Every Bike is Handmade
The purple Peacock is the perfect example of everything right and wrong with the bicycle industry in America. Please allow me a few paragraphs to explain before you wring my neck on Twitter.
I didn’t attend the annual handmade bicycle show in Salt Lake City this year because I was finishing up work ahead of another important industry event. That would be the Taipei Cycle Show. Taiwan’s gathering of the tribe is second only to Eurobike, and attended by industry from around the world. In fact, I’m writing this post from a hotel in Taiwan just before midnight.
There are three big bike shows every year, and NAHBS is not one of them. If you read the bicycling rags and follow all the cool kids on Instagram, you’d probably be convinced it’s the biggest bike extravaganza of the year. It is not. I think Sea Otter Classic could be, but I’m hugely biased towards Northern California. It’s our home show. You should see what we’re bringing this year.
Handbuilt bikes are no more than a microdrop in the bucket that is the bike industry. Even the most prolific builders in America rarely make 100 frames a year. That’s for guys — and yes, it is still mostly old dudes — who have long order books and even longer days in the shop. That’s a ton of work by just a handful of people. A couple of our local builders didn’t even go to NAHBS this year. Why not? Because they were too busy working as well. The show is slowly becoming less relevant every year, just like Interbike. But the cycling press, bike blogs and social media mavens love it. Everything looks so cool! Everyone is so badass! Look at my pretty feathers, see how they shimmer?
Deep Custom requires deep pockets.
Please don’t get me wrong. I love expensive handmade custom bikes. The guy above even built an ebike a few years ago. I’ve been lucky enough to own a few custom bikes from some of the best builders in America. But how many riders can afford a custom handbuilt bike? How many riders really need one? One of my best fitting bikes was a custom Davidson, but one of my best riding bikes of all time was an off-the-rack Cannondale Synapse.
Is it the handbuilt aspect that’s so desirable? Or the Made in America part?
Everyone imagines factories are full of robots, like what Apple and Tesla use. But the bike industry is still very much a human-driven business. Did you know our Koben frames are all welded by hand? Our welders have more frame-building experience in one month than other builders gain over a decade. Weld quality is simply based on training, practice and application. Are some hands more valuable than others based on their location? Should we value craft and product quality instead of simply where it was done.
The elitist attitude around what makes some bikes better than others has to stop. A guy on Facebook commenting on why a woman shouldn’t be riding a bicycle isn’t making cycling more inviting and inclusive for everyone. A custom builder with nearly three decades of experience once lamented that they were all fighting over the same slice of the pie. I have another analogy:
Let’s bake more pies instead.
I’d guess that 99.7% of handmade bikes are going to an owner with at least a couple other bikes in their collection. The introduction of new road bike niches just continues to slice that pie into ever thinner slices. That isn’t taking cycling to new places. It doesn’t bring the joy of bikes to new people. These slightly different flavors of the same old road bike doesn’t create new riders. The bike industry is stagnant for 10+ years because the customer is the same person (guys like me). These “serious cyclists” have to realize that having another person smiling and riding doesn’t reduce your enjoyment of your own bike or ride experience. No one’s taking away your slice of pie!
Our mission has always been to get more people riding. While I appreciate the art and creativity of the bikes at NAHBS, the reality is they’ll be ridden by one person, or not at all. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t love beautiful bikes hanging on the wall. I have about a dozen such machines in my house. But when you’re building a bike company, all you want to see are people riding your bikes. Our only measure of success is how many people are using our product. Maybe it’s a Silicon Valley mentality, but we like building, we love customers and we have no patience for the preening divas who only talk about ideas and don’t follow up with execution. More is better, even if the dudes online dismiss our bikes as “mass-produced”. We don’t build for “the masses”. Every single customer matters to us. Karmic owners are as important and valuable as that rich old guy who can afford to drop $3000 or more on just the frame alone. In the end, both will just be people on bikes.
We’re still on Mile One of this journey. We’ll keep working until everyone is riding a Karmic. That means making better bikes that work for more riders. It means exhausting travel to visit our factories and supplier partners. It means sweating every detail on the bike, and every line on the spreadsheet.
Bikes are beautiful. Shouldn’t they be democratic as well?
Cheers,
Hong
