My comparison to small wineries and microbreweries is that these are miniscule compared to Gallo or Budwieser, just as one-man shops compare to TREK. Also, they tend to be driven by the passion of the owners for a quality product, not just profit. By golden age, I meant there may now be more really top quality custom bulders making bikes in North America than at any time in history. Perhaps Proteus inspired a lot of builders, but most never became real masters. One could call the 1890's in golden age, I suppose, except I don't think many of the bikes of that era were what we would call a top quality custom frames today, although companies like Pope and Columbia certainly produced a lot of very good production bikes in that era.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX
CYCLESTORE@aol.com wrote:
snip<< I'm constantly amazed at the number of excellent American custom builders. It seems every week someone here points out yet another one or two I'd never heard of before. This is particularly amazing considering the consistent almost unanimous testimony from builders about how little money there is in this line of work. I think it must be like small wineries or microbreweries. People start them because the love the lifesytle, or at least the imagined lifestyle, despite universal warnings about the poor profitability.
I think we are actually now living in the "golden age" of American framebuilding, just as the golden age of British framebuilding seems to have been from the end of WWII to maybe 1960.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX >>
Hi Jerry,
Comparing the one man frame shop to the Microbreweries I know of like walnuts compared to watermelons. Most American outfits are so small and most Microbrewers I know of have a sizable payroll, lots of capital investment in materials, infrastructure, distribution deals, etc. Then again I suppose Waterford, Seven, Independent fabrication and BIG Ben Serotta are larger than some Microbrewers but of these guys Waterford is the only one dedicated to lugged steel that I am aware of.
Would not the golden age be around the mid 1970s when Proteus fired up their frame kits and thousands of frame builders were born? Not many got into it commercially through them but some I suspect are still building after starting with their hobby course in Frames 101. This could of course represent the birth or rebirth rather than the golden age. I suspect as hard as it is to survive nowadays building bicycle frames as a full time endeavor that the builders the selves might need to select their own golden age if it ever arrived at all.
Yours in Cycling,
Gilbert Anderson
North Road Bicycle Company
519 W. North St.
Raleigh, NC 27603
USA
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