August Bicycles
Retro Guru
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Hurlow and Cooper are quoted as being able to build 10-15 frames per week, I can't find the article or I'd have linked to it. Also begs the question. Why is there a two year waiting list for some. I'd be surprised if there were a 1000 customers waiting. So two frames a week at £4000 = £208,000 turnover. Not too shabby in my opinion. Before I'm flamed I obviously love steel frames
Jesus! If people are charging £4K for a frame, then you could get two from me for that price! I’m clearly not adding enough hipster tax! HahahaHurlow and Cooper are quoted as being able to build 10-15 frames per week, I can't find the article or I'd have linked to it. Also beg the question. Why is there a two year waiting list for some. I'd be surprised if there were a 1000 customers waiting. So two frames a week at £4000 = £208,000 turnover. Not too shabby in my opinion. Before I'm flamed I obviously love steel frames
I think frames these days take longer to build than back then, internal cable routing, disc mounts, shaped and curved tubing, larger tyre sizes etc all take longer to deal with.
Straight seatstays with a cast top eye onto a tabbed dropout is way easier to assemble than a tapered a bend seat stay which is going onto a flanged dropout and fastback style at the seat tube. It’s all extra time, tooling, consumables that have to be paid for.
Clearly as a steel framebullder I’m biased, but what’s the cost of materials and time to lay up a carbon frame into a mould and bake it compared to an average 7-10 days to build a steel frame? Some of these carbon frames are £6k+ and they are being churned out pretty quickly and none of them are bespoke to the customer. When you think of that in comparison to a one-off steel frame tailored to your exact specifications, the carbon bike is the overpriced one.