Isen workshop: adventures in batch production (or not...)

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Even weirder, their website is back up and running and states “Isen Workshop is a multi-award-winning London based manufacturer of high-end steel, stainless steel, and titanium bicycles. All our bikes are made to order right here in our workshop in South London.”

I assume this is Caren Hartley selling off Isen machinery?

Thats not good ! she had several other machines as well listed.
Separate to that a few frame builders freelance for brompton stayer and alpkit.

Yeah, I heard that Quirk works for Stayer, I know that in the past Donhou was working at Brompton too.

Hi @RunRabbitRun / August Bicycles, it's Caren here. I am selling a couple of the machines I own personally and that aren’t in daily use. Not that the reason I’m selling them should be of any interest to you, but I have found out I am having a baby and as you know they are very expensive.

As an ally of women and a framebuilder yourself, I’m sure you can understand the challenges faced being self employed in a physically and emotionally demanding job that uses a lot of toxic chemicals, whilst also balancing mine and the unborn babies health. Having seen how vocal you are about mental health on social media, I find it strange that you would post this in a public forum, rather than reaching out to one of your colleagues to see if everything is OK.

Also, if you want to try and throw shade at your fellow builders online, have the guts to not hide behind a ‘secret’ account.

Hey Caren,

It’s clearly not secret as you know who replied. Though it wasn’t me (first I’m reading about this). And we aren’t throwing shade. If we had been, we would have been gossiping months ago when three of your customers all individually came to us for advice/bikes because they hadn’t heard from you in months. I actually reached out to you to give you the heads up about this situation but you never saw fit to respond. So I assumed everything was a-ok now, my opinion didn’t count and everyone got their bikes or their refunds.

Yes I do know how expensive babies are. We are a full-time framebuilding operation trying to stay afloat in a sea of shitty reputations that tarnish our own. Comments such as “at least I know I’ll get a specialized” don’t really help any of us. We’ve delivered all of our orders but still feel the sting of customer doubt and hesitation. So yes, babies are super expensive and we try to do everything in our power to quietly and honestly afford our own. Congratulations on yours, I hope it’s a joyful experience for you!

As for the mental health call-out. Can we take a minute to admit that it’s the people waiting on bicycles with zero contact that are probably suffering most? I’m sorry you feel as though our addition to this thread has caused anguish. I think the thread in it’s entirety is more of a concern than our ten pence-worth which literally and genuinely comes from us being contacted by your customers. We try to stay neutral, try to encourage patience and communication but when people come back to us multiple times just to moan, I’m afraid our mental health also becomes a priority. Because do you know what these people don’t do? They don’t don’t order bikes from us. They ask our advice, use us as sounding posts then say they’re burnt on the whole custom bike thing and buy off the peg. It’s a lose-lose for us all.

If you guys are working to make good on your orders, fucking fantastic. What you started together was fun, made great business sense and was cool. And I hope this is the case and that loads more Isens get made and the company goes from strength to strength.

Other than that, let’s leave it here because a public forum slanging match wouldn’t become or be interesting to either of us I’m sure? Gavin apologises for adding fuel to the Isen fire too.

My opinion was only based on Matts customer care and should not reflect on Caren.

Nicely said.

Throwing my 2p in to ring, I know 2 people involved in the bike brand/building industry and anyone who has navigated the last 3 years of ‘world events’ has had to deal with the kind of stuff we the punters never see and have no real grasp of.
It’s not just a case of sending a drawing off to Taiwan or ordering some tubes from Italy, any self employed person will have some idea but thats just a glimpse at what it’s like to try and make a living and deliver a product on time and to customers expectations.

Never met anyone at Isen/Matt/Caren and make no excuses for any customer interactions they have had but running a cycling business in the UK is way harder than you think.

running a cycling business in the UK is way harder than you think.

Oh insanely so, quite a lots of builders come and go, the return they get are a lots less than getting a drawing send to Taiwan.

you kind of illustrate my point there ED, those who deal with Taiwanese agents/factories/QC/lead times/shipping/currency fluctuations/Freight rate index etc are rolling their eyes.

I was commenting on both ends of the spectrum, shed built artisan up to small/medium sized far east manufacture importers.

Can confirm being ghosted for months sucks.

At the time Matt ghosted me I was suffering from severe burnout and unable to work for over a year. The order I had paid for all of a sudden was a chunk of money I really really couldn't afford. But also the mental toll of another person that didn't give a fuck plus a process that I had no agency to just resolve and/or pull out of just messed me up really hard and made the pit I had to dig myself out of mentally quite a bit deeper.

And yes, the Talbot probably was the very last time I ordered something that isn't just in stock.

On the other side of the coin, do we have a list of who the 'good ones' are? Thinking of getting a custom touring frame made up, but not sure who to start with.

Ted James? August?

Why not consider an Onguza? Not entirely custom but different.

Stayer

Rourke

Thinking of getting a custom touring frame made up, but not sure who to start with.

I'd look no further than Mercian, based on family experience of multiple frame builders.

Winston is good.

Truth is there’s lots of good frame builders out there. Go visit a few.

For custom finishing, I've worked on painting hundreds of bikes by bespoke frame builders and been involved in their projects to some extent...

For what it's worth, I've no bad word to say about Isen/Talbot/Caren/Matt and my experiences with them and their customers have only ever been positive. I did an ISEN last year for a repeat customer and they were stoked with the bike.

Speaking very generally, they all use the same steel, and they all do kinda the same thing of sticking nine pipes together and calling it a bike. They're all adaptable in terms of building to your spec, as you would imagine. The things that make them different really is their style, both as builders and as businesses, and the flourishes that make their bikes unique to them.

My advice would be to contact a few with the same query, find out what their lead times and estimated costs are and go with the one you like the most!

If getting a bike sooner was the plan, Stayer would be the option I'd likely take if I were choosing today but that's based on seeing that recently, they posted about having a small run of frames in stock and ready to go.

From a customer experience perspective, every person I've painted an August for has sung their praises, and I personally only have pleasant things to say about Gavin and Amy.

I'd say the same of Tom at Hessonlabs but sadly he's not building at the moment. Very likeable human.

Quirk and Saffron and Spoon are top to work with.

Donhou customers speak highly of their experiences with Tom.

I very much have enjoyed working with Stolen, based in Paris, and Aloueta, who are also in France. I'm not sure how this would translate in terms of import costs and such.

I have seen a few Clandestine frames and I love those builds.

I like Toby Toad too.

That would be my personal shortlist, factoring both for the bikes and my professional interactions with the builders.

There are a handful of other lesser-known builders I could recommend too if you're interested... there's a potential for a cheaper bike based on them not having such an established name yet but I think perhaps one key selling point of those named here would be the experience they have in frame building, based on the numbers they've got under their belts already.

Stoked to make your shortlist Ian. Many thanks!

We don’t take many builds on a year so we can just really go all-in on them. But that’s not the perfect or a possible model for everyone so we always make that clear!

Thanks for that list!

Girlfriends got a quirk loves it.
Just come home on my Donhou with stayer wheels . Love it . You do need a bit of knowledge to express what your looking for and the builder will accommodate.

Or not as ^^^^ @pascalo said.