My thought has always been that Globalization is nice providing the people in the country buying the
products are not being royally screwed via lost jobs...not sure I wrote that right. It is not
Nationalism. The one argument I keep seeing for using Taiwan for frames is this economy of scale
thing AND that in North America we lack the advanced technologies to produce high quality product at
a low cost. Harley Davidson has invested the farm in Laser guided welding, tube cutters and pipe
benders...all located in the same State as RANS. One major downside to any company investing big
bucks in Laser guided anything and or robotics is under utilization of said technology. Perhaps RANS
could do a deal with HD to have the framesets made locally? HD went to Porsche in Germany to use the
advanced technologies and then add some of it to their US production facilities...some sections of
the new Harleys are being fabricated at a German Porsche plant...cool eh. IF all the bent makers in
North America could get together and do an estimate of how many frames they'd need for a production
run for one year, had the jigs available, had everything on CAD....then you could have "one" company
set up in the USA to do everyone's frames and Taiwan would be a distant memory. The problem being
getting everyone together, choosing the common technology they are all willing to accept and doing a
set price (regardless of) how many frames are being done re: same price for a company needing 100
frames or a company needing 1000 frames...it levels the playing field this way and will stop small
companies looking at Taiwan again because they have to pay more in the USA for their frames than say
a larger bent maker pays. Would think you'd have better QA if ALL the bent frames came from one
facility in the USA. Some saving to the environment re: less sea shipping (very minor and the ships
don't carry just RANS frames alone...okay a weak argument on the environment side). Maybe even
having such a facility in the USA will add to the pollution problem in America. Lets move all the
heavy polluting industries to China and let them choke on the fumes and contaminate their ground
water logic....then Americans end up being consumers only...but without a manufacturing base the
wages dry up and you can not afford most of the products you need to buy etc., etc.. One production
facility serving every bent and maybe a few DF makers located in the USA using state of the art
technologies, the government and banks would line up to fund such a facility...because you'd have
full utililization of the equipment...no periods of the equipment sitting idle and unproductive.
Dragging this out further...I observed a few years ago that (every) bent maker complains that they
cannot afford to advertise their products because their market is too small. Advertising to the
masses IS a costly deal and the financial rewards (sales) would hardly justify the expense. RCN and
B.R.O.L. are the only active players in letting the world know what bents are available in the
marketplace...and word of mouth. Small and very limited attempts at glossy brochures at bike shows
and of course websites few in the UN-Bent world every visit.
How about ONE marketing firm doing ALL the bent makers, one ad campaign for the heaving bent and
un-bent masses, get some national print medium coverage going. Have (every) bent maker contribute $
to the ONE selected Marketing firm.
Bent designers/makers tend to be really good at their craft but are "lost in space" when it comes to
letting the world know they exist and what products they make. There really needs to be some
National organization to actively promote the products made by bent companies...the status quo just
is not working very well. I am always floored when I see someone post a message that they saw a bent
on TV or an Avatar in a movie or the Discovery channel interviews [censored] Ryan etc. There needs to be a
more "in your face" regular exposure of bents to get any sales momentum going.
I used to joke that what we need is for someone at CNN to get a video clip of Osama Bin Laden
and Saddam Hussein riding a GRR and RANS V2 down the road just as the 101st Airbourne are
driving the opposite direction on the same road. That it would take something that dramatic to
get Bents well known.
I personally CANNOT live with riding a bent for another 25 years and not see another bent on the
road. The 1st time I put my rump on a bent in 1978 I realized I had discovered something totally
awesome and I wanted to share and "turn on" everyone else. Unfortunately my having a reputation as
someone who does not have all his cylinders firing at the same time probably convinced the heaving
masses to avoid trying what I rode...lest they too are seen as an un-orthodox Nut Bar. When I see
another bent on the road I have an urge to chase after it...and often do and I have had a few people
on bents chase after me. We are soooo rare still we seek each other out. The "Secret Bent Handshake"
among bent riders is we each firmly shake the others hand BUT we (never) make eye contact because we
are too preoccupied looking at the bent the other guy is riding. There is also Bent-Envy, which
involves the "Secret Bent Handshake" including Drool dripping from the corner of our mouth due to
massive saliva buildup as we Lust after the bent the other chap is riding.
I'd like to see a lot more people getting bent and our numbers are increasing, but ever so slowly
and I wonder about negative population growth re: with so many seniors bent and they will stop
riding in a decade or two and then die, we need to get younger people involved in greater numbers to
offset our aging riders.
My wife just asked if I thought anyone would read all this. Oh Yeah honey dearest....the weather is
sooo awful what else would anyone be doing today.
PS...J.R. are you riding bent in the Becel Challenge today?
----------------------------------------------------------
"john riley" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:[email hidden] (Lawrence Turner) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:I disagree. Rans decision - economical or not - was to outsource mfg oversees. They risked
quality for the sake of price. [...]
If they did it because of price, it would be "economical" not "not". And as I said elsewhere, I
don't know that that is the primary reason. It is difficult to have the employees and facilities
and to keep them fully utilized with a handful of low volume products. I think both RANS and Peek
did it more for logistical reasons than price.
I haven't done component by component matching, but it looks to me like Taiwan bikes and US frame
bikes are often in the same price range. _Maybe_ the companies with the Taiwan frames have better
margins, but I don't think either of us know for sure. These bikes are low volume either way.
Outsourcing spreads the risk to other companies who may be in a better position to utilize
capacity. That said, I recognize that outsourcing may make quality control more challenging, but I
don't think it makes it impossible.
If you want to buy a bike with a US frame (note that the components, the actual moving, friction
producing parts are also from various places) that's fine; they are available. But that is no
guarentee of quality. Quality is not dependent on country of origin. Some US frame bikes have had
issues too.
John Riley
