How many framebuilders would do production work?

[Eric Estlund]

Eric, your two examples of Kickstarter campaigns are both made in Taiwan $800 and 800GBP frames made by companies with experience sourcing batch frames from large stock houses. These are not examples of places small US companies/ single builders can do a 1:1 shoehorn.

[e-RICHIE]

I think just as some people become "framebuilders" by looking at pictures and then post their own, it's not uncommon to search for, and mine, stories to support a point one wants to make, without realizing the story and the point are unrelated. It's 2015 and I'm finally accepting that this is how work gets done. Practice? Research? Critical thinking??!

[incepi]

Eric, your two examples of Kickstarter campaigns are both made in Taiwan $800 and 800GBP frames made by companies with experience sourcing batch frames from large stock houses. These are not examples of places small US companies/ single builders can do a 1:1 shoehorn.

The point of my examples is to demonstrate that small batch production can be supported through crowdsourcing. It does not matter if the examples I provided were made in factories. That fact only affects the pricing and marketing of the final product.

[mothattack]

Anything can be crowd sourced. Cute girls crowd source vacations on kickstarter. It's just an extension of HS popularity contests.

[Rody]

The point of my examples is to demonstrate that small batch production can be supported through crowdsourcing. It does not matter if the examples I provided were made in factories. That fact only affects the pricing and marketing of the final product.

Ok, so using the last kickstarter as an example, the guy sold 16 frames/bikes. I think we can agree it was at very low margins to entice folks to support him.

16 bikes does not a company make. If you can only garner that level of support at reduced special kickstarter pricing, where does that leave your business plan?

The truth is undeniable, if you want to make a living building bicycles, you MUST put in your time to attain a level of skill mastery, you MUST have a solid understanding of basic business and be able to apply it to an achievable business plan, and you MUST understand that ultimately YOU ARE THE PRODUCT...that is what draws customers, whether contract or custom, to your doorstep. This is hard work and it cannot be shortcut, massaged, or otherwise side stepped.

r

[Michael Gordon]

you MUST understand that ultimately YOU ARE THE PRODUCT...that is what draws customers, whether contract or custom, to your doorstep.

Without a doubt!

[incepi]

Ok, so using the last kickstarter as an example, the guy sold 16 frames/bikes. I think we can agree it was at very low margins to entice folks to support him.

16 bikes does not a company make. If you can only garner that level of support at reduced special kickstarter pricing, where does that leave your business plan?

The truth is undeniable, if you want to make a living building bicycles, you MUST put in your time to attain a level of skill mastery, you MUST have a solid understanding of basic business and be able to apply it to an achievable business plan, and you MUST understand that ultimately YOU ARE THE PRODUCT...that is what draws customers, whether contract or custom, to your doorstep. This is hard work and it cannot be shortcut, massaged, or otherwise side stepped.

r

I completely agree. The framebuilder is the brand. That is what people are paying a premium for, whether it is a unique custom frame or a small production batch.

[e-RICHIE]

By the way, I batch build. Can't remember not batch building. Typically, I'll roll out fifteen pairs of chainstay assemblies. Or a few dozen sets of fork blades. I'll miter the bottom of forty seat tubes, or thr head tube end on twenty down tubes. I'll profile the lug edges on the next few month's lug sets. And braze crowns to steerers for three days straight. I don't have the temperament (or interest) to make one frame end to end. So each time I pull an order, a good deal of the labor is already done and on the shelf. It takes some of the romance out of it, but hey - that's my mission atmo.

[jaredjerome]

We'd average something closer to 4 to 6 a day depending on the rush.

The pace at times was tough, but when your profit margins are razor thin (go look at the prices of BMX frames) you have no choice.

This sounds like similar numbers to what we did at Quamen, but I think we'd do slightly less. We had 1 person cutting tubes all day (or pushing the CNC button), one person welding sub-assemblies (me), and one person welding all the sub-assemblies into a frame. It's hard to quantify because one day I'd weld a shitload of chain stay bridges, or seat tubes and so on. It's not really each person makes 1 frame (at least there it wasn't) - which is sounds like the OP might have been hinting at? The labor is much more divided up.

IMO handlebars are the worst - we were doing 8 piece bars and it felt like we'd weld a billion per week.

[Albie]

This sounds like similar numbers to what we did at Quamen, but I think we'd do slightly less. We had 1 person cutting tubes all day (or pushing the CNC button), one person welding sub-assemblies (me), and one person welding all the sub-assemblies into a frame. It's hard to quantify because one day I'd weld a shitload of chain stay bridges, or seat tubes and so on. It's not really each person makes 1 frame (at least there it wasn't) - which is sounds like the OP might have been hinting at? The labor is much more divided up.

IMO handlebars are the worst - we were doing 8 piece bars and it felt like we'd weld a billion per week.

Not at all.

We worked in a very similar fashion: mitering, sub assembly welding, more mitering, and then finally putting together all of the pieces to weld full frames.

Luckily, we didn't mess to much with flatland bars and could whip through massive batches of two piece bars with fervor.

[Eric Estlund]

At Friday we were averaging 8/9 completes a day (including tandamns and triples) between 8 (custom line production) folks from cutting to final boxing. During peek we'd push to 10 or 11.

I'm glad to have that in my background, and I'm pretty ok with working in a different mode now. Similar in a lot of ways, but scaled to a single employee.

[steve garro]

Do you still have them?

Hell no!

I made them into bikes & sold them!

- Garro.