Us vs. them......

We as bicycle frame builders in order to have buisness need to get exposure for our work-for me it is mostly at the races....for my more artistic brethren the venue is one or more of the various trade shows that showcase custom and/or collectable bicycles. Both avenues are potentially great but both require time and money to participate in and there is no guarantee that sales will result from either venture. The internet serves well as a place to have work displayed and information available to the potential customer but if you are not showing your wares out in the real world, your chances of sales are pretty slim. When the shows as we now know them first started up about five years ago ( the framebuilder exclusive ones...) they were gatherings that for the first time brought builders together in one place and for the most part helped solidify the framebuilder community. This process of celebrating the craft while at the same time re-enforcing the bonds of framebuilding folks was so long overdue , it was like a huge dam of enthusiasm and inspiration had broken open.We , as builders were no longer working in relative isolation. I, personally was moved by the first three shows I displayed at....they served to inspire me in a big way. The show had an unspoken theme, at least in my mind. It was :" Hey, we build frames....check out what we do." Now, just a few years later the show is now several shows....the community is now divided into sub-groups. The enormous size of the country and the increasing costs associated with the original show are the main cause but for me the focus of the original show is what spun me off. Now the handmade bike show can be distilled to this theme .: " Hey, look at what i build....". The "We" part of it is gone, buried under a big pile of one-upsmanship and big gaudy bowling trophies. While I applaud the talent of folks who win awards at the show-you really can't win an award with anything less than exceptional-The thing that still is not awarded for the most part is the commitment that some folks have to the craft, be it what they do for racers, junior developement or mentoring new builders. In my mind, that's what is where the focus needs to be and that is what will keep this craft from dying. No amount of museum quailty adornment will convince the bulk of cyclists that a custom bike is worth seeking out. I'm sticking with " Look at what we do " as the saying for the present and future builders who wish to not see the demise of framebuilding. You can save the " Look at what I do" for your blog.

Selling out......

Back in 1988 when I got my short music career behind me and decided to be fulltime in the frame building craft I didn't have any plan at all. My goal was to try to get better at the job and hopefully have a reliable clientele based on the kind of service I would try to provide. Sure, I had a lot to learn in all respects ( I still do...) but I was a 32 year old with energy, a few tools and a number of frames under my belt. I was not alone in Nor-Cal in those days-a few others were a bit ahead of me in terms of brand name recognition and product offerings. One of my competitors even had a patent or two. Two of these framebuilders would eventually sell their buisnesses and get back some of the money they had invested working hard for really low wages , considering the skills and comittment needed for the job. Both of these builders had done a lot to spread the word of thier brands with t-shirts and small accessories that were perfect for folks who wanted to buy something with the comany logo but couldn't spring for the bike.These two builders had built thier shops into small companies with between 20-30 employees . Not being a big thinker , I had no such accessories, no patents , a small dealer network and no employees. My company had stayed small because I was afraid of losing control of the situation.....also, I really liked the building process itself and didn't want to wind up in an office , away from the set of tasks that were the reason I was in the trade in the first place. Here it is, 2010 and I'm still at it as a sole proprietor in a small shop. I still build the frames myself and as of now have no employees, a small dealer network and seldom have any logo-emblazoned stuff that finds itself into the consumer market. Folks come to the shop and say " Dang, you have to be one of the only guys from the eighties who never sold out or quit .". Yes, it may be true that almost everyone who was building when I started out has ether sold thier companies or quit the buisness. Some might think that it was dedication and commitment that has kept me at it all these years. At one time I used to say that unlike my brethren, my company was not for sale. "You can't sell out if you are not for sale!" The bigger truth is that I never had any offers worth considering-the only one I got was from a German distributor who actually laughed at the paltry sum I was asking for permanent ownership of my trademark for all of Europe . I didn't lower my price as I pretty much figured that the German company was looking to get something for nothing and even though I really could have used the money , I was not willing to give away all those years of labor for chump change . The real truth about selling out is this : " You can't sell out if nobody is buying." So, along with the fact that I like the process , I was unable to cash in back in 1998 when people like Trek were scooping up every cult bike name they could . The money would have been nice but I would have missed all those years since in my shop..........can't put a price on that.

Listen to the pros and the bros.

While I drink my morning tea and eat my daily three pieces of toast at 7:30 a.m. I get a chance to read what framebuilders are discussing...or sometimes arguing about on the forums. That's right-while I'm no longer a part of these scrums I do check them out from a distance. The eternal battle seems to be framebuilders vs. engineers. The framebuilders have actual experience with tubes,lugs,brazing , etc. The way a framebuilder finds out if something dosen't work is if it comes back to the shop broken. The way and engineer finds out if something dosen't work is much the same except for the fact that most engineers do their work in labs and never get to actually build the final product themselves. Framebuilders see this as a disconnect. Engineers see framebuilders as primitives who by the seat of their collective pants put things together in sometimes a haphazard fashion that wouldn't cut it in the world of testing labs. The truth is that egineers and framebuilders benefit from each other and need each other for problem solving and real-world feedback. Where would framebuilders be without the engineers figuring out the best alloys and processes to make tubing ? Conversely, where would engineers be without framebuilders putting the torch to these raw materials and finding out if the engineering really adds up to a success for the end user , or if it falls short. Neither framebuilder nor engineer is immune from making a blunder but each of them are very sure that the other is missing something in the equasion of bicycle building. I read on the forum where a hobbyist-builder was asking if silver solder was better for attatching cantilever bosses than bronze as it melted at a lower temperature. Several experienced builders gave evidence that silver was a bad choice, to which the hobbyist replied : " I'm going to use silver, check the engineering data". Hey, mr. Hobbyist.....you are ignoring the most important data-that of people who braze on hundereds of cantilever bosses , exactly what you are trying to attempt for the first time. While the engineers will tell you properties that are very valuable, the engineers are not actually building the bikes, brazing on the bosses and dealing directly with the results. Think about it-free advice from seasoned pro builders.......years ago when I started out, this advice was almost impossible to come by. While we as builders depend on the engineering community to a large degree it is we, the guys in sheds all over the world who really knows what works in the bike building shop and the advice to " Read the data" from someone with little or no experience is downright laughable. To Mr. "Read the data " I say : Dude, we live the data....hell , our frames are the data . We , as builders accept responsability for failures that could be ours, or could be the data . Maybe you need to check some data of a more real-world kind-Hey, it's free !

Refund ??? Refund ???

Every once in awhile I have had to cut the cord with a customer ( or them with me..). I used to think that maybe this person who ordered a bike frame from me might be mentally unsound or just playing some sort of sick control game with me and possibly other craftspeople types . That's what I thought, until recently. A client/builder relationship is not unlike a friendship-trust is a major part of the relationship. The client must trust that the builder will do his or her utmost to satisfy what the customer ordered. Conversely , the builder must trust that the customer is being clear in what they are requesting and is acting in good faith, i.e. not going to flake on payment when the frame is completed. Both parties are taking a bit of a leap of faith-if either is unsure of the other, that is when the whole exchange can go south. So here it is, years since my last unfortunate aborted transaction with a clearly displeased customer......suddenly it hit me: Maybe this person was not insane...maybe they really weren't playing any kind of sick control game at all. Perhaps the issue with this customer is that they didn't trust me, the builder. Even though it has been a long time coming, this realization about trust ..but now I know why I couldn't satisfy them and also I know why I came away comletely insulted. I would like to think that I, like most of my framebuilding brethren do our utmost to make the customer happy. I also need to point out that when some of us do make an error we do all that we can to rectify the mistake in a timely fashion . While most of us do not advertise that we fix our flub-ups quickly , I believe it is an unspoken code that customer service is what sets us apart from larger companies and/or unethical practitioners of bicycle frame construction ( Names witheld to protect the cheeky bastards ) . Sooo.....here I am, thinking I'm going to build this customer the best frame they ever had and whammo.......the customer isn't happy, sometimes before I have even lit the torch ! I recently sent a deposit back to a customer who I spent quite a bit of time with in person and on the phone-all the time I was talking to this person I got the feeling that he/she was having a terribly hard time commiting to an order or even a design for the frame. I always tell people who appear this indecisive that perhaps they should not order a frame until they know exactly what they want . Now I know that indecision on the part of this customer was only a symptom of the greater issue: This person didn't trust me. Even though the customer clearly did not trust my ability to build what they want in the time they had envisioned , I recieved a deposit from the customer, albeit about three months later than I was told I would. In that three months I had accumulated about thirty orders , so the three and one-half month waiting time I had qouted the customer was out of the question. I phoned and left the customer a message on voicemail that now the frame would not be ready for perhaps four to five months. I gave the customer two weeks to reply as to weather this was acceptable ( if not I would send the deposit check back ) and then deposited the check. In a couple of days the customer called me and said that the check had cleared but that he hadn't given me the o.k. on the additional waiting time. I waited for another couple of weeks and then the custome called to have me refund the deposit, which I did immediately. I also sent back all the fit info so that it could be put to use by the other builder who would now be building the frame that was no longer my responsability. I was seriously scratching my head over this whole episode when it dawned on me that the indecision, the long delay in sending the deposit and the delay in getting back to me with the final solution were the red flags of mistrust on the part of the customer. I can understand that it is a big leap of faith to order a frame from someone you might not know personally but people do it every day . What I don't understand is why someone who clearly didn't trust me sent me money ..........it makes no sense . I'm not a mental health professional and some would say that I could benefit from a little analysis myself - this stuff is beyond me . I close with this : To all those untrusting individuals I say, go ahead -don't trust me.....pass me up as your potential builder, please ! Just remember that unless you are building the damn frame yourself you will indeed have to suck it up and trust somebody . Good night and good luck.

Have a nice time at the show for me.......

Yes, the NAHMBS is almost here and I for one am not going to be there. Don't think that I'm dissing the show.....it is the best of its kind in the known world, it's just that my energies are best spent in the shop rather than out at a show trying to wow people. I may sound like a whiner , mr. sour grapes and all that but the reason I'm not going is because other than seeing all the great work and getting to hang out with some of my favorite folks , it isn't a place where I'm going to write orders, wow people.....there's just too much other 'bling' that I can't compete with. I read on one of the forums about some guy deviding builders into two catagories. One catagory was "boring builders'. These are builders who don't put long stainless steel logos on their downtubes, don't build with ornate shiny bits and might only weld thier boring bikes and powdercoat them one measily color. Hey....that's me ! I'm officially a boring builder. People walk the isles of the show.....walk....hmm, down an aisle....... of bicycles-wait.....bicycles......what about riding the bicycles ? Does anyone do that at the shows ? The only riding I ever did at the show was to transport a bike to the photographer or to the lecture I was giving that day . Nobody rides at these shows. No trophies are awarded to any bike based on the way it rides , yet riding is what bicycles are for ! But noooo....these priceless works of art are to be looked at, worshipped and spared the indignity of being ridden . Often I see bikes that were obviously one-off labors of many hours of concentrated , commited painstaking work-the kind of work that only a hobbyist could find time to do. This pretty much makes the working stiff framebuilder , the guy who makes bikes for people that ride them , a boring framebuilder by the standards of at least some of the viewing public at the show. O.K. , I agree. My bikes will not wow you visually and since you will not be able to ride them at the show, you won't be able to judge that favorably, either. I see the show evolving into something of an exhibit for the obsessed. Hey, the custom bicycle market depends on the obsessed so I heartily endorse their obsessions and am glad the show exists to give builders a venue to display the stuff these people long to see. I can't compete with someone who is willing to put more time into filing one lug than I put into building an entire frame. That said, I don't want to compete with these folks......I willingly concede defeat. What is my concellation prize for losing this battle ? I'll bet you already know that..........

Test scores

O.K. , folks. If any of you actually bothered to do the quiz, here are your scores for each answer. The higher scores are awarded to the answers that I feel reflect the reality of building frames and not the fantasy. Pretense and negativity do not merit high numbers, even though so many of you champion both of those questionable attributes.

A one-point score indicates almost complete culelessness

A two point score indicates an almost imperceptable glimmer of grasping the concept.

A three point score shows some understanding , but clearly not the best choice.

A four point score indicates that this answer will work in a pinch.

A five point score means that you get it, whatever that may be.

A zero point score really isn't worth as much print as I have given it.

#1. A= 3

B= 3

C=4

D= 5

#2. A=2

B=3

C=2

D=1

E=5

#3. A=2

B=1

C=1

D=5

E=1

#4. A=1

B=1

C=1

D=5

E=2

#5. A=3

B=1

C=0

D=5

E=0

#6. A=2

B=0

C=5

D=1

E=1

#7. A=3

B=4

C=2

D=0

E=0

F=5

#8. A=3

B=2

C=5

D=0

E=3

In depth explanations of the reasoning behind the scores is something I have considered but I really don't want to waste your time unless there is a groundswell of enthusiasm.

A score of 40 indicates that you have a grasp, or at least my grasp of the framebuilders reality.....well done, bucko.

a score of 30 or more means that while you may have the grasp, you also think that there is some wiggle room with the rules, which there is, just not for me.

A score of less than 20 would say that you and I should never meet, at least not without a moderator or legal councel present.

Don't take it personally if you don't get a high score........taking this stuff personally is what drives the negative shit-circle that much of the chat forums have become. My advice ? Don't stir the shit........it will get on you and eventually all over you.

This is only a test......

So you want to build frames, eh ? Maybe you don't want to build frames.....maybe you already build frames....heck , I don't know why you found me but you are here and you can check out this questioneer I have come up with. This multiple-choice quiz was inspired but the NYC bike snob's Friday quizzes - the difference is that his are funnier. The quiz I am offering up is for aspiring framebuilders or anyone who wishes to waste a little of their time with the following questions. You won't win anything no matter how well you do at the quiz and I'm sure that whatever I believe is the correct answer to any question might be up for debate-then again , this is my blog so I get to be the supposed authority , for what its worth.

So you want to be a framebuider ? Answer me this:

#1. If you were to build frames for a profession , what kind or style would you build ?

A. Lugged, classic style.

B. Welded steel

C. A variety of materials depending on use.

D.The kind that sell.

#2. How would you set yourself apart from the myriad of builders out there in the trade ?

A. Make your shop a 'destination shop' with a nice area with couches and an espresso machine.

B. Get the latest fitting method with all the most modern bike fit equipment.

C. Have a super organized space that exudes an organized , professional approach.

D. Have custom logos and fittings made for your frames that nobody else can use on their frames.

E. Actually do what you say you will do and be truthful.

#3. If a client comes into your shop, how will you go about selling your product to the prospective buyer ?

A. First, point out what notable feature(s) set your frame apart from the other builders.

B. Let the customer know that they really have arrived at the place where dreams are realized.

C. Ask them what they want, then tell them what you think they need.

D. Listen to what they have to say, then offer up some suggestions.

E. Tell them that you have limited time and that they need to make up their mind quickly as you have several years worth of orders to fill.

#4. What do you do if someone asks for some sort of frame that you don't know how to build ?

A. You tell them that they are asking for something really stupid.

B. You refer them to someone you know will build them a total piece of shit and that'll teach 'em.

C. You ask them why hell they came to you with this request and then show them the door.

D. You make an effort to find a compromise between what they are asking for and what you can build for them without going out of your comfort zone.

E. You take the order and learn how to build the frame , even if it means you are getting involved in a potential career-ending time-toilet.

#5. What do you do if someone has issues or a complaint with something you built for them? A. Tell them that you will do anything to rectify the situation except for a full refund.

B. Educate them as to what is proper and what is not proper with bicycle frame construction and assure them that what they are complaining about is not your problem.

C. Hide somwhere in your shop where you are sure they won't find you.

D. Do your best to fix the problem but if the person becomes abusive and/or irate offer them a full refund.

E. Move your shop and don't give a forwarding address.

#6. As a bicycle enthusiast , you would most like to :

A. Build frames all day long, every day.

B. Yell at cars as often as possible and let the world know that they need to share your road .

C. Go for a ride.

D. Spend time on the internet discussing frame building.

E. Smoke cigarettes while riding backward circles on a fixed gear.

#7. If you go on the internet framebuilding forums you are primarily :

A. Checking out the gossip.

B. Wanting to find an answer to a framebuilding question.

C. Wanting to show off your latest project.

D. Looking to argue and be abusive, particularly to the newbies.

E. Needing to show that you are right and that they are wrong.

F. Wanting to exchange useful info with non-deranged like minded folks.

#8. If you don't know a procedure, what do you do to learn how to do said procedure ?

A. Go to the forums and ask the folks at large.

B. Just figure out by trying things in your shop, caveman style.

C. Find a more experienced builder and ask him/her how it is done.

D. Go check a number of sources and authorities , then disregard all the sound advice and figure it out for yourself because you are a genius and they are not.

E. Find a way to live your life never knowing.......

Well, Folks-that is your quiz. I'll be posting what I think are the best answers and there will be point values for each answer. A hig score means you think like I do which may or may not serve you well-it depends on what circles you travel in. Good luck and happy new year to all.