I had Massaman curry with chicken, thai hot, for dinner. It was pretty good.
Custom bike builders and lag time
- Thread starter Toshi
- Start date
Take heed of Uncle Buck, for he know of what he speaketh.
good to hear from a couple of builders on this but would have thought Suspect Device would have a comment or two also. would be curious as to what the response would be over at a couple of other forums i go to where Sachs and White and other builders frequently post at. when i had my Wojcik built, i was given a time when to expect it and it went longer due to paint issues. no biggie since i was told. i think part of the allure of a custom frame is that one on one interaction with the builder you don't get with "off the rack". is that worth more? to some yes, others maybe not but it's accepted as part of the price. is a Vanilla worth more than say a Wojcik? not in my opinion, both build beautiful frames it's just Vanilla happens to be the hip thing to buy. and if your willing to wait 5+ years then good for you. the price of these frames is kinda irrelevant. steel prices are going up since everyone wants carbon. does it make sense for me to pay say $3k for a carbon frame made in Taiwan with a big name on it or the same money for a Parlee? wouldn't the better deal come with the Parlee if i can work with them on getting a custom build for the same price as off the shelf? my $3k frame made in Taiwan with the fancy Italian name on it isn't saving me any money being made in Taiwan and since people are willing to pay that then the price won't come down. so for me, i'll just keep it state side and pay a custom builder that money. as far as lag time for the build goes, going custom is going to be a lengthy process. should it be? who knows. but if, in my mind, it takes a bit longer to build it right then so be it. Carl Strong's site has some good video and commentary on the build process, very interesting and worth watching.
There are standard models but these models are in a continuous state of evolution, and he does create a ton of prototypes (recent examples for those who know brass instruments: 4-valve B flat trumpet, a double-shank mouthpiece that has one cup so that two perfectly-tuned instruments could be played simultaneously--just for kicks, clearly, integrated-mouthpiece trumpets with screw-off rims, think Warburton but the rim screws to the trumpet, not the rest of the mouthpiece!). His shop is filled with tooling custom created by him and his staff and CNC machines to create the new designs.
He builds to his standards and the customer's desires, not industry standards. In this regard I bet he's way further from the norm subjectively than custom frame builders are.
I don't know how susceptible he is to supply chain disruptions, on the other hand. Since most things save for the unfinished valve casings (iirc) are built in-house in the Portland shop I think he's more insulated than a builder who has to rely on others for tubing, headsets, etc.
If you're curious: http://www.monette.net/newsite/ . The Facebook page has much more news than the website on new products and prototypes, etc.
Well if you can get the custom for the same price, lead time and warranty, then yes I'd have to say custom would be a great way to go. But I think that would be the exception to the rule.
I didn't realize that a 5-year lead time even existed. Seriously.....if you can wait FIVE YEARS for a BIKE....seriously? FIVE YEARS. There is all kinds of messed up there.
Perhaps it defeats the purpose of the custom frame....but if you have a customer base patient enough to wait 5 years, don't you almost owe it to your customers to HIRE SOME HELP?? Does the guy take deposits that far in advance? What happens if he dies before he gets to your bike? HOw do you get your deposit back?
I'm not going to tell anyone how to run their business...not for free anyway. But I've mentined this before....where i work we've spent a lot of time and effort in lean manufacturing. There are some very basic principles that are in fact universally applicable, regardless if it's a one man custom shop, or the Boeing 787 supply chain.
There are always ways of eliminating waste in your value stream.
"Man sees another man struggling to cut down a tree.
"Why does it take so long"
"Axe is too dull"
"Why don't you stop and sharpen it?"
"Not time to stop"
Focussing on new tooling or machines might not always yield the most dramatic results. An example that was given to us was a company that manufactured wooden chairs. The had a 3 month lead time. The owner was eyeing this million dollar machine that would reduce the time of one of his manufacturing processes from 45 min to 15. (or something like that).
The consultant basically said, "Congratualtions. So for a $1M, you will reduce your leadtime from 3 months to 2 months 29 days, 23 hours and 30 mins."
The guy had tons of waste in his process. Most of which he was able to eliminate for free just by taking a step back and really looking at what he was doing.
Anyway I am (obviously) a huge believer in lean manufacturing. and I realize it may not be 100% applicable. But it's also not 100% not applicable. Looking at the overall value stream and identifying waste, rather than dreaming up fancy new tooling MIGHT give you more significant gains.......
And if you have a customer base that is THAT loyal to you, then I do think you almost owe it to them to improve the turn-around on the product.
whew....
um........boobs.
Ah, but you're assuming the customers actually only derive value from the finished product. I bet there's lots of cachet, at least as perceived in certain circles, in dropping offhand that you're merely on the waiting list.
Got me again......I am somewhat "results driven"........
It's all about image.
Indeed...I have a hard time believing that, (ignoring the Shaquille O'Neals of the cycling world), it would be IMPOSSIBLE that anyone could not set up an off the rack frame to their liking. FRom Trek, Specialized, Santa Cruz, Yeti, Transition, Evil, Giant etc etc etc....all with slightly different geometry.....stem length, seatpost length, riser bar height, crank length.....there is no way that it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a bike to fit you.
As I said earlier, it' an emotional thing. Not a practical thing. And if that's what you want to go, then go ahead. Just don't try to dress it up that the custom bike is anything more than an emotional thing.
snipped a lot of good stuff about LEAN manufacturing
There's a balance here and the balance point is going to be different for every builder. That balance point between machination/handwork is likely going to evolve with the builder as well. I'm firmly in the camp that I can't do a good enough job if I hand file my miters. The time it takes is almost irrelevant to me because it's the fitup that's the most important aspect of mitering (to me). I know of some steel builders who actually like the hand filing part and consider it to be part of the craft. More power to them for doing it if that's what they want to do. You could make the argument that it's less efficient, and in some cases you'd be right, but some of those builders identify with it as being part of their craft and part of what what makes the process special for them. The process isn't entirely NOT about efficiency either. If I have three CX bikes back to back, it makes more sense to me to bend all the stays at one time so I only have to setup the tools once. I know one builder here in Portland who has at least 100 sets of dropout/chainstay assemblies sitting in a box ready to go. He's had them for at least five years and will probably have most of them five years from now. It may have seemed like an efficient use of time/money but now he has no ROI to show for the time invested and essentially has merch sitting on a shelf that's not producing $$.
Another reason LEAN doesn't work is because every single bike is different from the last and from the next in line. That's the nature of custom bikes. It's impossible to accurately forecast the supplies we're going to need too. In a LEAN environment the manufacturer typically has contracts with the suppliers to deliver goods in certain amounts at specific times. That model absolutely does not work at our level. We usually don't have the throughput, capital or leverage to enforce those types of contracts.
Buy a custom bike for whatever reason you want but please try to understand that your builder is a human and sh!t happens from time to time. I try to build a two week buffer in the delivery time in case something goes sideways...my daughter was sick for six weeks in December and January, then I got sick for a week, and my wife got sick the next week. As a one man operation, there's nothing I could do but communicate my circumstance to my customers and hope they understood.
For the record, I got into this because I love bikes and it was a good fit for a nerd like me to put myself to work creating stuff that I'm obsessed with. The best thing to come out of this for me is the relationships I've made with some of my customers. I've had the pleasure of meeting some truly wonderful people because they put their trust in me to build a bike for them. It's a BIG deal knowing that when someone puts down a deposit they're saying, "I trust YOU more than anyone else out there to do what you do and build me something that is going to make me want to shred every day."
That is a key concept too....inventory is in fact evil....for the very reason you state....and should something happen to render the parts obsolete, then it's a total waste.
At work we work in very small batches. and we have a bazillion different products. They key is having parts partially made in kanbans. Jigs/fixtures/tooling that changes quickly (SMED....single minute exchange of die....we're not quite at 1 minute....but we're trying)
But yeah.....full on Toyota style lean is likely never going to work in a custom shop. But just some of the principles (which you do seem to be aware of) can be applicable.....
you should be ashamed.....
The only thing that is applicable is to look at how efficiently you do things, but in a very small custom shop, the things that blow out timeframes more often than not have nothing to do with efficiency, and a vast amount of things are way out of our control.
If it's just one or two guys making frames, it makes no difference if Spectrum is running three weeks late, there's nothing you can do about it.
If you can't afford to have 10k of inventory lying around, then you're dependent on wholesalers to have stock, and if they don't then you have to wait.
And if new tubes are being drawn and new standards in the process of being developed and they customer wants them, then you have to wait for that, too.
I fail to see how reading about how Toyota makes cars has anything to major to impart on one or two men in a shed short of "make the most of your time". I did all that stuff in University as an Industrial Design student, at the level I chose to work on, it's mostly just interesting reading about how the other half live.
I realize that.....we have a specific product that requires that we stock a huge amount of inventory. the stuff has a 9-11 month lead time. So we have to carry a lot of the raw material. And fortunately we have the money and space to deal with it. I realize that you are competing for attention from your vendors. That same material, we are competing with Bell Helicopter for the very same stuff. While we will buy several hundred feet, Bell wants like.....20 miles of the stuff...(ok maybe not....but more than we want). so we need to fanagle.........
Don't get me wrong. I'm not AGAINST the custom shop thing. I DO sympathize/empathize with some of the trials and tribulations of being the little guy. (In our game we are the little guy).
Don't get me wrong. I'm not AGAINST the custom shop thing. I DO sympathize/empathize with some of the trials and tribulations of being the little guy. (In our game we are the little guy).
I wish I had the space and $$ for job specific tooling. I've been looking for a reasonable horizontal mill to use as a dedicated main tube mitering station but the PNW is machine starved compared to the mid west and east coast. When they show up, they're 3-4x their value. If we move back east I'll definitely get one, or four. I WISH I had a SMED situations. I have four dies that I use to bend stays (soon to be six) and one "backbone" that they bolt into. It takes a few minutes to set up. Time in between setups is one thing but seriously, most of the problems are with vendors.
I recently developed a headset and a component manufacturer agreed to make it. I was told that I had a few coming my way and I committed to build bikes out of them. That was in March. They haven't been returning my calls or emails for two months. What can I do? I bought some new tooling to incorporate it, I spent hour and hours making new tooling to incorporate it, I sourced hard to find material and made an agreement with a much larger bike co to keep me stocked but no headsets. They have more important (profitable) things to work on and stuff like this gets shuffled around.
Heck, even Niner is having problems with their manufacturer. They got the boot because of a bigger client. It's the way it works, and it sucks.
I'm placing an order next week for about $15K in tubing and hardware and my guess is that people would be shocked to find out how few bikes can be made with that investment. A friend of mine who owns a bike school you may have heard of was lamenting the titanium market at the moment. If one wanted to buy from a company like Haynes or Sandvik directly, $700K would have to be spent to acquire full mill runs of only four diameters of tubing. We typically keep 8 different diameters on hand. What the effing eff?!
Anyhow, I don't want this to be a b!tch session, I'm attempting to educate a bit. The bottom line is that it's tough when you have no control of your suppliers. You can mitigate to the best of your ability but it's either impossible or entirely inefficient to foresee every eventuality and shut it down before it becomes a problem.
yeah that's pretty f'ed up but i think it's part of the allure and bragging rights for some of those people who are waiting to say that they'll have their Vanilla or Sachs. good for V and S to have that type of customer who's willing to wait like that but i think that there are plenty of other builders who build just as nice a bike as they do and have pretty reasonable wait times. but i think as Buck mentioned, we're all human even the builders. they get sick, have stuff that pops up in their lives just like we do. and that's just part of going with a small custom shop.
in the end all that matters is that Mike likes his bike. i saw the pics of the frame and it looks great!! now i hope you ride the thing to death so all this discussion makes it all seem worth while.
Having worked for a custom builder, I see myself in a unique position.
Many builders carry 6mo waiting lists. As long as the customer knows this when they pay the deposit, what's the problem? A bike takes awhile to build. The tubes may take weeks to procure. If business gets slow, you haven't overextended yourself financially. Grow your business you say? Well, custom bikes are funny that way. Finding skilled labor is very hard. You almost need to train in-house. People who have the metal fab skills can make double money plus benefits pushing a broom at a larger company. That's why I left. I simply couldn't afford it anymore.
Many builders carry 6mo waiting lists. As long as the customer knows this when they pay the deposit, what's the problem? A bike takes awhile to build. The tubes may take weeks to procure. If business gets slow, you haven't overextended yourself financially. Grow your business you say? Well, custom bikes are funny that way. Finding skilled labor is very hard. You almost need to train in-house. People who have the metal fab skills can make double money plus benefits pushing a broom at a larger company. That's why I left. I simply couldn't afford it anymore.
What happened to the link to your blog a while back. I didn't get to see the rest of your frame build.
Yes yes yes...I understand that the custom bike frame makes it...."special". I don't condemn people for buying them and I don't don't condemn builders for taking a long time. I understand the challenges ofthe supply chain. Many vendors will look at you as if you've walked into a shoe store and only want to buy the left shoe. I get that.
And i don't think that a custom guy NEEDS to expand his business....that after all would somewhat defeat the purpose. All i was saying is that a guy could hire SOME form of help. Whether it's to work a second welding station, or whtehr it's a "doctor/nurse" arrangement, where an assistant hands him tools...or something.
It was the 5 year lead time I still can't wrap my brain around. By then bikes could be obsolete and we'll all be flying around in hover cars and rocket boots.
And i don't think that a custom guy NEEDS to expand his business....that after all would somewhat defeat the purpose. All i was saying is that a guy could hire SOME form of help. Whether it's to work a second welding station, or whtehr it's a "doctor/nurse" arrangement, where an assistant hands him tools...or something.
It was the 5 year lead time I still can't wrap my brain around. By then bikes could be obsolete and we'll all be flying around in hover cars and rocket boots.
I totally understand why it's hard to wrap your brain around a 5 year wait time. People make an emotional connection with the brand. It's not about the final product anymore. The same scenario exists in the custom guitar world, supercars...you name it. There may even be a highly sought out custom toothbrush artisan. If you make something that people want, they'll wait for it.
If a custom guy CAN expand his business responsibly, why shouldn't he? File under: everyone is entitled to the pursuit of their own happiness/success.
Again, speaking personally, I'm a control freak to my own detriment. It's hard to ask for help and it's even harder to let go enough to allow someone to help and EVEN HARDER to pay someone to live up to my own expectation. I'm some level I'm OK with my crappy website and the photography because I coded it myself and tool almost all of the pictures. I can't see myself ever hiring anyone to help out for many many reasons. I have a hard time on the rare occasions that I take a frame to be bead blasted.
Brad DeLong, an economics prof at Berkeley, blogs about a relevant example from the textile industry:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/05/the-3000-shirt.html
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/05/the-3000-shirt.html
When you've been building the exact same frame for 30 years, your leadtime could be 30 years and it wouldn't make a scrap of difference.
http://www.thylacinecycles.com/frame.php?model=arete&colour=gold
I'm sorry, but what is the price of the frame, and just how much am I to believe I would save over "pear" shaped tubing?
I'm a big fan of round tubing - never found any shaped tubing (aside from taper-swaged, but that's a rare beast) that I thought brought anything functional to the table.
I don't want to get into discussions about price etc. here, but if you want to have a chat, email me or look me up on MSN/ICQ/iChat.
I wonder what the waiting time is for a custom scooter?
Maybe 13 year olds with 5 grand to spend on a scooter is the next untapped niche?
Didn't Moots or a Litespeed or some other ti niche maker make a ridiculously expensive custom children's bike a while back?
I spent $90 on a Giant tricycle for my kids.
But I think Litespeed made a Ti tricycle......
Did it have a 5 year lead time
NOTE: This comment is based on the original post. Nothing after.
Toshi, unless you're willing to learn how to draw a frame, measure and miter tubes, prep the tubes, join the tubes, check the angles, fix the problems, prep the completed frame and coat the frame, then I don't think you have any room to complain about any of this stuff.
And that's just building a basic frame.
Designing a frame that has all the right angles and actually rides well, that's a different story, and it involves choosing tubing profiles (wall thicknesses, butting lengths, tube shape) and making everything work together... which takes a lot of experience.
Talking about people "putting up with ridiculous lag times" is pathetic, it just looks like you're trying to make yourself seem superior to those who know how to build a frame.
If you're so superior, go build your own.
You don't seem to understand what it takes to make a frame by hand. You just come off like an arrogant know-nothing. I'm guessing that's not how you actually are, but it is definitely how you're coming across.
I went to UBI's framebuilding school in 2003 and spent a couple of years designing and making prototype steel hardtails. The process isn't nearly as simple as you suggest.
There used to be a framebuilder's forum on the InterWebToobz and every so often a newbie would come on there to tell the existing builders that they were lazy and arrogant, charged too much money, took too long, and weren't innovative enough.
I can't recall a single one of those "critics" ever taking the steps to learn framebuilding and coming back to share some humble pie. Maybe you could be the first.
Toshi, unless you're willing to learn how to draw a frame, measure and miter tubes, prep the tubes, join the tubes, check the angles, fix the problems, prep the completed frame and coat the frame, then I don't think you have any room to complain about any of this stuff.
And that's just building a basic frame.
Designing a frame that has all the right angles and actually rides well, that's a different story, and it involves choosing tubing profiles (wall thicknesses, butting lengths, tube shape) and making everything work together... which takes a lot of experience.
Talking about people "putting up with ridiculous lag times" is pathetic, it just looks like you're trying to make yourself seem superior to those who know how to build a frame.
If you're so superior, go build your own.
You don't seem to understand what it takes to make a frame by hand. You just come off like an arrogant know-nothing. I'm guessing that's not how you actually are, but it is definitely how you're coming across.
I went to UBI's framebuilding school in 2003 and spent a couple of years designing and making prototype steel hardtails. The process isn't nearly as simple as you suggest.
There used to be a framebuilder's forum on the InterWebToobz and every so often a newbie would come on there to tell the existing builders that they were lazy and arrogant, charged too much money, took too long, and weren't innovative enough.
I can't recall a single one of those "critics" ever taking the steps to learn framebuilding and coming back to share some humble pie. Maybe you could be the first.
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Maybe I'm wrong, but the physical aspect of building a frame seems like the easy part. I won't pretend that I know anything about the actual geometry of a frame, but having helped multiple friends bend up tons of rock buggies, roll cages, bumpers, etc for offroading/jeeps I can't see it being ANY different to weld some tubes together to make a bike?
Granted, I am NOT arguing the attention to detail or skill involved in designer and making one of these, but at the same time, don't make it out to be something that it is not.....what it is, is about 17-20 feet of tube that is cut, bent, notched, mitered and welded together to make a frame....no different than the 80 ft of tube I bent up to build a roll cage for my jeep.
Speaking of arrogant know-nothings.......
You are aware that Toshi is a DOCTOR right?
And nor is metal fabrication rocket science. With the right tool, material and training, it's not THAT bad.
UBI has a course in it.
Yeah....i couldn't get in.....
I bet those parts are made in Tali-Kanbans....
I'm sorry for offending your artistic sensibilities by suggesting that you might hew to a delivery schedule... like every other business out there.
And, no thanks, I'm not really interested in learning how to build my own frame. It probably wouldn't be a productive use of my time. I'll stick to a cachet-free Taiwanese frame, one that actually is available at short notice rather than at the artisan's whim.
I don't think you're really sorry...