On Oct 8, 2009, at 9:50 AM, cyclotourist wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 7:26 AM, Tim McNamara <tim...@bitstream.net> > wrote: > > On Oct 8, 2009, at 8:47 AM, Seth Vidal wrote: > > > The frames from toyo are the item which seem to be > > commanding the large price increases. So that's my main > curiosity. Is > > there really no feasible way to level out the exchange rate by > > producing more of the frames in north america? > > > > It's not like toyo and wateford are the only two frame builders > in the > > world, right? Do all the frames have to be built in the same > couple of > > places by the same subset of people? Apparently so. > > No, but there are very few US frame building shops that can make 500 > frames in a month for a house brand. There's Waterford and that's > abotu it. Match tried and went toes-up fairly quickly. Most frame > builders in the US are one person operations and unable to meet a > demand higher than one frame a week or even less- most of those frame > builders are artisan hobbyists who make a living doing something else. > > What was wrong w/ the match business model? Have things changed > since then (10 years?) so another production frame company could > get enough business? Well, Waterford was and is in a unique position. First, the facility was financed by Schwinn, initially, as the place to build Paramount frames. When Schwinn was sold off, Richard Schwinn negotiated to keep the Waterford plant and began Waterford Precision Bicycles as a brand. So they had fixtures and tools, skilled staff, manufacturing processes, some existing market, etc. They make their own lines of bikes (Waterford and Gunnar) and make bikes for others under contract (Rivendell, Heron, Boulder Cycles/Rene Herse, etc.). My hunch is that they pretty much own this very small market. We have to remember that RBW-type folks are a tiny fraction of the bike-buying market, which is shared by many individual custom builders plus Rivendell, Velo Orange, Jitensha, etc. I think that's the challenge for a business model like Match's. But there were probably other factors in its demise of which I have no knowledge and which may well have weighed much heavier. You can have all the work you want and still not be able to make a go of it. Someone mentioned the possibility of a distributed production model, which is interesting but inherently lacks economics of scale which are crucial to profitability in manufacturing. You need to be able to set up the jigs to do 100 54 cm frames at a crack, rather than making two 54s, three 56s, one 64, etc. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
