Just to clear up a few points .
We bought the Sab factory and stock last year following me bumping into the then owner Pier Luigi Mullaroni whilst I was on summer holiday in Rimini . Pier Luigis dad still has a small shop in San Marino full of 1990s Fondriests and other retro items , many prices still in Lira !.
Sab was a second tier Italian brand , infamous in italy for some sexist adverts in Italian cycling mags with naked girls . Jamie Burrow the former US postal rider who now works for us actually rode Sab bikes when he rode for Amore vita alongside Francesco Casegrande . That team folded after Amore Vita did not get a planned for giro start .
here is jamie's summary
http://www.planet-x-bikes.co.uk/news/pl ... he-history
The archive of stock we acquired spans we reckon late 1980s to 2013 - cataloguing and dating over 2000 frames has of course been an interesting challenge and a fair bit of guesswork is involved .
I can accurately date some of the stock as we unearthed one box of unused Lemond titanium frames made by Clark Kent , this was the last box we opened and when I started in the bicycle business in 1989 the very first frames I imported were Lemond bikes , firstly titanium made by Clark Kent (then production moved to lynskey) , some lovely webbed Carbonframes and italian steel by my good friend and Italian framebuilder Roberto Billato . Lemond bikes were of course sold to trek , but I was lucky to have the pre-trek distribution for a few years , and given these 4 Clark kent produced lemonds we can date these NOS frames to 1989-1990.
(see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark-Kent_(Bicycles))
and
http://chuck.kichline.com/bikes/Argenta ... llato.html)
Billato has confirmed to me he built a lot of the early Sab frames , as well as of course for most of the leading European brands in the 80s and 90s before shutting up shop in I think late 90s . He also built I think the first specialised mountain bikes and bikes for the legendary American distributor of the 80s ten speed drive imports .
Roberto is still involved with us today and he is one of the cycle industries larger than life characters .
