An open letter to the builders of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show - VeloNews.com
I just thought everyone had their own reliable wheelbuilder
Printable View
An open letter to the builders of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show - VeloNews.com
I just thought everyone had their own reliable wheelbuilder
I just build my own. If I'd known there was a market for "boutique" wheel building, I'd have doubled my prices.
Boyd will be there. Good enough for me.
too cheap to buy the email list?
I knew something was missing from my framebuilding program.
Now I know its jibbing..........
At least it was written in the correct tone for a NAHBS type letter.
Before anyone worries about wheels and if they are handmade from a wheelbuilder, how about
folks find a way to make the forks that go through the head tubes of the frames that have their
names on them atmo.
Officially, I am declining to comment pending approval of my response by PR folks.
Unofficially, game on.
DW
I build most of my own, but have used others for builds as well. Sometimes the client has a preference of builder, or sometimes it' proprietary stuff and it's easier to let the company build them. Each time I've spoken with the builder and/or met them. No machines, just people. Horses for courses and options are good. Sometimes I learn a thing or two from them as well.
What is "jibbing?" I'd say plenty of the bikes shown at NAHBS have hand built wheels. I don't understand the author's complaint.
Jibbing usually results in planing. Or something.
DW
I gave my thoughts on this on the Velonews Facebook page.
I see what we're doing as very similar to what the framebuilders are doing. We design and engineer our rims and hubs to our spec and then hand build the wheels in house. There are a few wheel companies that will be at the NAHBS show that are similar in this. If I was doing the exact same thing, but selling the parts to Wheelbuilder instead of building them myself, now all of a sudden it's ok to have that at the show according to them??
I am all for custom wheelbuilders, and soon you will start seeing our components being used by some of the best of them. But my life goes into the work I'm doing for my company, and I don't think it's right to say that because it's not a "custom" option that we shouldn't be displayed on custom handmade bikes. I have had the pleasure of meeting and riding with a lot of the people who will be at the show. I am extremely proud that we'll have our wheels on display at the NAHBS show, in our booth and on a few various bikes.
Starboard is what you scream at (smaller) things in your way ;)
Alot and I mean ALOT of bikes at NAHBS have handbuilt wheels.
For reference sake here is the question R.Sawris asked "“Why don’t you have custom handbuilt wheels on your show bikes?”
W.B. is a solid company. I had to say that before saying why did VN run this "Open Letter"? It is not an opinion piece, it's advertising.
Is it unusual to make forks then? I probably make more forks than frames - in fact I definitely do if I count ones for Bromptons.
I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but wheel building is just putting parts together. You need to pick the right parts, and you need to assemble them competently, but there's not the same level of craft that there is in building a frame. Well, sometimes anyway - framebuilding could be seen as just sticking tubes together, but there's hopefully more to it than that for a good framebuilder.
Wheel building isn't really much different from the rest of the build-up process - you also need to pick the right derailleurs, brakes, cranks and seatposts, and put them all together competently.
I feel like that advertisement just trolled the niche to get web clicks. I have no problem with them looking for new clients, but I would have hoped they would have chosen an inclusive high road and not been accusatory. As noted elsewhere- most of the wheels in that room are hand built. To specifically call out a "lack of attention" if off putting, and frankly inaccurate at best.
The brand should find its own way to reach a market rather than use or be used by Velo News to help it. The line between news and not news becomes blurred by stories like these.
Same stuff different year.
I see ignorance of the facts and promotional materials there.
Just like regular "news".
We--and a lot of other folks--are talking about them. Mission accomplished. Ad spend—Zero Dollars.
Agree with their stated POV or not about NAHBS bikes specifically, I don't think that's really the point.
+1 I would like to know how they got the "air time" on Velo News. If I write an "open letter" to Velo News about something, especially that's got this much BS in it, is it going to get published? Yeah...NO.
Frankly, I'd never heard of these guys until now. So, I guess mission accomplished on their part, but for the wrong reason IMO. It's pretty unlikely that I would use them now. Also.....if they want to be at Nahbs I am sure they can find folks that are open to displaying their stuff on a frame. Also, can't they just rent a booth?
Dave
???? im not following where that even came from
i came across that reading about what colnagos marketing new toy was all about and wondered what the actual meaning of it was ? completely puzzled by it as i would think a lot of the NAHBS builders would have either their own or at least some builder they have a working relationship with, hence i posted it here more to get WTF it was on about
they got pixel-space at vn cuz there's an extremely permeable boundary between "cycling journalist" and "cycling pr flak"
I will need to recalibrate if Velonews is major league.
I'm not a fan of the open letter thing, but fwiw I've had wheels from wheelbuilder and they were all excellent with great service.
There isn't one. Its a straw man argument designed to drive traffic to Wheelbuilder.com - Handcrafted Precision Custom Bicycle Race Wheels
I get my custom wheels from Jude Kirstein: Sugar Wheel Works / Portland, OR Top notch wheels and service.....and she built wheels that were on display in my booths at Nahbs in years past.
Dave
I hope the guys displaying at the show aren't using factory made drive trains. Surely only handbuilt components should be shown on show bikes. 8-/
Maybe I'll give her a shot. I've had wheels built by a few folks and have been happy with most. I've also ridden factory wheels that were awesome (mostly what I'm on these days). I even plan to pull the trigger on a set from Boyd. My point is just that shoddy velonews journalism shouldn't take away from the WB folks and their quality work. If they had a banner ad on the side of the page next to a review of the super-uber Colnagorello C.think60 race frame (which is true journalism), would anyone care?*
*Apologies in advance if I'm coming off as pissy. I'm at the end of my 4th 13+hour day in a row and I'd grump in that other thread but I'm too tired to know if it's Thursday or not, and if I'm wrong I can't physically do pushups thanks to injury.
IMO any wheelbuilder is probably more than welcome to provide wheels to most framebuilders for the show, assuming they see eye-to-eye on things.
I've had wheels built by a few different people and my favorites are from Adam Schwarcz in Oakland and Justin Spinelli in Boston.
Justin who?
I don't get that impression at all. I was just giving a shout out to the Sugar Wheelworks.
With respect to VN...maybe I am wrong, but wasn't it the WB folks that wrote the "letter"? ....and, therefore, the actual folks throwing us builders (who do offer custom wheels and take them to shows) under the bus?
I kind of took like a lame marketing ploy with some hyperbole thrown in to get attention for custom built wheels, more than throwing frame builders under the bus. But, I'm not a frame builder so my opinion doesn't really count for much here. Now if it was an open letter to computer geeks who love bikes, I might feel differently.
Either way, your endorsement of Sugar Wheelworks just got Jude on my radar, and that's a good thing.