Orient Express - Cheap Chinese Rims / Wheels / Forks / Frames / Cranks / Etc

So to save the work here is the basic thread about the Chinese frames:
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12751016&highlight=chinese

Here is the stuff from Dave at Planet X make of it what you will.

OK - sorry been a bit busy last few days . Here goes, it might end up a bit long winded but it should give you an idea of how things evolve .both in terms of products , but also how other areas come into it . Im writing this on the hoof so please take it as you find it and it might wander a bit . This is completely open book , might ruffle a few feathers but this is the facts .

"How much design input do you have with your frames. Are they designed in house and then made by your manufacturer or do you specify what you require and let your supplier design and manufacturer them for you or do you just buy something off the shelf? Or maybe something else I haven't thought of?"

• Its a real combination of the above .
  
  

For titanium / alloy / steel - all our frames are custom built to our specs and designs by various manufacturers . We have a pretty tried n tested road geometry that weve been using for a long time , going right back to the original little audrey aluminium road bike that was raced by our team back in the 90s . Nothing much has changed to that except weve added a cm to the top tube . Its a semi compact classic "cinelli" mid 80s geometry geometry .
We used lynskey for our titanium production last few years , and looks like were just switching to van nicholas , we will actively get input from the manufacturers and lynskey were especially pro active in getting the correct tubing selected for optimal riding characteristics .
Our uncle john cyclo cross frame was developped directly with our sponsored riders Nick Craig and the year after Matt Ellis - weve not changed that classic euro cross geometry that nick / matt developped years ago .
The kaffenback / pompino are based on the same geometry as little audrey , just 1cm shorter than the race bike version .

Dont forget also pre planet x our previous company was tritech , where we had 10 years or so importing and distributing some great bike brands - Lemond . Fondriest , Casati , Rocky Mountain , Powerbar , Odyseey etc . During this time we had a lot of pro riders on our books from Mark Walsham , John Tanner back in 89 , through to the Optimum Performance years of Curran , Randle , Speight , Dawson , Rob Harris , Ray Eden , then back through to the late 90s when Lovatt and Tanner were at their best . So weve always had very very close links to our riders who give us great input , feedback , and generally help out when we need a hand .

Now when you get to carbon it gets much more interesting and complicated due to the much higher set up and tooling costs .

For time trial frames our first venture many years ago was actually producing via our alloy frame builder in Taiwan an alloy aero frame - we spent a lot of time developing this frame , but at the time our main market was selling dirt jump bikes and trials bikes , we hadnt yet made the switch to time trial / triathlon which was my original sport . Anyway we developed an alloy time trial frame , then promptly "gave" the design to my good friend joe muino who was the Hed distributor - and Hed badged the frame up for a year and the first aero tt frame we developed actually was sold by Hed .

Our first venture into carbon was the planet x carbon tri bars - that were developed directly with a top british TDF rider whilst he was enjoying an enforced lay off , we spent a lot of time designing the stealth aero bars in conjunction with Sheffield university , the factory we used called xds was introduced to us by my Taiwan agent Rick Tsai as he had known their general manager Richard Gu for 30 years . Our agent in Taiwan is the distributor of Trek , Klein , Giro , Oakley - and has a very good eye on QC .

Anyway - so then we tooled up for our stealth bar , it was our first venture into carbon fibre and a nice exciting project for me , especially on a going back to your roots basis . Mold costs on this were I think circa 8000 usd .

Whilst producing the bar Richard Gu came to us saying they were developing a TT bike and would we be interested , I said yes send us the drawing to look at , after developing the allioy frame (that was sold to Hed) I pretty much said their geometry was rubbish and the dropouts wouldnt work and there were some things to modify - not too many just a few . Eventually in return for a UK exclusive for our input we helped them tweak the frame , XDS paid the mould costs , and we said hey no problem were only worried about the uk market so you can sell anywhere outside the UK .

Now at the time there were no direct sell business models bringing a carbon tt frame to the market , and we had very strong sales for a good few years , but we were still a pretty small company and 40k tooling on carbon frames would have scared us silly .

The next thing that happened was Richard Gu asked if we wanted to carry one of their off the peg road models - we said lets take a look at the geometry and check a few samples , whilst the frame (current model) had no design input from us it ticked a lot of boxes

• geometry was consistent with our tried n tested cinelli geometry (same top tube / seattube / similar headtube) which was what we were looking for
  
• It tested and rode well , and the team riders liked it (Irish national team , lovatt )
  
• it had a tube profile that we liked .
  
  

Which sort of brings us to where we are now .

We are still using Richard Gu and the stealth frame and bars , and the sl carbon road frame have just kept on selling .

We are dealing with a new factory who came very very highly reccomended- at Taipei show last year four of my industry contacts all pointed me to a new manufacturer who Id met a few times and said we needed to work with them -

• our disc wheels are / were supplied by ffwd , the FFWD owner said xpace are doing great things
  
• Roberto Billato famous italian framebuilder who 20 years ago built all our Lemond frames is working at Xpace Museeuw bikes -
  
• Museeuw bikes who were chasing us to do their UK distribution use them and gave them an amazing thumbs up as Xpace do production for Museeuw , Merckx and Fondriest amongst others .
  
• Steve Fenton of Pro Lite told us to use them as they were small enough for us to be interesting to them and their quality was great .
  
  

The consultant we work with in China is a designer called Paul Farrell , he is the ex partner / designer at Teschner , so he is our eyes n ears at our factory (especially as hes married to the factory manager). Now Paul seems to know his onions .

We had been working long n hard on developing a new TT frame for about 2 years , firstly with Sheffield University SERG and lately with an ex red bull formula one car designer who happened to live in Barnsley - finally we ended up with our new design and were looking at production , we ran a CFD programme against three frames and the frame that came out top was the new frame Paul Farrell had developed .
So similar to our first tt frame - we test the bike , this time Ian Cammish , he things its great , we agree a UK exclusive , we save ourselves 40k tooling (that we can spend other areas).

Our new road frame nanolight - again is an open model , made by xpace , designed by Paul Farrell , its been tested by Lovatt , and signed off . Its made to the same standards , material , tecnology as the highest spec bikes from Merckx and Fondriest . Should be exclusive to us in the uk as part of our long term deal (they are producing our carbon 29er)

What HAS changed for us is that we now have enough worldwide volume to start to pay for our own molds and tooling , right now we are working with a leading Belgium designer and have three completely exclusive own model bikes in carbon . These are branded on-one , its possibly questionable that we should put all our big investment into the smaller of our two brands , but with the new CE regulations meaning a few of our steel models became obselete we gave on-one the focus .

We have a carbon 456 freeride hardtail frame , a 29er carbon bike being developed with Richard Ussher , and a new superlight XC race bike - samples of all three should be on show at Dalby Forest . Thats 90k of tooling so thats probably about all we will do until later in the year .

Next up that we will develop later in the year will be a full own design carbon road frame ,which we will probably make in our tried n tested semi compact little audrey geometry , with tubing profile and frame design being done by our belgian designer , and probably a track frame , based on a traditional points geometry but thats not definite . Could also think about a sportive frame .

Anyway , its 1am now , i did not want to be accused of dipping out of answering a question so there you have it !! Hope this post doesnt get pulled ?