# Lower cost American welded frame?



## money (Oct 31, 2005)

Hi there,
I just did a quick search and found nothing.

Was thinking of the frames/bikes I have bought over the years and I have only one American welded frame. I suppose whats stopping me from having more is the obvious cost.

Would I buy a IF frame/fork for 1900? No, most likely for 1000 though. Would I buy a American welded frame for 200 dollars more than a Surly 1x1 or Salsa El Mariachi? Yes.

Lot of factors go into this but my question is, what is the lowest cost, with a profit, that one could make a frame? Is it possible to have an American frame manufacturing company that has no custom sizes, just generic s/m/l/xl etc, with great quality control?
Also, with the costs somewhere in the middle of the road?

Oh and i'm just talking about steel frames.
Thanks,
Thomas


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## jeff (Jan 13, 2004)

http://www.qballbikes.com/qframe.html

$499 for US built frame from a quality builder is a hell of a deal in my eyes.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

money said:


> Lot of factors go into this but my question is, what is the lowest cost, with a profit, that one could make a frame? Is it possible to have an American frame manufacturing company that has no custom sizes, just generic s/m/l/xl etc, with great quality control?
> Also, with the costs somewhere in the middle of the road?


I don't think anyone can answer those questions. Production costs and expected profits will be different for every entity. I will say this though. No investors or capitalists will invest in a company unless it can generate revenues similar to other investments they could put their money in. That means about 10-15% on the bottom line and in the U.S. that is probably hard to do and still keep the price within that kind of range. If it were you would probably see more choices.

The second thing I will mention is how many people are shopping primarily on price but would still buy American if it was only 200 dollars? My guess is not that many. Maybe for some they would only tolerate 100 dollars, maybe for others domestic production means nothing.

You know sometimes certain groups of customers are just not worth courting. At least in the niche markets there are plenty of people willing to pay 1500+ why would you even want to deal with tire kickers who may or may not spend 100-200 more, there is just no incentive for the domestic manufacturers for those kinds of buyers.

IMHO the only thing this generates is a race to the bottom.


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## Yogii (Jun 5, 2008)

Thomas,

"Go fish"! Ain't going to happen...Qball is just a couple of hundred dollars more that a Surly and you still have not bought one. You said you would,


> Would I buy a American welded frame for 200 dollars more than a Surly 1x1 or Salsa El Mariachi? Yes.


Liar liar, pants on fire...


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## unterhausen (Sep 28, 2008)

There are lots of American framebuilders out there that are selling frames for rock-bottom prices. I'm impressed that someone can make a living selling bikes for $500. I figure that's where I break even on materials and a really cheap powder coat. I have had this discussion with my boss, "those guys are getting tubing cheaper than you." I know I'm buying tubing retail, but how many boutique builders bother to buy in quantity? Some of the mtb guys can do it because they use a lot of tubes, but then they have to deal with inventory. There's always a cost.

This subject seems to come up a lot, mostly from people that are not currently in the business of building frames. And to be fair, I've had the idea of limited production runs myself. But you have to sell the frames. And the cash flow issues are huge. It's not a path for someone to make it on a shoestring.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

unterhausen said:


> There are lots of American framebuilders out there that are selling frames for rock-bottom prices. I'm impressed that someone can make a living selling bikes for $500.


I didn't know there were framebuilders selling for 500 dollars? Do you have a link? I know a couple around the 800-1000 range which seems about the minimum to me that would make a profit even accounting for volume purchasing of materials and efficient manufacturing.


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## Schmitty (Sep 7, 2008)

Rick Hunter sells his Pajaro line starting at $500.

Hate to say it, but that Thai Juan guy is making some damn nice bikes.. nicer everyday. The retail on a complete Mariachi blows my mind its so cheap for what you get. 

-Schmitty-


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## unterhausen (Sep 28, 2008)

dbohemian said:


> I didn't know there were framebuilders selling for 500 dollars? Do you have a link? I know a couple around the 800-1000 range which seems about the minimum to me that would make a profit even accounting for volume purchasing of materials and efficient manufacturing.


it's in the second post of this thread, $499 w/o fork. I was shocked myself. Seems like an insane business model to me, the guys that are designing bikes and having them made under contract in Taiwan look a bit smarter. It's not like the Taiwanese don't know how to build a frame.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

unterhausen said:


> it's in the second post of this thread, $499 w/o fork. I was shocked myself. Seems like an insane business model to me, the guys that are designing bikes and having them made under contract in Taiwan look a bit smarter. It's not like the Taiwanese don't know how to build a frame.


Sorry about not seeing that. Need more coffee...

I have to agree with you. I don't know what they can make them for but let's be conservative and say they net $200 per frame (I think that is high personally but for example).

For every hundred of these that I had to produce, box up, converse with customers, log the stuff in my accounting software, order supplies and pay the overhead I would net 20k. That is a lot of work for it seems to me not a lot of reward. If the numbers are even lower it just gets worse.

I know that you can buy a Taiwanese frame/fork like this for about 120 dollars boxed and delivered but even if you sold that for 500 dollars you still have marketing costs, overhead and labor, warehousing, shipping etc. I know you can do that through shear volume but this just doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I have seen so many of these outfits come and go over my time I think a history lesson is in order


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## pyranha (Aug 7, 2007)

I don't think the question is that hard to answer but it is a little more complex than what most people want to talk about. I think the first step in making this determination is to consider the price of materials. For the frame tubing, drops, and bits you can get in around 150.00 for a double butted tube set, cast drops, and the rest of the small bits. It is kind of hard to consider how many frames you get out of your gas cylinder refills. I think I heard Steve Garro quote in a thread that he uses 7 brass rods per frame(he can correct me if that is wrong....I don't count them myself). IME that is about 1/3 of a pound @ 17 bucks a pound(if buying from HJ or Cycle Design). Then throw in insurance. Roughly 1800 a year. Divide by number of frames per year. Then there is machine depreciation and space rental and so on. It can all be quantified. That being said......I offer a tig welded frame made right here in the heart of Ohio for 900. Fillet brazed ones go for 1150 currently. Of course, I am not a "master builder". The beauty of this industry in my opinion is there are so many builders at so many levels that there is always a place to take a chance.


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## Walt (Jan 23, 2004)

*You're missing some things...*

Many people don't do a very good job figuring out their costs, but off the top of my head:
-Insurance (this goes up if you make more than about $50k/year in revenue) - figure about $50 a frame.
-Tubing/dropouts/hard bits. If you include tubes you mess up (you will, no matter how good you are) figure $200/frame for cheap stuff, $300 for nice stuff. That's if you buy in bulk, of course. 
-Consumables (ie gas, electricity, flux, silver/brass/tig rod). Hard to quantify, but $10-50 a frame, depending on what you're doing. 
-Tool replacement and maintenance - most people seem to think their tools are going to last forever once they buy them - and most of them will last a long time, but once you've got a whole shop full, figure $500 a year or so to replace and fix broken stuff. Files get dull eventually, hacksaw and chopsaw blades get replaced, new hole saws, etc etc. I bet $10/frame for that. 
-Overhead for shop space. Can be anything from basically zero (ie, garage) to thousands of dollars a month.
-Cost of warranty repair. Sooner or later, your frames will break, if you build enough of them. Most of them won't, but some will, and you'll have to fix them. Nobody is perfect, and even if you do an awesome job, the customer is almost always right in our "industry". If 0.5% of your frames need repair work every year, figure you're on the hook for $50-100/frame for anticipated repairs and paint work and such. Of course, you can just plan on denying all warranties, offer no warranty at all, or plan to just go out of business in the near future...

All said, I think the minimum to make any kind of decent living is probably about $1000. There are plenty of frames out there for less, obviously, but most of those builders pop up and disappear pretty fast.

I have no problem with frames made overseas - but even assuming labor and materials costs are a fraction of what they are here, it's obvious to me that at ~$100 for a frame, the price has got to be artificially low due to something - most likely massive export subsidies/currency manipulation/etc. I mean, even if Chinese labor was FREE, and materials/energy cost 1/4 of what they do here, and shipping across the ocean was free, you'd be losing money. So realistically, I think the *real* premium for a US made frame isn't much more than the OP was asking about - a couple hundred bucks.

-Walt



pyranha said:


> I don't think the question is that hard to answer but it is a little more complex than what most people want to talk about. I think the first step in making this determination is to consider the price of materials. For the frame tubing, drops, and bits you can get in around 150.00 for a double butted tube set, cast drops, and the rest of the small bits. It is kind of hard to consider how many frames you get out of your gas cylinder refills. I think I heard Steve Garro quote in a thread that he uses 7 brass rods per frame(he can correct me if that is wrong....I don't count them myself). IME that is about 1/3 of a pound @ 17 bucks a pound(if buying from HJ or Cycle Design). Then throw in insurance. Roughly 1800 a year. Divide by number of frames per year. Then there is machine depreciation and space rental and so on. It can all be quantified. That being said......I offer a tig welded frame made right here in the heart of Ohio for 900. Fillet brazed ones go for 1150 currently. Of course, I am not a "master builder". The beauty of this industry in my opinion is there are so many builders at so many levels that there is always a place to take a chance.


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## jeff (Jan 13, 2004)

Scott has been building and selling these frames for quite a few years. Along with his custom buisness he's somehow managed to make it work. Using the same model Hunter seems to be able to make a go at it also. Of course I don't know what thier bottom line is but could production rate make the difference? In my buisness I take on quite a bit of low margin work just to feed the beast. Obviously, buying in bulk alows me to procure materials at a better margin which in turn allows me to increase profits on my custom work. It also keeps me busy and the doors open when the high end side of the buiss is slow. Then again what do I know? I'm a much better tradesman than I am a buisnessman.


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## money (Oct 31, 2005)

It's definitely a hard question to answer. A couple of months ago I recently received a Kona Explosif frame. Steel, sliding dropouts, black. Great looking IMHO, and saw a made in Tawain sticker. I don't have a problem with that, world economy, economics etc. But that sticker just made me think about my original question.

I bought a IF Planet Cross frame/fork back in 2001 for 1200, what a bargain now!
It's actually my exploring the back roads and dirt ones in Maine for out of the way fishing spots.

Jeff, never heard of Qball till now. Ha, good answer Yogii, the boss lady likes me to wait more than a couple of months between frames/bikes. Plus at this moment I have no room for an eighth bike. Well maybe I do.

Rick Hunter does some great stuff but that Pajaro frame doesn't do it for me.

I guess I may be just thinking out loud. Getting older, just thinking about the bike industry in general.

Thanks everyone,
Thomas


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## CS2 (Jul 24, 2007)

Usually, these kind of threads don't have this much good information.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

jeff said:


> ? In my buisness I take on quite a bit of low margin work just to feed the beast.


It says in your profile that your day job is Male Escort.....I'm curious, What does low margin work entail for a male escort?


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

jeff said:


> Scott has been building and selling these frames for quite a few years. Along with his custom buisness he's somehow managed to make it work.


This is something I often bring up. It does "seem" like these people make it work but we really don't know what is going on behind the scenes. Too many people enter this business with decisions based on the outward view of others who are seemingly being successful but the reality may be far different.

For example IF has always seemed to be doing well but they have had nothing but financial difficulty most of their corporate life. I have known small framebuilders who had only an out-house to crap in or others who slept in their shops in a tent, or others yet live a subsistence lifestyle far below the national poverty level. These are not things you see on their websites or blogs. Even if they do make it how do we know what that really is? is it 15k a year? 40k a year? We don't really know. Others I know have trust funds or other unusual situations that allow them to basically just work for the sake of working. I think we should keep in mind that not all is what it seems. IMHO, along with Walt's is that this may very well work for a few but if it was a model that was extremely viable we would have seen the market react already and there would be more of these at this price level, made in the USA then you could shake a stick at. There are not and I think that fact alone basically answers the question of it's overall validity.


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## unterhausen (Sep 28, 2008)

I could make it as a pro framebuilder because my wife makes enough to support me. Of course, if I tried that for too long she probably would make legal arrangements to stop supporting me. Going into production pretty much removes the possibility of a day job. I bet I could count the number of framebuilders without outside income on my fingers and toes.


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## shiggy (Dec 19, 1998)

unterhausen said:


> I could make it as a pro framebuilder because my wife makes enough to support me. Of course, if I tried that for too long she probably would make legal arrangements to stop supporting me. Going into production pretty much removes the possibility of a day job. I bet I could count the number of framebuilders without outside income on my fingers and toes.


Assuming you mean builders with additional household income. I know many full-time frame builders with a working spouse.


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## jeff (Jan 13, 2004)

dbohemian said:


> It says in your profile that your day job is Male Escort.....I'm curious, What does low margin work entail for a male escort?


I guess I walked into that one. Well played. :thumbsup:


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## Schmitty (Sep 7, 2008)

Many sans kids too.... 

Dave said it well. What looks like success often isn't.

-Schmitty-


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## forwardcomponents (Dec 2, 2008)

This Canadian company sells bare knuckle fixies online. The frames are made in Canada by a respected Canadian builder whose brand builds off road bikes. I spoke with the builder, and was told that they could put together a cross country hardtail frame(no fork) for less than $600. The tubes would be True Temper, and there would be a minimum order of around 50 frames.

It can be done. It's just difficult to find any builders in the USA or Canada!

http://www.atombicycles.com/customize/


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## Walt (Jan 23, 2004)

*Hmm.*

That appears to be a VERY fly-by-night (a blogger site? no pricing?) BMX company (Dobermann) that is actually supposed to build the bikes. Color me dubious that you'd get anything decent for $600 a frame (I'm also dubious that they could actually fill such an order, or make money on it). Their main business appears to be selling shiny color-coordinated fixies to hipsters, so it's possible that the frame is a sort of loss-leader to get people to buy overpriced purple polka-dot rims and such, I guess.

Bottom line: I have been doing this for 8 years (so not that long, really) and I'm very well capitalized as small businesses go. Buying in bulk, working from your garage, and using the cheapest possible stuff, you won't even make minimum wage at $500 a frame. Period. Yes, there are people that do it anyway - mostly because they can't or won't do the math and figure out that they're not making any money.

-Walt



forwardcomponents said:


> This Canadian company sells bare knuckle fixies online. The frames are made in Canada by a respected Canadian builder whose brand builds off road bikes. I spoke with the builder, and was told that they could put together a cross country hardtail frame(no fork) for less than $600. The tubes would be True Temper, and there would be a minimum order of around 50 frames.
> 
> It can be done. It's just difficult to find any builders in the USA or Canada!
> 
> http://www.atombicycles.com/customize/


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## forwardcomponents (Dec 2, 2008)

Walt said:


> That appears to be a VERY fly-by-night (a blogger site? no pricing?) BMX company (Dobermann) that is actually supposed to build the bikes. Color me dubious that you'd get anything decent for $600 a frame (I'm also dubious that they could actually fill such an order, or make money on it). Their main business appears to be selling shiny color-coordinated fixies to hipsters, so it's possible that the frame is a sort of loss-leader to get people to buy overpriced purple polka-dot rims and such, I guess.


At volume discounts, decent True Temper tubesets can be bought for $100-$150. Once you're mitering and welding fixtures are set up, how long does it take to cut and paste tubes together if you do them in batches of 50? What is the final cost per frame if the welders are paid $20/hour?


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## Walt (Jan 23, 2004)

*Did you not read the other posts?*

Tubes and dropouts: $150 for cheap stuff, assume you have no bad tubes and never cut a miter wrong.
Powder/paint, cheap: $50
Insurance: $50
Consumables: $10-40, depending
Repairs/maintenance for tools and shop: $10-20
Warranty work/repairs: $50 (stuff breaks, customer is always right, etc)
Shop space: Zero for garage, $20-50 or more if you've got a commercial space
Other overhead: tax preparation, website/ISP, phone, etc - probably $20?

Of course, you have some upfront costs (all the tooling, tax license fees, etc, etc) to deal with too. Let's pretend rich uncle Fester gave you the whole setup.

So we're at roughly $370-400 before paying anyone. Let's say that you do no customer service at all and your $20/hour fabricator can build a frame in a lightning-fast 4 hours, and that she only spends 1 hour taking orders, packing and shipping, and doing basic frame prep (chase/face/etc) after paint. Let's say ordering materials and doing inventory takes you no time at all, you just step into the TARDIS or something. So your total cost is now approaching $500, using extremely optimistic assumptions, and you have yet to see a dime.

Sorry, doesn't work. This is why I tell people to take a business or accounting class before deciding to hang out a shingle.

-Walt



forwardcomponents said:


> At volume discounts, decent True Temper tubesets can be bought for $100-$150. Once you're mitering and welding fixtures are set up, how long does it take to cut and paste tubes together if you do them in batches of 50? What is the final cost per frame if the welders are paid $20/hour?


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## unterhausen (Sep 28, 2008)

even if the labor was free, I don't see making $200 a frame as a sustainable way of making a business go. In the end, the builders that try to go with low-ball prices are just screwing themselves and their fellow builders.


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## forwardcomponents (Dec 2, 2008)

Walt said:


> (Dobermann) that is actually supposed to build the bikes. Color me dubious that you'd get anything decent for $600 a frame (I'm also dubious that they could actually fill such an order, or make money on it).


I have seen the frame sub assemblies myself, sitting on shelves in batches. The welds were beautiful, and I was assured that it was True Temper Verus tubing. They have been supplying them for over one year in small quantities. Somehow they are managing to do it. Don't ask me how, I am not a framebuilder.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

forwardcomponents said:


> I have seen the frame sub assemblies myself, sitting on shelves in batches. The welds were beautiful, and I was assured that it was True Temper Verus tubing. They have been supplying them for over one year in small quantities. Somehow they are managing to do it. Don't ask me how, I am not a framebuilder.


I have to basically agree with Walt. I will make the distinction between a contract shop and a forward consumer facing business.

If all I have to do is make 50 frames, all the same size, just a couple of colors and I have no time invested in customer contact it can make the final product a lot less expensive to produce. Not so much in hard costs as Walt has pointed out (although you can really start to save some dough when you buy 100+ units of tubing) but customers suck up lots of time. It's the all you can eat syndrome. Some are 15 minutes, some are 15 hours. Hopefully it averages out. This company may very well be doing something else like using it to sell parts or filling capacity to cover overhead while they have other more profitable things going on.

You said this company has only been doing this for one year. It may not be long enough to realize that they are making a profit or not. The fact is that around 50% of all business fail within the first two years, that is no different for bicycle companies. I think our business attracts its fair share of people willing to risk it because the entry costs are low (compared to a lot of businesses) and they have a passion but that still doesn't change the fact that half of them all will bite the dust and if the low price point we have been speaking of was viable overall it would be seen a lot more.

I don't know if someone making something really cheap is doing me a dis-service I don't really even play in that realm but I think they are doing themselves a disservice and that is what is really disappointing.


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## Walt (Jan 23, 2004)

*Simple...*

They are doing it by not making any/much profit. Let's see if they're around in 5 years, eh?

-Walt



forwardcomponents said:


> I have seen the frame sub assemblies myself, sitting on shelves in batches. The welds were beautiful, and I was assured that it was True Temper Verus tubing. They have been supplying them for over one year in small quantities. Somehow they are managing to do it. Don't ask me how, I am not a framebuilder.


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## Francis Buxton (Apr 2, 2004)

Just FYI, I have two friends on Qballs, and they have been going for a while and really seem to like them. Seem like a little better bike than a Karate Monkey. For the price, I don't know how you can beat it. I don't know how he does it, but they are pretty decent bikes.


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## Schmitty (Sep 7, 2008)

Francis Buxton said:


> For the price, I don't know how you can beat it. I don't know how he does it, but they are pretty decent bikes.


Like others have said it can (appear) to be done, but for how long? Is he making money? Really making money? Wife a millionaire? Trust account?

Wasn't the FAT CHANCE Buckshaver like $800 15 years ago? That was their cheap frame. Wouldn't doubt if they lost money on that as well. The Kona Sandvik ti bikes were $1200 retail years ago... wonder what Kona's margin was. And then there's the new Salsa Ti bikes. I think if you threw a ton of capital (for dialed production runs) and skill at it, you could boot them out pretty cheap, but you'd need that same number of buyers on the other end. Throw custom in the mix, and forget about it.

-Schmitty-


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## Francis Buxton (Apr 2, 2004)

He appears to make his primary income out of the custom arena, but his custom frames are still pretty affordable, relatively speaking. A lot of people on mtbr seem to support him, and he supports the sport. His welding/fabrication look clean, but we all know what appearance can be worth.

He only offers stock sizes, they only come in Henry Ford Black, and I believe you order thru the website. $500 for a frame, $125 for the fork. I would assume that he batches all the tubing cuts and he has those dialed in for efficiency.

He lives in Michigan, so he's not paying high-cost housing for a coastal or mountain region. I'm not saying that he's making a bank roll on these, but he probably netting $100-150 per frame, which may be enough. Maybe he batches them in the winter months when he can't ride much. Maybe he batches them when custom work is slow, which keeps him "employed" and brings in some kind of "regular" income to balance out the fluctuations of custom work. I think he could easily charge another $100-200 per frame and probably sell almost as many.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

Francis Buxton said:


> . I think he could easily charge another $100-200 per frame and probably sell almost as many.


Bingo!! Francis gets a gold star! We all remember the price vs demand chart in econ 101 class. Very few of us have the ability like larger companies to do market surveys and optimize this price.

I always have to question your price. Yes, you may lose the OP as a client as his tolerance was only 100-200 dollars but you make much more per unit and you may not lose very many customers. I think many framebuilders ask what "they" could afford and it has nothing to do with that or they just see a price point that is not being serviced (for which there may be a very good reason) and figure that is a niche they can target.


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## TigWorld (Feb 8, 2010)

Maybe he's using those cheaply priced frames to get people in the door. He probably gets a good deal of free publicity that way. Even discussions like this thread will be helping the cause. So even if he's only making $100 a frame there may be significant other benefits. eg. How many people get interested by the $500 frame and then end up ordering a full custom job for more?


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

that very well may be the case. I once sold a complete bicycle with ultegra components for 1400 dollars. I actually only ever sold two of them because everyone else came for the 1400 dollar bike but upgraded to a much higher priced bicycle, so maybe it happens for him too.


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## unterhausen (Sep 28, 2008)

dbohemian said:


> You said this company has only been doing this for one year. It may not be long enough to realize that they are making a profit or not.


I worked at Trek in the early days. One day Bevil Hogg admitted to me that he had no idea if we were making money or not. It shocked me a little, because we were shipping everything that got painted. Figuring out profit/loss for a production shop is not an easy thing to do, and lots of bad decisions in business are made because of that. Simplifying it so that "I took in this much, this much went out, that means I made x" is the kind of thing that leads to companies going in the hole.


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## edoz (Jan 16, 2004)

This is an interesting discussion, and it's kinda giving me the whole "Hey we're going to have to cut your pay by 50%, but on the up side we'll let you work some overtime to make up for it" feeling.


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## Smokebikes (Feb 2, 2008)

*Price depends on who and what..........*

Nuff-said........keep working!


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## geckocycles (Sep 3, 2006)

Frame materials are costing a bit more than they did in the early 80's as I was averaging about $200 per unit for aircraft steel material and Tange uni forks with shimano drops and Nova jibs and paint materials. I paint my own bikes with Emron and was selling the frame and fork for the Y-Bike for $550 to dealers. 3 fixed sizes only. The Genesis sold for $900 with fork and BB all the way up till 92. It paid the bills it generated. I was really working to be working and for the life style. I talked on the phone, rode my bike and partied all day and made product till I dropped to about 2 am. I could only make about 2 per week with those poor work habits but it was a cool life style as I was not into making a living and thinking of the future. 
I don't believe in production welding of frames as everyone does. I have never to this day tacked a whole frame and welded it and have not had a single frame failure, at least one that has come back to me or has been brought to my attention. That is why I could only make 2 per week though but I am also doing everything, PR, office crap, fork and paint included. I know that there have been some bikes that have bent but honest people tell me that they stuffed it into a boulder, or the bike ghost rode down a cliff for 600 ft and bent and one lady fell into a man hole with no cover at time trial speed. I had no warranty at all on my bikes. I feel as soon as you start warrantying bikes they all of sudden break while "I was just riding down the road" or "it broke when I just jumped off a curb".

If you were to do production type welding you would have to include some warranty repairs or replacements as Walt mentioned. You build in incredible stresses into a frame doing production welding leaving not much room for the bike to work and take a good hit. Also during these sue happy days have to have product liability insurance if you own a house or anything tangible. I am up in the air about that being all I really own is in my shop. They won't sue if you have nothing and have no insurance. My girl friend would think otherwise though and would have nothing of it and would insist that I get product liability ins.

All this being said I think I could build a frame only in the same manor as I always had but without paint for $600 if I sold only 2/week on the side. Fillet brazed Y File It's with butted tubing. I used to have a company called Plainwrap Cycles and made the Y-File-It. Then I swallowed the Gecko pride and incorporated the Y-Bike into the Gecko line. I think only a few of those frames were made with that branding so if you have a Plainwrap you really have something rare. Treavor (Fillet Brazed) got one. This is the only picture I have scanned. It was just the stem on his Plainwrap.








In fact I think it was Treavor who talked me into dissolving the Plainwrap name. Maybe resurrect that brand without paint. I think I still have some Plainwrap stickers too in a half dozen different colors.
The problem I have is I am way too picky about paint and that would be hard to overcome. Wet paint costs have gone through the roof and permits are hard to come by. Even painting with an air brush as I do. As soon as you paint in a booth to keep dust down you might as well be spraying gallons a day. Storing paint in a shop is a whole new ball game too. You can store as much paint in your house as you want but in a shop you are limited to nearly nothing even in a fireproof cabinet and especially if you are welding in the same building. I would have to get over the paint thing so it isn't happening. Which is a shame as I loved doing custom paints as much or more than building frames and my paint part of the business is what carried the business. I painted well over 5 bikes a week average. Then now add in the granola's and environmentally correct coatings. LOL Bottom line is even the best powder doesn't meet my standards for finishes without a wet clear over it. Strange that I am talking about this as just a week or so ago Mark Nobilette stopped by. He has one of my paint booths and a nice 3hp compressor at his shop and I said I wanted them back being he isn't using the booth and I am not painting at his shop anymore and was thinking about getting back into painting. We did some trading for some website and hosting work I gave him and one of my tube benders for his water cooled Tig torch cooler.

One more thing that I didn't mention nor did Walt is that there is a "use" tax on your equipment in the shop. It was not cheap either. If I recall it was about 10% of their appraised value of the equipment a year. I refused to pay it so I moved into my home garage and went underground and built all the Zinn's for about 8 years total. I'm sure I would get busted here in this shop if I went back in business legit. I'm surprised they haven't been here already. Probably has something to do with going underground and not having a phone line or book listing and not doing much with the Gecko name. I have been making intake and cooling manifolds, and other parts for the Samurai using the Gecko Cycles name.


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## SuspectDevice (Apr 12, 2004)

What the hell is "production welding"?


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## geckocycles (Sep 3, 2006)

SuspectDevice said:


> What the hell is "production welding"?


More like when you tack a whole frame and then weld it. I have even seen them completely welded in the jig.

I weld mine one joint at time. Let it cool and align as needed. Put that assembly in the jig and do the same.
The final joint is the DT at the BB. I bore a threw hole in the BB so the DT can move in it as you heat it up. Eventually some stress is built in to a frame but this really limits it. It is a slow process but makes for a very lively frame with more room to give under impact.


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## fotu (Jan 20, 2005)

How come a USA handmade bmx like a Standard with decent steel is about $300-400 a frame and a mtb is like $1200-2000?

and Dobermann has been around a few years now, not really fly-by-night?

EDIT: My uneducated guess is that there is a demand for mtb/road frames that cost $2000. Noone will pay that for a bmx. Sorry in advance if that touches nerves, just speculating here.


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## Smokebikes (Feb 2, 2008)

In the cost of BMX vs Mtb (or any other frame config)......weight is a huge. The lighter the more expensive..........I think


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## fotu (Jan 20, 2005)

Yeah, a high-end steel bmx frame weighs ~ 4 lbs and costs ~ $400.

I am just curious, cause a bmx frame is a little smaller, and maybe has less brazeons, but is it really $1200 smaller and simpler?


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## Blaster1200 (Feb 20, 2004)

I've been waiting for someone to mention the relative low cost of made in the USA BMX frames that use high quality tubing. 

About 2 years ago, I ordered a Black Market Mob DJ/4X race frame. It was actually a semi-custom frame, as they only made 10 of them with this geometry (most went to the Chain Reaction race team). The frame was built in Santa Ana, California by S&M bicycles using True Temper Supertherm tubing. It has a disc mount, ISCG tabs, and all the normal braze-ons. It was $600, the same as the normal production made in the USA Mob.

Sure, if you're a frame builder, doing a lower cost frame doesn't make sense, but if you're in a production environment, it can surely be done. Of course, you have to sell what you build, if you're going to build/sell based on quantity.


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## dbohemian (Mar 25, 2007)

fotu said:


> Yeah, a high-end steel bmx frame weighs ~ 4 lbs and costs ~ $400.
> 
> I am just curious, cause a bmx frame is a little smaller, and maybe has less brazeons, but is it really $1200 smaller and simpler?


It is true, I have always wondered. It's a bit of an anomaly. Actually S&M is quite nicely made. I think they just do it through shear volume. S&M for instance sells a ton and there is nothing unusual on them so its the economies of scale. Also, as we mentioned before it may be that S&M sells boatloads of schwag, hats, shirts, hoodies and they may not make what the market would typically demand as far as profit on frames but make it up on high profit items and the fact that in order to sell that other stuff you have to have the creed from being a frame company.


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## Vlad (Feb 7, 2004)

dbohemian said:


> It is true, I have always wondered. It's a bit of an anomaly. Actually S&M is quite nicely made. I think they just do it through shear volume. S&M for instance sells a ton and there is nothing unusual on them so its the economies of scale. Also, as we mentioned before it may be that S&M sells boatloads of schwag, hats, shirts, hoodies and they may not make what the market would typically demand as far as profit on frames but make it up on high profit items and the fact that in order to sell that other stuff you have to have the creed from being a frame company.


S&M also sells a sh*tload of handlebars. I visited them last May. That shop was busy.

Edit: I visited S&M in May of 2010.


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## fotu (Jan 20, 2005)

Just poked around the Gunnar website, $800-900 seems reasonable for what you get. Its funny though, how the stock single speed is $300 MORE than the regular rock hound. Paying extra for single speed seems kind of wrong.

Anyway, again I am not a frame builder, but I would guess prices have to do with market and demand as much as they do cost. Waterford has the cache and the clientele to ask $850 for a frame. Hard to imagine someone paying that for a S&M Dirt Bike.

EDIT: and I think gunnar fits into the $200 more than a Salsa category. Just sayin.


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## Addy Marx (Jul 18, 2009)

A very interesting thread, sorry to be late to add I usually lurk on the endurance and 29er forums, once it turned to BMX comparisons I thought I could add some information.

Having ridden BMX bikes and associated my youth as a BMXer for over 10 years through the mid 90's to late 2000's I will add that a contributing factor to the popularity of American Made frames over over seas frames was the ever presence of the topic in BMX media; magazine advertisements, pro interviews and videos of the time. 
Secondly the fact that the core of the hardcore (for lack of a better term) BMX companies were American made. S&M, FBM, Standard and lesser popular Solid were the main brands that took great pride in the American Made ethos and they had a strong influence in the BMX world which is typically comprised of a younger demographic of riders. In my experience a lot of it (purchasing decisions as a young consumer) were based on the irrational (to some of us now) 'cool factor'. At the time though it seemed the American Made companies offered a far superior product in terms of durability. It wasn't until the early to mid 2000's that the Taiwanese made frames produced started to hold up to the abuse of street, park and dirt riding and pros were actually riding the frames you could buy, not a repainted and re stickered American Made. If you were into riding you didn't ride a schwinn or haro complete very long and eventually got something more hardcore.

The fact that the American Made companies could offer frames at competitive prices to their Taiwanese made counterparts was the key from a 17 year old consumers standpoint. After breaking my first two (Taiwanese built) entry level complete bike frames (both replaced) when it came time to purchase my first full built from the ground up bike it was a no brainer, an S&M next generation dirtbike, with as many S&M parts as I could afford to put on there and profile cranks of course.

How do they continue to do it? This is beyond the scope of my expertise. There is no doubt the quality of Taiwanese BMX frames, just like frames in different sectors of the cycling industry have improved greatly and this surely has had an impact on American Made brands, perhaps not. 

One thing that has not been mentioned is that S&M, FBM and Solid bikes are the key frame builders for most of the American Made BMX's that are out now. Hugely popular Brands like Cvlt and Fit (I've lost touch with the 20 inch world to provide more examples) are/were welded by FBM and S&M. I'm not sure how that impacts their profits, perhaps someone with a greater knowledge of the bike biz could chime in. 

To the OP, Yes it seems possible to have an American frame manufacturing company that also offers custom sizes, with great quality control at realistically competitive prices at least in the tiny 20 inch world. I do not know how much 'bigger' the mountain biking world is compared to the BMX world (number of brands, units sold per year) my guess is huge though and I think this proportion alone would be a tremendous factor in comparing why it 'works' for BMX and why with mountain bikes it is more challenging. Surely there are greater contributing factors that I could not even fathom. It would be interesting to have Chris Moeller(S&M owner) and Steve Crandall (FBM owner) add their 2 cents.

Adam. (full disclosure, I'm Canadian)


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## SuspectDevice (Apr 12, 2004)

I work everyday with a guy who used to pump out thousands of bmx frames a year.
I asked him "how the hell did you guys do it so cheaply"?

Answer- Economy of scale (tack 100 rear ends at a time, etc.) but mostly there is just way less need for precision.

American manufacturing is viable- we make our road bikes 100 at a time too- that gets my manufactured cost down for sure. I could have a factory in china build the same frames for 10 times less boxed and stickered. Of course I'd have to order 300 of them to fill a container, then I'd have to pay shipping and customs and age the inventory a lot longer.

It comes out at as a wash for my one man operation.
If we employed more people full time neither method of production would be viable. Health insurance costs are a primary barrier as is the incredibly low margin we make to get our retail prices to the pricepoint that the market will bare.
Luckily here in Massachusetts we have heavily subsidized(read free) insurance for people who make less than $15,000 a year. That gives someone a real wage closer to $20,000 which is pretty close to a living wage. 120 road frames, 50cx frames and 45 custom frames still isn't much money to live or operate a company on.
People who work at FBM, S+M and Solid make no money- they do it because they have a passion for doing it themselves and the DIY ethos that has always been the major underpinning idea that has driven BMX since the days of Gary Turner.

To the OP-
You get what you pay for- and if you value products that are made in America you need to open your wallet wider if you want to make a difference. You can't be cheap and proud. Doesn't work that way.


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## mtnbeer (Jul 2, 2007)

What would SAPA charge for a Run of 50 Hardtail bikes?
Would they even consider it? Is it probably too small a quantity for them?

Sapa | Aluminum Bike Frames


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## SuspectDevice (Apr 12, 2004)

mtnbeer said:


> What would SAPA charge for a Run of 50 Hardtail bikes?
> Would they even consider it? Is it probably too small a quantity for them?
> 
> Sapa | Aluminum Bike Frames


Minimum Order Quantity is 100 units, 25 per size. Initial tooling charges can be significant. 150 day leadtime.


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