chicago. Schwinn wanted to present an image that they were still a friendly little mom and pop operation that still made custom bicycles to order. In reality, they had huge automated welding machines in the back that were stamping out frames at a rate of almost a million a year. I wonder how many school kids, while visiting the Schwinn factory on field trips, asked if the the guy or girl welding the Paramounts were Mr/ Mrs.Schwinn? (I wanted to add Bianchi & Colnago to this list. They started small but very quickly became huge)
Even the little family run places did what they had to do to pay the bills. Someone wrote an article recently (Rivendell?) about how many small Italian builders weren't concerned about what name went on their frames. If they were short of stock, they would get some frames from a bigger shop and put their own labels on them. If Tony's Lawnmower Shop and Hardware Store up the street wanted to sell bicycles, the custom shops would make up some frames and put Tony's name on it. So much for artistic integrity!
The small English custom shops would do the same. Claud Butler started out in a little shed behind a bike shop in South London. When they had a really good year during the bike boom of the '50s, they would rent out some lofts and hire who ever they could find to braze frames and keep up with demand. If a bicycle came in for repair of repainting--regardless of who made it originally--it would often leave the shop with a nice, enameled "Claud Butler" badge on the head tube.
I think we would all agree that there is something special about the custom shops that stayed small and never out-sourced their production. It's nice to see a Jack Taylor or a Richard Sachs or (usually) an Eisentraut that you know that someone named Taylor or a Sachs or and Eisentraut actually worked on that frame. There are damn few bicycles that you can say that about! (Someone should make a list).
Sure, the modern, oversize aluminum frames that are made by Masi, Raleigh, etc. are hideous and ugly from our view point, but those are the bicycles that are demanded by today's market. At least with Raleigh and Schwinn, those companies made bicycles for 100 years. If buyer's today don't want classics from those companies, It's fine with me. I'll pick up all the nice examples cheap and put them in my basement. If everyone still wanted lugged steel bikes, Masi and Raleigh would start making them again. And Everyone would drive Ford Mod.A's '57 Chevys and the roads would look lovely. :-)
Off like a flock of turtles, Stratton (not one aluminum bike on my property) Hammon Louisville, Kentucky, USA
From: Richard M Sachs <richardsachs@juno.com> To: BobHoveyGa@aol.com Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: Re: [CR]Re: How the mighty are fallen Message-ID: <20040304.220059.2772.34.richardsachs@juno.com>
Message: 14
>i'm curious as to why folks think these framebuilder slash icon
>types want to stay at their benchs all day long until retirement and
>"create" those dang same ol' things year after year. etcetera.
>over "there", framebuilding is not the touchy feely artsy phartsy
>profession that we have/had projected it to be. most who were
>doing it were born into the family business or entered it after
>grade school; it wasn't to exercise a creative bent or to "keep the
>flame burning".
>those who succeeded at it in various eras should be allowed the
>opportunity of profiting from the market they helped create. to a
>builder, i never met any italian who believed it was a virtue to stand
>at a bench when the option to "grow the business" was possible.
>e-RICHIE
>chester, ct