After Paul Sadoff went to the far east for his single steel model, which was distributed in the UK by N.T.I (Nicol Trading) and only available in either green or blue. that is.... about where it ended.
After this, Merlin cycles bought the rights to use the name, and on their OWN went to the far east and imported alloy and steel frames by the container load, and assembled them here in the UK to whatever spec you could afford, doing mental mail order deals using surplus O/E shimano etc etc, this was supposed to be there flagship range, topping that of the home branded Merlin frames, which in all honesty come the end, there was very little difference between the two.
At this Paul remained hand building frames in the U.S, with absolutely NO involvement at all with the UK mail order firm, selling the generic far east frames of the same name.
The and only involvement Paul had was when he took the original steel wishbone design to the far east for manufacture, leading to the UK supply of the NTI supplied stock.
To be fair to those of us who were doing a roaring trade with Bontrager frames, when Bontragers were selling hand over fist and we couldn’t get them due to demand outstripping supply, we all turned to the Paul Sadoff designed (NTI supplied) ROCK LOBSTER.
They sold and sold well, getting great reviews too. Hardly surprising really given Paul did his time with Keith at the beginning, and they were...to my mind, of a similar mindset.
To my mind, all Merlin did was cash in, and buy the "rights" to a good name. They needed a brand name at the time, and they exploited it well. It always got good reviews in the mags, but then, the way it was being done, and the massive low cost on the generic frame, coupled together with higher spec than the competition on test, it wasn’t really surprising the masses bought into it. The sum of the parts and all that....... :facepalm:
To be fair, hundreds of bike shops up and down the country were buying "Generic" far east frames, and building bikes using O/E surplus from suppliers cheap, ( from the likes of Saracen/Southwestspares etc etc).
Everybody was at it, another example was the "Handsum Dog" range, im sure some will remember.
The only difference was MerlinMailOrder had already used a Name "Merlin", but what they wanted a brand giving a level of Kudos, (given how well real bike shops were selling Bontragers and Rock Lobsters to real cyclists,).
Buying the use of the name RockLobster for this purpose, must have been like finding a Golden goose to them. They certainly had the buying power, and advertising budget to do with it, what thers with brands like "Handsum Dog" could not.
With all this said and done, I suspect for the small amount Paul (Sadoff) gained from the deal, I can’t imagine he will want reminding of it. (IMHO).