It’s a bit like being asked to talk about your previous lover who let you down, when all you’re really interested in right now is your current one who does you very nicely.
Although Scot Nicol may be a very laid-back kind of guy, his words read as though there’s a bit of pain in them. The story seems to me to be basically all about Taiwan, but also about Nicol being twenty six years older than he was when he started Ibis. Back then he could make a living selling home-made bikes and not working too hard, but the market for ‘jewel’ US-made products gradually disappeared in the face of the sheer competence (and hard work) of the Taiwanese competitors. The plain fact is building a steel frame is just welding nine tubes together and if the tubes are the same and your competitor welds them together accurately for half the price, you can’t compete. That must have hurt.
So now Ibis builds nothing, but designs and develops carbon frames, which are built guess where? And as Rody and Wold Ranger point out in Tintin’s ‘broken’ thread, there’s a lot of high-endedness about carbon that suits the concept of a jewel brand far better than steel does. Nicol has seen the light – whereas Ibis mark one was doomed to failure, the Ibis mark two concept of designed in the US, built in Taiwan is the way to go for someone like him.
And the poll of Singletrack readers voted the carbon Mojo the Bike of the Year, so he must be doing something right.
