I loved my Simplex derailleurs. In the 1970s I was a kid in a blue collar neighborhood trying to fund my foray into bike racing on earnings from lawn mowing and snow shoveling. As a solo Jr rider I was constantly the target of big city Jr team whose parents could afford coaches and top equipment. The Simplex derailures were light, simple, and reliable. I had to do all of my own maintenance and adjustments. Fortunately the Simplex derailures didn’t add to my workload. Through elimination and modification of components I made many alterations to make my Vita Sprint race competitive. Before races cleaning hub bearings and reassembling with oil. Day after race taking hubs apart again to clean and repack with grease. Throughout my manufacturing and QC career I frequently thought back to how those Simplex components were my best bang for the buck and didn’t require any innovation on my part to be race competitive against the high priced aspirational components of the era.
Ben - Thanks for this. I still write a monthly column for Bill's website and did business with him for many years when I ran Sachs US. I started in 1973 so have a similar history. Bill and Carol are a couple of the reasons the industry has been a great place to spend a career.
North American and European controllers of Big brand names tried to maximize profits by minimalizing cost of production without sacrificing decent quality. That's a no brainer.. The bike industry has been using Asian manufacturing and playing the shell game of moving production to various countries as costs rise even in some Asian countries and then are moved to cheaper Asian countries. (I've seen this first hand as I have previously lived in Asia full time for nine years and watched it develop.) At the same time, these big brand companies were doing their best to convince the public in the west that Asian products were "inferior" to western produced products, (even though the engineers overseeing the design and manufacture of these frames and wheels were from western countries) while trying to hide the fact that their own brands were manufactured in some of these very same plants under contract, to keep the prices grossly inflated to attempt to support brick and mortar stores' costs in the Americas and European countries. The "cat has been let out of the bag" for some time now and the big brands are paying the price now. Unfortunately, so are their retailers, the devoted bike shop owners who depended on their name brands for customer appeal/loyalty.. This landscape of the bike industry has been turned on its ear as more information has made it's way to the public that some big name bike frames and wheels are made in the same factories as various competitors and cheaper Asian frames that were "open mold" copies or earlier runs and pre-production runs of eventual big brand offers. Asian brand frames are available at a fraction of the cost of bigger brands and more and more small startup companies realized the markup and flooded the market with more products than the demand could bear, while taking a substantial amount of business away from the established big brand names. There's only so much milk in those "teets" guys.
Great interview. If you are looking for an American made frame, don't forget Lynskey. Great frames and a company that stands behind their products. I like the shout-out for the Peugeot PX10. That was my first pro-quality racing bike. It was half the price of anything from Italy with Campy on it and was honestly a better bike. The one bike I wish I still had.
Great interview and history lesson. I lived the bike boom. My first bike was a Schwinn Stingray, but as became a teen I got a Raleigh Record, but it was stolen from my garage. I replaced it with a Gitane Interclub, with tubulars, which I road from 1970-1981. I replaced it with a Peugeot CFX-10 frameset with Campagnolo NR. I still ride that bike today.
Great piece here! Thanks!! Gotta love "Chairman Bill"! Torelli supplied the rental fleet for our Italian tour company with bikes made in San Marino as he described. I still have my made-to-measure Mondonico steel frames. But I'll argue with my friend Bill , who ignored (at least in this clip) the lower labor costs vs Europe as why your bike is made in Asia. When I walked into an Italian bike shop in 2010, one with an owner who made and sold steel frames with his name on them (I still have one) and found him instead arguing with a supplier of Asian-made carbon frames on the telephone over the look of the decals, it was clear - he COULD have had carbon frames made in Italy (and as noted, some are made there to this day) but not at a cost he considered competitive. How do I know this? I asked him. He never claimed the Asian products were better (and as frame-builder I think he would know) just that they were cheaper. Either way they were going to have HIS name on the downtube. It was all based on price and we know that's mostly labor cost, so a claim that Asians responded to the market while Europeans didn't is only part of the explanation. Colnago puts his name on bikes from Taiwan and Italy...does he buy 'em from Taiwan because the quality is better or they somehow meet the customers needs better...or because they cost less?
My dear friend and former training partner Chairman Bill could have penned a similar book about the automobile industry. American manufacturers stopped caring about service and reliability in the early '70s, setting the stage for Honda and Toyota to clean their clocks. This is documented in the book "The Toyota Way." Bill's book is an excellent post mortem on an industry that evaporated because it became lazy, complacent, and unresponsive to what consumers really wanted.
Brilliant Ben' This video goes way beyond cycling, this is a lesson for Business! How many of us have worked in a business where the arrogance of believing "we are the best" so we ignore what others do , or dismiss it, DOn't invest in innovation or have a "what could we do to make it better? or that the financial numbers, shareholder profit means to some that growth is more important than innovation, quality or delivering customer delight. What's needed is someone to explain what quality and craftsmanship is. not only what its made of!
I agree with his sentiment on this. Also unfortunately for companies it seems to be cheaper to build overseas although I will say it doesn’t seem the savings always makes it to the consumer. I also try to support local shops as much as possible either for parts purchases or service that I don’t “feel” like doing 😂
Very cool news. I recently learned they haven't made frames in France for about 5 years as they had moved their factory to Slovakia in 2018. Has the state of the US economy gotten so bad that we are more competitive in wages with Slovakia or is France just that much worse? 🤔
So I'm thinking Ben's Book Club might be fun and fascinating during cold-weather months, six books over six months. And thanks for this conversation, Ben and Bill, and I do recall what happened in the '70s with Japanese manufacturers wresting large swaths of the marketplace from European and American companies by being nimble and innovative and selling affordable and appealing products. And Schwinn, sadly, was a case study in bloat and inefficiency during that decade, as explained in the book No Hands: The Rise and Fall of the Schwinn Bicycle Company. Two Chicago journalists wrote about Schwinn's complacency over its riches from the U.S. bike boom, ignoring lightweight touring bikes and BMX and mountain bikes until it was too late for them to keep up with all the upstarts. And contrast that to the '60s when a Southern California dealer tipped off headquarters to a trend early in the decade, kids turning their standard 20" bikes into something cool with long bicycle-polo saddles and high-rise handlebars to look like motorcycle choppers. Schwinn sent out a rep who returned and quickly put the Sting-Ray into production with its banana seat and high-rise bars and colorful frames. That bike launched a generation of kids who quickly figured out you could ride your bike everywhere, even like Evel Knievel with a set of wooden ramps on a sidewalk or in the street, lol.
Great vid and very interesting about the industry and the people in it. Here in texas there were no big bike companies and we had Western Auto to go to for our bikes which greatly enhanced my Life!
Still have and ride my 1976 Gitane Interclub. Must have gotten a good one. Cheers enjoyed this interview. Time bikes will be made in South Carolina soon.
Late January the prices on groupsets, other small parts, most carbon wheels, and frames no matter what material will go up. Many bike shops are struggling are to get by as it is. Unstocked shelves, long wait time to finish service as parts come as order not prestocked as currently. It will take time US companies to adjust while shops suffer and customers pay way more for same product, some will not be possible to to adjust and loose out alot sales..
I bought two Cannondales in the early 90s particularly because they were innovative & made close by in PA. I believe their manufacturing was moved to Asia partly due to a lawsuit linked to the Raven MTB. Also no mention of Kestrel who as I understand it actually made the first monologue carbon fiber frame in the world here in the USA (also innovative in the use of aero tubing) about 1986. They survived until 2018, but also moved manufacturing to Asia.
The changover from European made bikes to Japan took place in the early 70's. The component and frames from Japan were superior to European made counterparts. Japan bicycle production and assembly dominated until 1985 when The Plaza Accord was signed and the US Dollar was devalued against the Japanese Yen. Japanese bicycle brands scrambled and started sourcing bikes from Taiwan. Japan chose Taiwan because of it's close ties and cultural history. Japan had ruled Taiwan from 1895 through 1945. Prior to the mid 1980's many Japanese brands had helped train some of the Taiwan assembly factories on how to better set up their factories, improve their quality and had started to manufacture some of the brands entry level products in Taiwan. The Plaza Accord accelerated the move to Taiwan. China bicycle production came about in the early 1990's by Taiwan owned assembly factories on the mainland to offer lower priced models. Beyond China with the tariffs looming, some bicycle production has already migrated to Cambodia, Vietnam and India. With the tariffs that Trump promises, it'll be interesting to see what countries emerge in the next 5-10 years.
I would take exception with Shimano making great products back in the late 1980 and 1990s. They were great from about the first week and then they turned to crap. I had MTB shoes where the stitching blew out in the first week and chunks of the rubber tread ripped off. My Ultegra STI levers were basically frictional shifter after a couple months. Chains and chainring were good for a few months. It seemed that the only quality parts were DuraAce. Durability is was turned me into a Campy fan for 30 years, until that fell apart.
I feel most legacy brand bikes are not worth the cost. The best bang for buck bikes are Chinese brands with ridiculous names like Big Rock, Trifox, Elves, and Winspace.
That’s what I was thinking. But damn, Specialized really rides differently. And honestly, I even hate Specialized as a brand-I’d much rather ride a Trifox Aethos, Big Rock SL8, or Elves Crux. But unfortunately, here we are. Hopefully they will be humbled by low demand and prices at least won’t go up. As for wheels, though, I’d take Winspace or Wheelsfar 10 times out of 10 over Zipps or Enves.
Put it this way, Chinese bikes are charged fairly. US brand are cooperations that put profit above all and all the marketing is just bragging rights and the premium you paid for has nothing to do with riding a good bike. TBH, most of people are missing the point of the entire Made in USA thing. you don't need low-end industry (unskilled-expensive labor). you need high-end manufacturing that can benefit the nation which will require upskilling a large group of laborers (Like robots, automation maintenance, etc)
@@IvanMalechkospecialized rides differently.... like on another level of bendy frame lol for the non sworks variant that uses T800 vs chinese brand T800. I honestly feel if the carbon layup is the same like swork's T1000 vs another T1000, the differences are mostly placebo. Albeit ive not seen a chinese brand T1000 yet due margins.
Interesting topic Btw, wouldn’t have that chair headrest behind you next time… looks like wearing one of those inflatable cushioned collars for aeroplanes😀
back when '2 years of free adjustments' wasn't too hard to make happen because there wasn't any indexed shifting, internal cable routing, etc. You MAY have to do the hubs once, BB once, and headset once edited to add: LBSes have to order whatever widget you want too cause they/I can't stock all the bits and bobs someone is going to potentially want in all combinations of colors/speeds/etc. It became easier to just order online cause A. online has it B. It's usually less $ and C. it comes right to the house in a few days The downside to online ordering is that the onus is on you to make sure what you're ordering will fit/work ...which can be tricky these days unlike when I started riding. Back then, all you really needed to know was 'Dura Ace only works with Dura Ace'
Square taper bottom bracket: you never have to touch it. Threadless headset on metal frame bike with metal stem: it can be adjusted while stopped for 30 seconds with one 5mm Allen wrench while still on the bike. My Dura Ace bar end shifters work fine with Acera derailleurs which work fine with a Sunrace cassette on a Shimano hub I put together from a 600 Tricolor shell and an STX freewheel and a TX 500 solid axle. Internal cables? Forget about it.
I love how elitist cyclists try to turn a blind eye that nearly all frames and wheels are made in the far East even if the brand is a Western brand, it weeds out the snobby guys.
Simple answer: it's way cheaper. People would be genuinely shocked to see the difference in cost of manufacture between the west and Asia. Most people think it's cheaper, but people have no idea just how much cheaper. I've had stuff made there that cost 300% less than trying to get it done domestically. Wages are lower, but at this point not by that much. The main differences is cost of materials, taxes and regulatory atmosphere. China's government tries very, very hard to make their domestic businesses as competitive as possible, where in the West, governments are more complex and saddled with components that basically amount to corruption in order to get as much money out of businesses as possible to further fund government. The globalist economy is essentially a tiny proportion of rich investors hiring a small domestic workforce that does design, engineering, marketing to come up with product, which is then made in Asia at vastly reduced cost, and the breakdown of the revenue is something like 50% going into the pockets of the investors, 10% into the design, engineering, marketing pockets and 40% going back into Asia to pay for the labor there. Very sad state of affairs. I think most people in manufacturing/sale of products would like to have things made here, but Western governments policy has been formulated to make it almost impossible to do so (something that will cost me $400 dollars to have made in China will cost $5000 domestically, it is really THAT bad), essentially solely to benefit rich investors....who then and go fund politicians who pursue these economic policies. That's really the main reason why the establishment is so Anti Orange Man...they are afraid they will only make a gobs of cash instead of giant gobs of cash.
"Western governments policy has been formulated to make it almost impossible to do so (something that will cost me $400 dollars to have made in China will cost $5000 domestically, it is really THAT bad)," What policy? The ones that (try) to keep pollutants out of the environment, the workers from being killed/maimed and maybe, just maybe...get a fair wage for their efforts? Does it all have to be a race-to-the-bottom on production cost to maximize profit? Maybe your boy Don-the-Con's tariffs will fix it all? Don't bet on it!
Asian countries are inexpensive mostly because the government subsidizes tooling and cap ex. You can’t even buy the block of steel for what they charge to make a finished die casting tool in china. They do that to attract the work locally-once your expensive tooling is there, you’ll never move-it’s smart. Here in the US, we give never ending business tax cuts thinking that will somehow drive business growth, but all that happens is they take the money saved on the tax bill and spend it on new tooling in china.
300% less ... jeez that is pretty good business. I wonder why the even bother making something useful instead of just producing whatever ... oh wait ... oh ... wait ...
Specialized, cannondale and trek trash would become even worse with made in USA. While giant and the brands they OEM for will monopolize the high end while chinese bike brands will gain even more attention to becoming mainstream 😂
@@rudyelizondo1935 With the falling rate of profit it won't work out, the American market needs to expand continually. So you will produce bicycles and then buy them yourself?
@@huawei755 True, but the majority of revenue will not be flooding out of the country, it'll be going back into people in the domestic market's pockets. The only people that have genuinely been better off since the inception of internet hypercharged globalism are the ultrarich in the West and the middle class in Asia. It has eviscerated the middle class of the West.
I loved my Simplex derailleurs. In the 1970s I was a kid in a blue collar neighborhood trying to fund my foray into bike racing on earnings from lawn mowing and snow shoveling. As a solo Jr rider I was constantly the target of big city Jr team whose parents could afford coaches and top equipment. The Simplex derailures were light, simple, and reliable. I had to do all of my own maintenance and adjustments. Fortunately the Simplex derailures didn’t add to my workload. Through elimination and modification of components I made many alterations to make my Vita Sprint race competitive. Before races cleaning hub bearings and reassembling with oil. Day after race taking hubs apart again to clean and repack with grease. Throughout my manufacturing and QC career I frequently thought back to how those Simplex components were my best bang for the buck and didn’t require any innovation on my part to be race competitive against the high priced aspirational components of the era.
Ben - Thanks for this. I still write a monthly column for Bill's website and did business with him for many years when I ran Sachs US. I started in 1973 so have a similar history. Bill and Carol are a couple of the reasons the industry has been a great place to spend a career.
North American and European controllers of Big brand names tried to maximize profits by minimalizing cost of production without sacrificing decent quality. That's a no brainer.. The bike industry has been using Asian manufacturing and playing the shell game of moving production to various countries as costs rise even in some Asian countries and then are moved to cheaper Asian countries. (I've seen this first hand as I have previously lived in Asia full time for nine years and watched it develop.) At the same time, these big brand companies were doing their best to convince the public in the west that Asian products were "inferior" to western produced products, (even though the engineers overseeing the design and manufacture of these frames and wheels were from western countries) while trying to hide the fact that their own brands were manufactured in some of these very same plants under contract, to keep the prices grossly inflated to attempt to support brick and mortar stores' costs in the Americas and European countries. The "cat has been let out of the bag" for some time now and the big brands are paying the price now. Unfortunately, so are their retailers, the devoted bike shop owners who depended on their name brands for customer appeal/loyalty.. This landscape of the bike industry has been turned on its ear as more information has made it's way to the public that some big name bike frames and wheels are made in the same factories as various competitors and cheaper Asian frames that were "open mold" copies or earlier runs and pre-production runs of eventual big brand offers. Asian brand frames are available at a fraction of the cost of bigger brands and more and more small startup companies realized the markup and flooded the market with more products than the demand could bear, while taking a substantial amount of business away from the established big brand names. There's only so much milk in those "teets" guys.
Great conversation Ben! Thank you Bill. I learn something original and authentic about our great sport with every video.
Forgot to mention HED wheels who have been making great wheels out of Minnesota
14:01 Marchetti Frame Alignment table. I had to look it up.
Thanks for including this kind of content, Ben. 👊
That was a good one, Delaney!
Great interview. If you are looking for an American made frame, don't forget Lynskey. Great frames and a company that stands behind their products. I like the shout-out for the Peugeot PX10. That was my first pro-quality racing bike. It was half the price of anything from Italy with Campy on it and was honestly a better bike. The one bike I wish I still had.
Just got a Lynskey G300 frame. Pretty excited to get it built up. My first titanium, and USA made frame.
Great interview and history lesson. I lived the bike boom. My first bike was a Schwinn Stingray, but as became a teen I got a Raleigh Record, but it was stolen from my garage. I replaced it with a Gitane Interclub, with tubulars, which I road from 1970-1981. I replaced it with a Peugeot CFX-10 frameset with Campagnolo NR. I still ride that bike today.
For us bike geeks that was great!
Great piece here! Thanks!! Gotta love "Chairman Bill"! Torelli supplied the rental fleet for our Italian tour company with bikes made in San Marino as he described. I still have my made-to-measure Mondonico steel frames. But I'll argue with my friend Bill , who ignored (at least in this clip) the lower labor costs vs Europe as why your bike is made in Asia.
When I walked into an Italian bike shop in 2010, one with an owner who made and sold steel frames with his name on them (I still have one) and found him instead arguing with a supplier of Asian-made carbon frames on the telephone over the look of the decals, it was clear - he COULD have had carbon frames made in Italy (and as noted, some are made there to this day) but not at a cost he considered competitive. How do I know this? I asked him. He never claimed the Asian products were better (and as frame-builder I think he would know) just that they were cheaper. Either way they were going to have HIS name on the downtube. It was all based on price and we know that's mostly labor cost, so a claim that Asians responded to the market while Europeans didn't is only part of the explanation. Colnago puts his name on bikes from Taiwan and Italy...does he buy 'em from Taiwan because the quality is better or they somehow meet the customers needs better...or because they cost less?
He’s basically joe from panda podium before joe from panda podium 🫡
My dear friend and former training partner Chairman Bill could have penned a similar book about the automobile industry. American manufacturers stopped caring about service and reliability in the early '70s, setting the stage for Honda and Toyota to clean their clocks. This is documented in the book "The Toyota Way." Bill's book is an excellent post mortem on an industry that evaporated because it became lazy, complacent, and unresponsive to what consumers really wanted.
Oddly enough, who taught the Japanese all that stuff? W. Edward Demings in the 1950's.
I still remember seeing Chairman Bill's Torelli ads in Road Bike Action magazine and going to the old Camarillo location. So long ago 😮
Me too. Sad that the new owner ran it into the ground :-(
....that explanation pretty much sums up the American business mindset...
Brilliant Ben' This video goes way beyond cycling, this is a lesson for Business! How many of us have worked in a business where the arrogance of believing "we are the best" so we ignore what others do , or dismiss it, DOn't invest in innovation or have a "what could we do to make it better? or that the financial numbers, shareholder profit means to some that growth is more important than innovation, quality or delivering customer delight. What's needed is someone to explain what quality and craftsmanship is. not only what its made of!
I agree with his sentiment on this. Also unfortunately for companies it seems to be cheaper to build overseas although I will say it doesn’t seem the savings always makes it to the consumer. I also try to support local shops as much as possible either for parts purchases or service that I don’t “feel” like doing 😂
Tremendous thank you
Isn’t Time opening a manufacturing plant in South Carolina?
Yes, in Landrum, SC. BOYD Cycling is going to move into the same facility, the old Bommer Industries plant (my old customer).
Very cool news. I recently learned they haven't made frames in France for about 5 years as they had moved their factory to Slovakia in 2018. Has the state of the US economy gotten so bad that we are more competitive in wages with Slovakia or is France just that much worse? 🤔
So I'm thinking Ben's Book Club might be fun and fascinating during cold-weather months, six books over six months. And thanks for this conversation, Ben and Bill, and I do recall what happened in the '70s with Japanese manufacturers wresting large swaths of the marketplace from European and American companies by being nimble and innovative and selling affordable and appealing products. And Schwinn, sadly, was a case study in bloat and inefficiency during that decade, as explained in the book No Hands: The Rise and Fall of the Schwinn Bicycle Company. Two Chicago journalists wrote about Schwinn's complacency over its riches from the U.S. bike boom, ignoring lightweight touring bikes and BMX and mountain bikes until it was too late for them to keep up with all the upstarts. And contrast that to the '60s when a Southern California dealer tipped off headquarters to a trend early in the decade, kids turning their standard 20" bikes into something cool with long bicycle-polo saddles and high-rise handlebars to look like motorcycle choppers. Schwinn sent out a rep who returned and quickly put the Sting-Ray into production with its banana seat and high-rise bars and colorful frames. That bike launched a generation of kids who quickly figured out you could ride your bike everywhere, even like Evel Knievel with a set of wooden ramps on a sidewalk or in the street, lol.
Great vid and very interesting about the industry and the people in it. Here in texas there were no big bike companies and we had Western Auto to go to for our bikes which greatly enhanced my Life!
Still have and ride my 1976 Gitane Interclub. Must have gotten a good one. Cheers enjoyed this interview. Time bikes will be made in South Carolina soon.
Love it! And yes, keen to see Time set up shop in SC alongside Boyd.
Late January the prices on groupsets, other small parts, most carbon wheels, and frames no matter what material will go up. Many bike shops are struggling are to get by as it is. Unstocked shelves, long wait time to finish service as parts come as order not prestocked as currently. It will take time US companies to adjust while shops suffer and customers pay way more for same product, some will not be possible to to adjust and loose out alot sales..
Taiwan has built some very nice bikes for decades.
I've waited 3 months for my TIME bike to be manufactured in Slovakia, also my previous road bike Focus disc, I had to wait also 3 months.
I bought two Cannondales in the early 90s particularly because they were innovative & made close by in PA. I believe their manufacturing was moved to Asia partly due to a lawsuit linked to the Raven MTB.
Also no mention of Kestrel who as I understand it actually made the first monologue carbon fiber frame in the world here in the USA (also innovative in the use of aero tubing) about 1986. They survived until 2018, but also moved manufacturing to Asia.
S. So I go to Walt's in Columbia, Missouri and if you buy a check from them, they give you a a lifetime tune-up great bike shop
Boyd makes carbon fiber wheels in Greenville SC.
The changover from European made bikes to Japan took place in the early 70's. The component and frames from Japan were superior to European made counterparts. Japan bicycle production and assembly dominated until 1985 when The Plaza Accord was signed and the US Dollar was devalued against the Japanese Yen. Japanese bicycle brands scrambled and started sourcing bikes from Taiwan. Japan chose Taiwan because of it's close ties and cultural history. Japan had ruled Taiwan from 1895 through 1945. Prior to the mid 1980's many Japanese brands had helped train some of the Taiwan assembly factories on how to better set up their factories, improve their quality and had started to manufacture some of the brands entry level products in Taiwan. The Plaza Accord accelerated the move to Taiwan.
China bicycle production came about in the early 1990's by Taiwan owned assembly factories on the mainland to offer lower priced models. Beyond China with the tariffs looming, some bicycle production has already migrated to Cambodia, Vietnam and India. With the tariffs that Trump promises, it'll be interesting to see what countries emerge in the next 5-10 years.
I would take exception with Shimano making great products back in the late 1980 and 1990s. They were great from about the first week and then they turned to crap. I had MTB shoes where the stitching blew out in the first week and chunks of the rubber tread ripped off. My Ultegra STI levers were basically frictional shifter after a couple months. Chains and chainring were good for a few months. It seemed that the only quality parts were DuraAce. Durability is was turned me into a Campy fan for 30 years, until that fell apart.
I feel most legacy brand bikes are not worth the cost. The best bang for buck bikes are Chinese brands with ridiculous names like Big Rock, Trifox, Elves, and Winspace.
and Lightcarbon
That’s what I was thinking. But damn, Specialized really rides differently. And honestly, I even hate Specialized as a brand-I’d much rather ride a Trifox Aethos, Big Rock SL8, or Elves Crux. But unfortunately, here we are. Hopefully they will be humbled by low demand and prices at least won’t go up. As for wheels, though, I’d take Winspace or Wheelsfar 10 times out of 10 over Zipps or Enves.
Put it this way, Chinese bikes are charged fairly. US brand are cooperations that put profit above all and all the marketing is just bragging rights and the premium you paid for has nothing to do with riding a good bike. TBH, most of people are missing the point of the entire Made in USA thing. you don't need low-end industry (unskilled-expensive labor). you need high-end manufacturing that can benefit the nation which will require upskilling a large group of laborers (Like robots, automation maintenance, etc)
@@IvanMalechkospecialized rides differently.... like on another level of bendy frame lol for the non sworks variant that uses T800 vs chinese brand T800. I honestly feel if the carbon layup is the same like swork's T1000 vs another T1000, the differences are mostly placebo. Albeit ive not seen a chinese brand T1000 yet due margins.
Interesting topic
Btw, wouldn’t have that chair headrest behind you next time… looks like wearing one of those inflatable cushioned collars for aeroplanes😀
Just look at wheels. The Chinese brands are cheaper, but they're responding much faster to market demands to wider and wider hooked rims
back when '2 years of free adjustments' wasn't too hard to make happen because there wasn't any indexed shifting, internal cable routing, etc. You MAY have to do the hubs once, BB once, and headset once
edited to add: LBSes have to order whatever widget you want too cause they/I can't stock all the bits and bobs someone is going to potentially want in all combinations of colors/speeds/etc. It became easier to just order online cause A. online has it B. It's usually less $ and C. it comes right to the house in a few days The downside to online ordering is that the onus is on you to make sure what you're ordering will fit/work ...which can be tricky these days unlike when I started riding. Back then, all you really needed to know was 'Dura Ace only works with Dura Ace'
Square taper bottom bracket: you never have to touch it. Threadless headset on metal frame bike with metal stem: it can be adjusted while stopped for 30 seconds with one 5mm Allen wrench while still on the bike. My Dura Ace bar end shifters work fine with Acera derailleurs which work fine with a Sunrace cassette on a Shimano hub I put together from a 600 Tricolor shell and an STX freewheel and a TX 500 solid axle. Internal cables? Forget about it.
Mine isn't 😊
Government regulations make it cost prohibitive to manufacture in the USA.
I love how elitist cyclists try to turn a blind eye that nearly all frames and wheels are made in the far East even if the brand is a Western brand, it weeds out the snobby guys.
Because they can bang out cheap frames and charge the earth for them 🤣🤣🤣
Simple answer: it's way cheaper. People would be genuinely shocked to see the difference in cost of manufacture between the west and Asia. Most people think it's cheaper, but people have no idea just how much cheaper. I've had stuff made there that cost 300% less than trying to get it done domestically. Wages are lower, but at this point not by that much. The main differences is cost of materials, taxes and regulatory atmosphere. China's government tries very, very hard to make their domestic businesses as competitive as possible, where in the West, governments are more complex and saddled with components that basically amount to corruption in order to get as much money out of businesses as possible to further fund government.
The globalist economy is essentially a tiny proportion of rich investors hiring a small domestic workforce that does design, engineering, marketing to come up with product, which is then made in Asia at vastly reduced cost, and the breakdown of the revenue is something like 50% going into the pockets of the investors, 10% into the design, engineering, marketing pockets and 40% going back into Asia to pay for the labor there. Very sad state of affairs. I think most people in manufacturing/sale of products would like to have things made here, but Western governments policy has been formulated to make it almost impossible to do so (something that will cost me $400 dollars to have made in China will cost $5000 domestically, it is really THAT bad), essentially solely to benefit rich investors....who then and go fund politicians who pursue these economic policies. That's really the main reason why the establishment is so Anti Orange Man...they are afraid they will only make a gobs of cash instead of giant gobs of cash.
"Western governments policy has been formulated to make it almost impossible to do so (something that will cost me $400 dollars to have made in China will cost $5000 domestically, it is really THAT bad),"
What policy? The ones that (try) to keep pollutants out of the environment, the workers from being killed/maimed and maybe, just maybe...get a fair wage for their efforts? Does it all have to be a race-to-the-bottom on production cost to maximize profit? Maybe your boy Don-the-Con's tariffs will fix it all? Don't bet on it!
Asian countries are inexpensive mostly because the government subsidizes tooling and cap ex. You can’t even buy the block of steel for what they charge to make a finished die casting tool in china. They do that to attract the work locally-once your expensive tooling is there, you’ll never move-it’s smart.
Here in the US, we give never ending business tax cuts thinking that will somehow drive business growth, but all that happens is they take the money saved on the tax bill and spend it on new tooling in china.
300% less ... jeez that is pretty good business. I wonder why the even bother making something useful instead of just producing whatever ... oh wait ... oh ... wait ...
Trump will make bike building in USA great again.
And the price will rise like crazy. If you think bikes are expensive today you've seen nothing yet.
Naw, the whole industry will improve
Specialized, cannondale and trek trash would become even worse with made in USA. While giant and the brands they OEM for will monopolize the high end while chinese bike brands will gain even more attention to becoming mainstream 😂
@@rudyelizondo1935 With the falling rate of profit it won't work out, the American market needs to expand continually. So you will produce bicycles and then buy them yourself?
@@huawei755 True, but the majority of revenue will not be flooding out of the country, it'll be going back into people in the domestic market's pockets. The only people that have genuinely been better off since the inception of internet hypercharged globalism are the ultrarich in the West and the middle class in Asia. It has eviscerated the middle class of the West.