Richard Sachs Cycles

[dave1215]

richie,

this is some special thread. thanks for sharing those views and that perspective.
sure your frames are nice but i think it's all the personality that people really desire.
if other guys want to make it big they had better get smoked out as soon as they can.

as i've said before, you're not just a frame builder - you're a cultural phenomenon.
so many people in all walks on these cycling interwebs and beyond
have immeasurably benefitted from your relentlessness and good form.

have you ever considered the legacy of your work?
when you began the frame building gig?
when you started promoting your peers on your website?
when you stopped taking orders or began slowing production?
and what role(s) do you see for yourself after you lay down the torch?

thanks again,

dave

[e-RICHIE]

richie,

this is some special thread. thanks for sharing those views and that perspective.
sure your frames are nice but i think it's all the personality that people really desire.
if other guys want to make it big they had better get smoked out as soon as they can.

as i've said before, you're not just a frame builder - you're a cultural phenomenon.
so many people in all walks on these cycling interwebs and beyond
have immeasurably benefitted from your relentlessness and good form.

have you ever considered the legacy of your work?
when you began the frame building gig?
when you started promoting your peers on your website?
when you stopped taking orders or began slowing production?
and what role(s) do you see for yourself after you lay down the torch?

thanks again,

dave

hey dave thanks for all these nice comments atmo.

regarding the more recent e-RICHIEness of it all, i'd have to say it started at nahbs 1.0 in texas and continues to this day.
it was there, or maybe a week later whe i returned home, that i started the Next Wave page on my site. it was more of a
concept than anything else and, sadly, i haven't tended to it in real time. but i will now atmo! i left texas feeling quite good
about the experience and have made good pals in this niche ever since. it took me some searching, but i found this blog
entry that speaks to my time at that very first show.

[suhacycles]

Hey Richie,

Did my first cross race this past weekend and had the 'pleasure' of TRYING to catch a guy on one of your bikes! It's the first one I've seen down here in NC and I'm hoping to get a little closer next time.
Thanks for the inspiration - on many levels!

-Hansen

[e-RICHIE]

What started your interest in bicycle engineering/design?
That is too long a story. Suffice it to say it was not/never planned. It was all serendipitous. I ended up in London after being turned down for a measly wrench job for which I was never qualified anyway! Learning about bicycles and moving overseas was an act of revenge (to that shop) as much as anything else.

How do you size your customers?
Intuitively.

What do you want to achieve for your customers?
I have never considered that. I continue to make these frames to better understand why so many become what they want, rather than what is planned. To be sure, all work, fit, and please the client, but making something by hand, particularly an item wound so tight as is a steel bicycle frame, includes a certain amount of acquiescing to the material and the process. After 30 years, it still confounds me that no two can be alike, and my role at the workbench is to take the better of the two and repeat it. And so it goes…

read all of it here atmo.

[e-RICHIE]

some assorted shameless and relentless 'cross pollinating atmo -

House Industries - Blog

[doubled]

nice wool richard! you have some awesome relationships with sponsors.

[Dazza]

thanks, bigmonter atmo.

these are all great questions and the kind for which replies could vary depending on the mood. for the last several years or so i have stayed on a 4-5 frames per month schedule and that's almost half of what used to do. i think i hit an intersection in (my) life when i realized, or perhaps it's more exact to say - i admitted to my own self that more doesn't equal better. i'm not a machine, but i have been a machine over the years and i could do it again at the drop of an over-sized, extremely loose fitting, cooler-than-kewl atmo hat. making more frames is no problem from an operational standpoint. heck, back in the 1970s when i started my business i was doing 3-4 a week with little effort.

i also have a parts and materials and soft goods business to nurture and i have found the effort needed for this is also part of the job here. for a long time i fooled myself that i could plan inventory and pack boxes after work or while a lug was cooling down. a line in the sand arrived and it was obvious that i didn't need to work that hard or get in touch with my inner workaholic to find a nice balance between making frames, filling orders for the RS toys, training/racing, managing the 'cross team, and - most importantly, having a personal life worth living atmo.

there are a lot of orders in the queue. most folks realize these are not shoes from thom mcan's. i don't go into a back room and grab a pair of size 8s for a customer. there's so much more to this (my) job than standing at the bench and making a frame, and then starting the next one a few hours after it's done. even without the side work that i manage, the time it takes to make my signature frames is nearly twice what it was in the old days. every epiphany, every improvement, every detail that i see and tweak - each of these doesn't always make the assembly easier and faster. the more critically i look at my work, the more i see. the consequence of this is i am far less prone than ever to care about output. the frames are exponentially better than what i ever produced when the numbers were high. when i was younger, it was a badge of courage (or even smugness) to know and say that i was a 100 frames per year guy. some of it was tied to that i didn't want folks confusing what i did with the part timers and artiste framebuilders who were cranking out 10-12 units a year. oh has time tempered my ass atmo.

so, yeah - i work slower now, and folks will wait longer now. but the balance has never been better. sorry for the ramble, huh.

This speaks to me!
Good stuff


When I used to go to Italian bike shows, Milan etc, the first thing the so called "Big Name builders" like Ernesto etc would ask me
"How many frames do you make each year?"
after a while this erkked me and made me dark!
And I would reply" more than you"
and I would hold both my hands up and said a few times
"I make all of them with only these two hands, so I make more than YOU"
I gave up speaking to big name brands at shows
and never liked bike shows since
Maybe I got a little more mature, maybe a I got more attitude, but bike shows make me vomit
till I finally got to NAHBS 2008 and 2010.
A real bike show, or really a bike show about the people who make the bikes
it is where I liked speaking to the the builders and punters walking about.
Fantastic stuff

What Richie writes is good stuff, and his stories is the message, and he tells it well
Bravo Richie!

[Dazza]

atmo the focus appears to be on fabricating a cult of personality first, and then getting the design experience, assembly skills,and
business acumen after that. i don't know where it all started, but it sure seems like the natural progression of the current day frame-
builder is to 1) build a frame, 2) take a picture, 3) blog about it, 4) seek public adoration, 5) go to nahbs, 6) come home and look for
pictures of his frame on the internet, 7) continue his learning curve by working on his 12th frame for his 5th client, 8) use whatever
deposits he left has as cash flow, 9) see that it's not all as it appears, and 10) sells his journeyman fixture on the list serve. note that
i never mention stainless head badges or water jet dropouts from e-machineshop dot com atmo.

I am laughing
Well said
well said
How true how true


we are all on a different bit of the time line
but the "we have arrived stuff" that comes from builders makes me SIGH
one never arrives
and never will arrive

[WFSTEKL]

e-Richie writes prose.
Dazza writes poetry.
Nothing is more poignant.

[ergott]

I wish I had something more interesting to say.

Thanks.

-Eric

[e-RICHIE]

Throughout more than three decades as a builder, Richard Sachs has made primarily one kind of bicycle (for racing) in one kind of material (steel) painted in one color (red). And yet he sees nothing repetitive in this approach. An idealist who sets out to create the perfect bicycle with every attempt (and has come close fewer than ten times out of thousands, he estimates) Sachs insists that the tasks of designing, cutting, brazing, and coaxing the materials are so organic, and often so confounding, that he is unable to make the same frame twice.

read more here atmo -

[nahtnoj]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

-Heraclitus

[e-RICHIE]

some history (as in his story...) as a reply of sorts to this post on another thread atmo -

In 1975, the number of American framebuilders amounted to nearly 100. Today, there may be less than 20 still involved
on a full-time basis. These, however, are building a reputation that is equaling, if not exceeding, the European masters.

Read the rest here atmo.

[anthonymaietta]

some history (as in his story...) as a reply of sorts to this post on another thread atmo -

In 1975, the number of American framebuilders amounted to nearly 100. Today, there may be less than 20 still involved
on a full-time basis. These, however, are building a reputation that is equaling, if not exceeding, the European masters.

Read the rest here atmo.

"Today" in the article was 1979. Was there anything in particular that attrtibuted to ~80 Pros hanging it up in those 4 years that you can remember?

If your feet were held to the fire, what would yo put the estimate at now?

Tony

[e-RICHIE]

"Today" in the article was 1979. Was there anything in particular that attrtibuted to ~80 Pros hanging it up in those 4 years that you can remember?

If your feet were held to the fire, what would yo put the estimate at now?

Tony

yeah - atmo:
the quality level and design of factory manufactured and industrial-made frames improved exponentially.
ps my estimate of what?

[e-RICHIE]

"Today" in the article was 1979. Was there anything in particular that attrtibuted to ~80 Pros hanging it up in those 4 years that you can remember?


Tony

ps i didn't say there were 100 pros atmo.
i wrote that there were 100 guys.
no different at-all from now.

[Gregory Townsend]

whoa atmo i am embarrassed to admit that i absolutely missed this post and apologize that it went unanswered.
here's a reply straight from the hip -
make what you use.
use what you know.
know what you use.
sell what you use.
and never look up to see what anyone else is doing.
no matter how wide the net is cast, all that matters is what you think.
if you ever second guess yourself, pause until you don't atmo.

Hey Richie,
I must admit to feeling more than a bit dense when reading your communications but for some reason this hits home.

Grazie mille for the support & encouragement.

Greg

[e-RICHIE]

Hey Richie,
I must admit to feeling more than a bit dense when reading your communications but for some reason this hits home.

Grazie mille for the support & encouragement.

Greg

high five atmo.

[e-RICHIE]

people in glass houses are generally advised against throwing stones.

read more here atmo.

[DCT]

richard,

what changes have you made to your frames in the last 5 or so years?