18 Jan 2012

I just stumbled upon this write-up by the online retailler Competitive Cyclist. I subscribe to their email newsletter and a simple word got me to click-thru -

Merlin.

At one stage, there was only Merlin. If you lusted after a Titanium bike, it had ‘Merlin’ on the downtube. With so many Ti builders now struggling for a piece of the pie, Merlin was one of those brands that honestly I hadn’t thought about for quite a few years. I don’t know the details of what’s happening with them at the moment (I’ll investigate further after this post), but this blog post from Competitive Cyclist just reinforces what I’ve been saying since NAHBS inception, about how amateur and myopic the thing is.

It’s been a yearlong struggle trying to nail down our goals for the resurrection of the brand: Is an art project OK, or should we pursue financially viability? Is it reasonable to maintain Merlin’s fanaticism for titanium, or is moving into carbon inevitable?

It was a debate with a deadline because of a daydream I couldn’t shed. I wanted to officially and pyrotechnically re-introduce the brand and unveil our design concepts in March at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS) in Sacramento.

NAHBS seemed like the perfect place for our kickoff. It’s a show that celebrates craft while simultaneously extending a big middle finger to the bike industry. There’s an appealing lack of retailer politics and the tedium of distribution and market talk. Like nearly all the brands present at NAHBS, Merlin would put the customer first, not the bike shop.

Ah-HA! But it doesn’t. It’s a tool for Don Walkers’ “You’re either with us or against us” conservative xenophobia. Welcome to the North American Lathe Owners Show.

We contacted the show about reserving booth space. But its reply was heartbreaking. Registration was limited to brands conforming to, among other things, these regulations:

“FRAME BUILDERS: PRIMARY DISPLAY BIKES ONLY (YOU BUILT THESE IN YOUR WORKSHOP).
No bicycles are permitted in any frame builder’s booth other than those built by the exhibitor, and if branded, bearing the exhibitor’s brand.
No sub-contracted bicycles are permitted. Not even those by a current-year NAHBS exhibitor.”

This last section I believe is a new edition. So, to put this into a real world scenario - Say for instance you build TIG bikes and you’re exhibiting at NAHBS, if you collaborate with say a fillet brazer on a new product, or you subcontract a sub assembly for a full suspension bike like a swingarm, neither of you can promote that fact. Retarded.

Given the vast untapped capacity for titanium bike production in the US, we never gave a moment’s thought to anything except subcontracting Merlin’s production. Doing otherwise would be staring into the economic abyss.

Here at Competitive Cyclist we keenly appreciate Merlin’s past, we’re consumed with a passion for riding….But when it comes to what we don’t know, like sourcing flawless raw material and the meticulous manufacturing, there’s a great deal of underutilized capability available in America. To develop that expertise within our four walls would be plain dumb.

Yes indeed it would. You didn’t think supporting US micro-manufacturing would be something NAHBS would want to support, did you? How naive!

One man in a shed = good.

Two men in a shed, letting someone else do all the tedious design, sales and marketing = bad.

And so the end of my NAHBS dream upended my vision of what Merlin may become. The one-time titans of Ti are breathing their last breaths. For a reason. The Independent Fabrication buzz from 2009 has seemingly vanished. What in the world is going on at Serotta? Doesn’t the resurgence of Litespeed rest purely on the back of carbon? What percentage of Seven bikes are Ti? The remains of Titus were bought by whom? And who with a taste for Ti wouldn’t just want to buy a Moots?

Well, not me. I’d rather buy an Alliance, Vertigo, (neuw skoul) Eriksen or Steve Potts (ould skoul). I do have to add that this last paragraph doesn’t really make much sense to me though. Those established brands are probably doing okay, but perhaps people are buying direct or thought their LBS and not places like Competitive Cyclist. The pressure on these small micro-manufacturers must be huge too - yesterday I walked into a bike shop (very rare occurrence as I hate them and they smell of rubber) and there was a full carbon Merida road bike, a 1100g frame with Ultegra Di2 for 3k+ change. Heck, if I knew nothing about geometry and were stupor-fied by the 543 times it said MERIDA on it, I’d think that was a pretty good deal, too.

Anyway, that reminds me. Geometry. In my size, these guys get it as right as it gets - Volagi bikes.

Top Tube - 596mm. Good.

Head Tube - 237mm. Good.

Seat Tube Angle - 72.75. Not the best, but workable.

Chainstay - 414mm. Acceptable. At least these change depending on the size.

These guys were brought to my attention when the owners - ex-Specialized employees - were taken to court by said company for contract infringement. You know you’re a potential threat when the company you worked for tries to bankrupt you - nice job guys. For the record Specialized won and were awarded ONE DOLLAR, which in layman’s terms means technically they were right, but the court finds their trying of the case as contemptible, and gives them a whole buck for their trouble. Personally I would’ve liked to have seen the Judge Judy version, especially if there was one where she swore. Specialized is officially on my shit-list, especially with douche-y comments….

“This lawsuit was a matter of principle and about protecting our culture of trust and innovation. We respect the ruling of the court in our favour. We are very satisfied with the outcome and the damages set at $1.00. We really want to put all our passion and time into growing the sport of cycling.” - Mike Sinyard

Laughable. Choi had a good comeback -

“We think justice was served. I want to tell the cycling world to breathe a sigh of relief, too, because we can still paint bikes red.”

Well….maybe not a good comeback because I hate red bikes almost as much as I hate white ones.

Posted by warwick @ 11:17 pm

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