23 Mar 2011

In case you were wondering as a designer, how you could nab yourself a trophy and a cool €12,500 (that’s AUD17,585 folks) for that cutting edge design you’ve been slaving away at for years that’s a real game changer, well don’t go to Taipei because you’ll be usurped by this -

Posted by warwick @ 8:35 am

Pardon my crank Fetish.

For some unknown reason, I have a thing for cranks. You wouldn’t know it if you could see the current cranks on my bikes (nothing gets the heart racing like Shimano Deore XT eh? Ooh Lah lah!) but I do.

It all started many years ago when I actually made money and I lashed out and bought a set of Syncros Revolution cranks.  They were the best part of……..sit down…….900 bucks. They were ridiculous cranks, and as I learned a few years later when I went to Interbike for the first time and spoke to one of the Syncros founders, a complete money pit because of the time and resources it took to make the things. I forgot to mention I paid 900 bucks for mine, so clearly someone was making some money from them.

They were also a money pit because a year later I put them on a Spot singlespeed and doing about 30RPM up a big hill I snapped the non-drive side arm clean off.

Of course, before the ‘actual’ crank fetishism took off, it was underwritten by the chimps at MBA magazine, and Zap Espinoza and his damn Yetis. I don’t know anyone here who didn’t think those ‘fresh outta the shed’ FRO’s with their white Bullseye cranks weren’t exactly what American ingenuity and mountain biking were all about. Of all the bikes, Yeti’s with their Bullseye hubs and cranks still resonate, 20 years later. Heck, even my current 29er is ‘Desert Turquoise’.

But anyway, I digress slightly.

As you may or may-not know, Bullseye hubs have been leaking into the market via Ebay for quite a few years now, but everytime I’ve enquired about the cranks, I’d been given the old ‘yeah, soon’ line. Some have managed to make it online but it’s been ages if not years since they’ve been sighted. I guess you know where I’m going with this….

I have nearly 40 blogs and Flickrs I take a look at once a week to see what people are up to, and lo-and-behold our ubiquitous FTW has a folder called ‘Bullseye’ and a few teaser photos.

That’s all the info I have at the moment, but I’ll drop Frank an email and see what the deal is.

Never know, I may be able to finally re-indulge my latent crank fetishism!

*EDIT*

Okay, an update. Apparently Frank has been making some BMX-specific Gen 1 cranks currently and they’re all presold. The next batch is apparently some Gen 2’s and they will be more readily available.

Hey Warwick!

Yeah he is finish welding our OLD STOCK crank components for us.

Those are all pre-sold sets.

Let me know what size your after and I will see what I can do for you.

You do know these are all 1st Generation BMX style?
We will make 2nd Gen. TA style MTB/Road/Fixed sets as soon as these are completed.

Thanks and nice to hear from you.

Posted by warwick @ 2:22 am

21 Mar 2011

Because I walk in the shadowy Limboworld as a designer in a world full of as Richo likes to say, “effbuilders”, I’ve pretty much been lambased by the framebuilding industry mostly because ‘I’m not a framebuilder’. Of course the great irony of this is as I’ve said repeatedly here and elsewhere, you’re not really buying a frame when you go to a custom framebuilder. What gets the vast majority of customers over the line is emotive - they just take for granted that the thing is going to be well made.

This is a nice article from Red Kite Prayer by Padraig, titled ‘Builder Brand’. He made some very good points about his trip to NAHBS :

“Brand. For all the passion, technical wizardry and expert work I saw at NAHBS, the detail that united most of the builders there was a lack of branding.”

“Further, my sense of what [his] brand stands for is just that: my sense. Because it’s my emotional connection to what [he] does, it doesn’t even matter if my perception is different from yours if both are favorable.”

He’s referring mostly of course to Vanilla bicycles, although I would argue that White’s ’secondary’ brand Speedwagen has probably overshadowed ‘Vanilla’ at this stage, precisely because it is fresh and modern whereas Vanilla has it’s emotive and aesthetic roots in the past.

“There’s no way to deconstruct how a pink grenade conveys speed, style and lust, but it does all of those things, and more.”

This is exactly the tractor I’ve been driving for ages now - “it’s not about the bike” (Thanks Lance). All those little details which say just as much about the guy tending the helm are far more important than their ability to stick 8 tubes together. There’s only so far you can go with technical ability mostly because 99% of people wouldn’t know if something actually was well made, or whether it just looks neat enough to convey the idea of it being well made and the emotions that provokes.

Vanilla have been poo-poo’d somewhat over a velocipede for making it be more about the display and less about the bike, but the image is even more potent when you can back up the quality of the display with the quality of the merch. Why just sell the ’sizzle’ when you can sell both the sizzle and the steak? Does the only thing that matter is how something is made? Did you pick your last girlfriend using a spreadsheet and non-destructive testing?

Honestly, when I looked at the hundreds and hundreds of photos from NAHBS this year, I was left a little cold. There really wasn’t that much interesting stuff there and all it really did for me was cement in the mind of potential buyers probably only 20 builders offering anything with any real coherency - and even half of them are conservative established builders like Sachs and Della Santa. Many more offer a nice bike, but leaves it impossible for me at least to attach an emotive quotient to what they’re doing. If I removed myself from the ring, I honestly don’t know what I’d buy. You’d have to macerate 10 builders together to get the same amount of je ne sais quoi the now defunct Fat City Cycles had almost 20 years ago. Even Erik Noren of Peacock Groove was a little subdued this year.

So, perhaps it’s becoming clearer that custom framebuilders need to take maybe just one page out of the Sacha White Handbook of Awesome, and realise that once you get to a certain proficiency, it’s perhaps time to devote more than a passing few moments to how your personality, beliefs, and style and the way that’s conveyed to Joe Customer.

I should perhaps look up the chapter entitled “How being an acerbic, over-opinionated outsider will not work”?

Posted by warwick @ 9:17 am

06 Mar 2011

So years later it seems like there is finally some constructive dialogue about what NAHBS actually is, and it’s happening over at velocipede salon (16 pages to wade through), go means go, and bicycle design. I’m sure there’s others but I’ve wasted more of my life on this than is generally regarded as healthy.

It’s great that the ‘establishment’ has finally decided it’s okay to talk about this, because I do sometimes feel a bit weird as one of the strange guys stuck in limbo between Artisanland and Designland - and someone whose never been to NAHBS and is unlikely to ever exhibit - being the guy pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. I’m not sure half the time why I even bother, except for my annoying personality trait of being a dog with a bone.

Despite my colourful negativity, I am a huge fan of NAHBS and it has done a whole heap to promote Custom, Handbuilt bikes. I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with each year and I spend hours scouring the Net for every single photo I can find.  It’s a heck of a lot of fun.

However, it’s clear that people are finally over the “okay, it’s good for us so we’ll just shut up and go along with it” phase and are into the critical appraisal stage. The larger players have got a fair whack invested in the show now and are now starting to have a little spray in the corner to mark their territory - or they’re just a bit tired of the Don Walker Invitational where the rules are flaunted if it suits the desire for the organisers’ egos and status. Whatever the motivation, it’s good. Dialogue is good. It’s very grown-up - at least until the self-righteous indignation dollar kicks in.

So - because I can - what is it in my highly esteemed opinion that NAHBS should be?  We should firstly, look at the environment -

A Counterpoint to Interbike.

If you can’t exhibit at Interbike, or it’s not your demographic, then NAHBS should provide a trade show that acts as a counterpoint to that. It should be an ‘Alternative’ trade show for design, innovation, and artisanship. Not a show for the North American Mill and Lathe owners Assoc.

Promote Small Business.

Please, companies like Zipp and Shimano don’t need to be at NAHBS. The MOQ of OEM is way above what most small businesses can handle, and they get enough mainstream exposure. NAHBS should be a showcase of innovative small business - regardless of who or where ‘handmakes’ their goods.

Affordable

I’m completely against using the price of entry as a ‘deterrent’ to get ’serious buyers’ into the show, that some people have suggested. The show should be as affordable as possible so as many people can visit as possible. There should also be multiple levels of sizes of stands so even someone whose made a few courier bags in their shed can attend if they so desire.

Promote Design as well as Artisanship

It’s small minded and parochial to exculde design as something that’s not valued on a small scale. In fact, if you look at the multitude of small businesses based within the cycling community, you see many companies that are design based, small, and not overly concerned about doing everything inhouse. Currently companies like this have no trade show voice, so why can’t NAHBS be that voice?

Divide and Conquer

Sure, why not have a show where there is a section for Men who live in sheds, one for Design, and one for P&A? If the Framebuilders are feeling like the show has been invaded by people who own Macs, Pfaffs, and CNC vinyl cutters, why not let them have their own corner? It would help attendees find what they’re interested in, too.

Okay, so that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. I think the main point I want to make, is that NAHBS should primarily be a counterpoint to Interbike, and it should promote small business. That’s the core problem - it’s not really about either.

Anyway, that’s about all the energy I have left for the topic, so I’m probably going to leave it at that.

Right after I have a look at this other lot of 1200 photos I missed………

Posted by warwick @ 2:22 am