The Secret Factory The Bike Industry Doesn't Want You to Know About
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- Interview with Adam Sklar talking about visiting the Maxway factory in Taiwan.
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Thanks for sharing Maxway Cycles, we are a 38-year-old OEM and ODM factory. We love to work with great designers such as Adam. What we are doing is translating customers' visions into tangible realities. 😀
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That guy gave a fantastic interview. Extremely knowledgeable and yet seemingly so down to earth and humble.
What a fascinating and likable guy.
I grew up in Taiwan and we are very proud of our bicycles. The economy is based tens of thousands of extremely hardworking family-owned small businesses that are all interconnected through decades and generations of networking. It is going to be very hard for most Americans to imagine industries based on mom and pop shops rather than giant corporations or monopolies.
One time in a bike shop around Seattle, I heard a customer complained to a sales person "but it's made in Taiwan." I was quite saddened.
I agree. Don't let the globalists ruin Taiwan like they did to our workforce. It's terrible.
Taiwanese products are generally very well made in my experience.
Cool insights. Let’s hope everyone is ok there after today’s earthquake!
My Author bike frame was made in Taiwan back in 1996 and I still admire its outstanding quality and craftsmanship. They know their thing.
Excellent. Have followed the ‘bike industry’,with various degrees of involvement since 1970’s. Since the huge transfer of wealth during 2020-24 the industry has,in my opinion become lost to ‘corporate interests’( profit for shareholders) prices through the roof. Love to see small business,craft,skilled,non bullshit content!
Other than the reason you gave, I watch your videos because I am sick and tired of the 'look at me riding my new bike, or touring on my bike type videos.'
He does a lot of touring on my bike videos though
A lot of channels have mixed content, I go with who's having the most fun tbh.
Randal gave one heck of an interview here! Very knowledgeable and with great inside insight
I had one job where I operated the destructive testing machines, a real blast for a 20-something to break stuff all day, then I had a job where I messed around with a 3d printer and I don't think they quite live up to the hype, yet. But they are good for one-offs. Thanks for taking the time to inform about the wonderful world of manufacturing.
Great interview that offers a lot of comparative insight into production in Taiwan vs. artisan US framebuilding. Would love to see a few more interviews in this direction! As others have noted, Sklar was especially knowledgeable, humble, and friendly. Also wish the businesses in Taiwan that they survived the earthquake and are able to recover.
Really great chat, thanks for posting!
nerdy conversation.... right down my alley! Thanks for this video
The description of the manufacturing process reminds me of a visit I made to the Philippines of a furniture manufacturing "facility." There wasn't any facility. Instead a truck would pull up to an extended family's compound of glorified huts and unload several dozen pieces of furniture, each one needing a particular operation in the manufacturing process to be performed next. Inside the huts family members expertly and quickly performed one single operation on those pieces in progress. A little while later another truck stopped by to unload another set and pick up the ones they had worked on. The truck traveled several hundred yards and unloaded at another extended family's compound of huts where they performed the next step in the manufacturing process.
Glad to see artisans can still make a living from custom builds. My Grandfather eas one of only a few steel frame builders in England in the 70s. He was sad to see a lot of British bike manufacturers disappear to the Asian market
Who was your grandfather?
@@bffaris Stan Lang. His frames were called 'southern cross'
Being in manufacturing over thirty five now with one involving metal fabrication this was right down my alley.
Great interview👍
Great interview! Lively yet very informative.
Great conversation! Learned a lot! Thanks
Fantastic interview! Thanks to you both.
This video was so good that I would have watched it even if the title said it was an interview with Adam Sklar
supa cool interview. nice to learn a bit about the factory
My mountain bike was built in Taiwan. It was probably built here. Great interview!!
Great stuff and some modest insights from Adam too :-). Visiting some wheel factories in Taiwan and meeting the folk building + hearing their stories is something I'd love to do in the future!
Excellent presentation. Thank you Russ!
Great video! Very informative. Thanks!
FANTASTIC!!! Thanks so much!
Great channel! Great interview! Great insights! All the best, Rob in Switzerland
I just rode by it yesterday touring about Taiwan. Yes the morning (and most of the day) involved a lot of shaking.
Insight into bike manufacturing is very interesting. Loved this,
Great video! Thank you
Enjoyed this insight a lot. Thanks to you both!
Great conversation and insights.
Fantastic video, thanks for this!
Excellent interview! I have a 92 Giant Allegra steel road bike and it has an amazing ride feel. The geometry is spot on, compared to my Italian Tommasini, a 92 Columbus SLX frame. The Giant Allegra made me a big believer in Taiwanese quality made bikes.
as a welder for the past 17 years, It's amazing to have Adam view on the subject
Great interview and discussion to pull back the curtain on how skilled and efficient the hand-built Taiwanese frames are. Super interesting. Good luck Adam with your new venture!
i respect the language used by adam when he talks about the workers sometimes when people talk about far east manufacturing the words can be unintentionally dehumanizing.
What a fantastic deep dive into this steel frame world. Well done. Masterfully edited I must admit. So much info in such short video👏🏻👏🏻
we must protect taiwan for the bike industry and maybe for chips too.. but mostly for bikes.
They will voluntarily become part of China, we have nothing to protect them from.
You wrote that joke using a device that surely relied on Taiwan chips though :p
Protect from what?
@@Jack42Frost gina
Great insights thanks
I have an aluminum Specialised roadbike, made in Taiwan. It's incredibly smooth, virtually silent. Beautiful, effortless ride.
silent?? so like the rear freehub is quiet? What kind of wheels on it?
I'm glad a rigid bike is silent. Probably has literally nothing to do with the frame, since rigid frames aren't the source of the sound.....
@@jamesmedina2062 I don't know about the above person's bike, but I ride a Shimano Alfine 8 speed hub and it's totally silent. I recently bought a hardtail and I can't stand how loud the freewheel is. I've decided to save a litle money and buy a new rear wheel with an Onyx hub for that bike.
Color me surprised! I feel the same way about these (mostly Taiwanese) frame manufacturers and didn't expect Russ to have similar views on this. Also, is it me or Russ appears to be feeling better? Hopefully things are less stressful these days.
Well, the blurry filter helps…
frame building is no joke. I've been loving my ferrum hardtail, and the care and detail on the build is far in excess of anything I could ever do. they even TIG brazed the water bottle mounts!
great interview...can't take my eyes off the nimble mtb fork in adams background🤤
Great video! As a hobby framebuilder this was really interesting. I’ll never build frames to sell, but it was cool to hear about all the behind the scenes stuff on the production side.
So every frame is just for yourself? Why not to sell any?
@@jamesmedina2062 I’m slow; I typically build one frame a year. I have really basic tooling and limited time, so it’s tough to make more than that. I’d have to sell multiple frames a year just to cover insurance, and my day job doesn’t pay enough to buy nicer tools, machines, and equipment that would speed up the process.
Oh! I have one from them. A touring frame that I initially used for gravel, and now it's my commuter bike. The frame code is Y17T01. Great frameset.
Thanks!
some links to Adam's stuff in the description would be nice.
The big thing I heard was how cost of living is easier overseas, which makes their factory jobs attractive to skilled laborers. Even if you were a non exploitative owner in the states, you can’t make up for the FIRE industry’s effects on housing and food prices.
Is that the place that builds the Rivendell frames?
I want a titanium fixed gear that clears 55c tires! Sounds awesome!
Thanks for sharing!
Taichung is sick. Really amazing road riding over there, good food, and good people. Robot welded bikes are generally ultra high volume things like bike share bikes. The setup cost for robot welding is huge.
Ovalized butt- dang, that is nice! Really good MTB idea there.
Thanks - was about time somebody lifted the lid ...
Thanks for the lovely peak into the Taiwanese facilities... Cant imagine working on frames for 30 years and that too at a humongous weekly output. These guys would be the modern master frame builders!
Maxway are the best! Greetings from Taichung
I didn't know there was manufacturing done in Taiwan anymore. I have owned some telescopes lenses/telescopes made in Taiwan and they were very good quality, just like made in Japan optics (telescopes and binoculars).
Good interview. IMO tube quality matters much less once you get up up +40mm tyres. It used to be really important for road bikes with skinny tyres but nowadays it hardly matters except for weight.
Now I want a Sklar mini-velo!
Same!
Let us know when the group buy for a frame with thru axles and 406x2.4" tire clearance starts
Some fifteen years ago when I first went to/lived in Taiwan there were already a lot of minivelos and some pretty nice brazed steel frames (and the matching euro style bags and leather saddles and the whole nine yards) around. I attributed a lot of that to borrowing more from the Japanese (and their cool AF bike culture) than the West. Back then the 環島 (around the island bike trip) was already a popular cultural tradition (and I encourage everyone to watch the 2006 movie "Island Edtude" it is one of the best bicycle movies). Things have shifted a lot since then, and there are a lot more drop bar race style road bikes around than there used to be, but it is still one of the best places on earth to cycle.
Why nice? Can you describe it there?
I found DAC makers MHDT from Taiwan and I was blown away how good their electronics are but they kind of closed shop. The Taiwanese are known to make things with pride and I fully support them and their freedoms.
Adam's rad! Did you see the factory where the Dream Bars are made?
My bike frame was probably made there, it's an absolute banger and it didnt cost that much.
Love his shop, I would make human powered airplane frames if I had a set up like that.
Wow. Super fascinating. I can relate to lots of what was discussed. I made a musical instrument here in the US for 30 years. Yeah, it's almost entirely hard work. There's no magic machine.
Just down the road from me 😊
Love the interview and it brought back so many memories of the first time I went to Taiwan on a sourcing trip in 1998 for a company I was working for that made mountain bike suspension and components. We were completely blown away by all the mom and pop shops dedicated to making bicycle components covering all the manufacturing processes like forging, casting, injection molding, machining, etc.. and all within a couple hundred miles of each other. Interesting comments about product testing also. All of the ASTM standards were about six years behind and nearly impossible to update. We could never get our carbon fiber products to pass, because all the standards expected components to bend before they break even though our handlebars and seat posts were three times as strong as their aluminum counterparts.
I miss my Miyata 414.
Shout out to Reynolds and Columbus !! Why is it so difficult to get a custom aluminium frame or even just the tubing ?
Taichung makes knives for American brand Spyderco…and those knives are known to rival and eclipse the USA manufactured blades…
It’s nice to hear u mention that city
I have a 2005 Fuji Team SL with a Taiwanese frame….but my first love was a 1989 USA Cannondale….still have it, and another 89’ is being assembled with Campagnolo wheels/group tomorrow….they got it right
I want one of those sklar bikes sooo bad but the cost is just a bit out of reach.
One day I hope
Excellent video. Also happy to hear someone speak truth about 3d printing!
Mine was built by Jim Redcay in New Jersey!
Mine 2
Excellent interview and super interesting. I’ve wanted a super something since Russ’s review last year and this isn’t helping!
Taiwan does have the manufacturing expertise now
taiwan, the smarts and skills there!!!
Hi Russ...how about some euro content now you're over here?!
..eg...you could visit Bike Valley in Portugal, or visit Bespoked show in Manchester or Germany?...
Just a thought 👍
Under the terms of our visa we're only allowed to leave Spain for a few weeks a year so we have to be pretty judicious about the trips out of country.
Kinda a secret ... unless you used to get the riv reader in the mail. Price performance is a rough segment to have a biz in but where it's where I almost exclusively shop.
I’d be surprised if 1 in 10 people that walk into a bike shop know about them. Also lots of brands are cagey about mentioning the factories they work with.
Super interesting. I ride Chinese carbon bikes. Would love to see similar videos on carbon bikes. There's a grift running whereby western boutique shops sell you an overpriced complete bike with their brand logo... That you can buy for 500$ unbranded from the factory. In the last years, unbranded Chinese frames have stepped up their game a lot, in QC, customer service, manufacturing processes, more expensive materials. As a business study it's been very interesting to watch. Quite a few are branching into the branding side of things, whereby you just pay more for the same thing, but the layman feels better about it. I've helped develop a gravel frame, it took them weeks. Not months. Weeks. They will be at that sea otter event.
Perhaps the intellectual design is worth something too right?
Charging the very maximum you can for something or that the market will bear is now a very "American" thing. I don't think any one asks what "fair" would be. Thats pretty sad because it's really not fair to be this way but at least there are choices and on these things we don't have to buy it unlike some other necessities.
@@jamesmedina2062 I'm not sure what you mean. In the case of these boutique brands, they buy the rights for a given frame mould in a given jurisdiction. They do not develop the mould /design themselves. They're literally just a reseller pretending to be a big dog.
Can you name examples of frames you ride? Where to get them? Aliex etc is a very confusing place. Even things that make media such as the Yasujiro Svelte by Tange are not available. Thanks.
I lived in China for a year, overseeing manufacturing for a USA firm. Chinese learn fast once you show them exactly what you want. Besides low wages, there isn’t any OSHA rules, no pesky HR with DEI crapola that adds nothing to the end products, etc.of my own volition I did visit a very big shop in Taiwan in early 2015 that manufactured carbon frames for supposedly 90% of all commercial bike brands in the world. Interesting part was each brand had their own dedicated space and some placed curtains around there proprietary shenanigans to feign secrecy.Carbon frame layups area “black art”, IMHO, but it seems to work. I bought a carbon frame bike off Bikes Direct for less than most can buy a frame that is out of that very factory. Personally my favorite bike is my 1984 Miyata, cro-mo steel welded using automated processes to avoid human variables. It was made in Japan but forced to move to Taiwan in early 90’s due to Yen/$ changes in value. ✌️
@@ShaggyRodgers420 long teng is a great factory. I suggest you join the online forum chinertown, it's a whole community of nerds that discuss Chinese carbon bike stuff.
perhaps i missed something big here, but it appears to be mostly an economies of scale matter…
My frame was made in Florida.
does it have a "florida man" personality? "only ride this bike if you're up for fighting a drunk alligator in the middle of Calle Ocho" ;)
@@buriedintime Maybe, but Im messing with no overgrown geckos. She is a very specific racer, with some brand new and some very old parts, like the spring forks from the 20s. Lol.
Please sign me up for a titanium fixed gear that clears 55mm tires!
Seriously? Why?
台灣加油！
Thank you for this
Another major reason why Taiwan's bike industry is successful is protectionism.
If you live in the USA, support American bike builders and American riders! Great video! Cheers!
Adam Sklar reminds me of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. I don't mean that in an insulting way; I've always thought her character's speech cadence was very interesting.
It's always depressing to see how little is made in the US.
Hm, Russ didn't shit on Surlys in this interview, lol. (Kidding around)
Asian contract framebuilders are definitely producing high quality frames. But its not really a direct comparison because there is a big difference between building for an individual and building to suit a wide range of riders with one frame. I think it is this point which is often missed. It is definite a small market, so I can understand why framebuilders go down the small batch route, but once your competing on efficiencies with companies like Maxway, you are going to lose.
Love the channel by the way!
meh, you can fit a bike with the right parts, their designed that way. Custom frames are luxury items and completely unecessary
@@BigBADSTUFF69 judging by the way I see a lot of people fitted to their bikes I would disagree not to mention rising tubing which is made for someone much heavier than themselves because the bike has to suit a wide range of riders. The advantages are real. But you don't know the difference until you experience it.
However I would agree that these days it is a luxury for most. Having said that perhaps it's better to invest in the right bike rather than half a dozen compromises..
Here in the Philippines, some local artisans make bicycles from bamboo. Bamboo is a springy and compliant material. I was wondering if Adam Sklar is interested in building a bamboo bike.
If I'm buying a steel frame, it's going to be made in America. My buddy rides a Sklar from a few years back, it's a beautiful bike. I wish him luck, but with bike brands going out of business left and right, I fear that he may have picked a bad time to try this.
Seems to be a common theme on various subjects here: secret factory, secret mountain bike; along with conspiracy theories of “ what bike industry doesn’t want you to know, and finally many videos simply titled “DON’T buy this, don’t do this, et.al”….
Maybe ride & enjoy! 🙏✌️
It’s what people click on. Don’t hate the player hate the game.
How's he paying his bills?
3-5 bikes ain't gonna cut it..
Taiwan produces almost all high end Processors for the world.
To think they can't do bike frames speaks volumes about western arrogance.
We have to admit we're producing nothing exceptionally great anymore in the west. I say that as a German, our cars suck these days and our machining industry leaves the country en masse. 😉
They steal your idea and your hard work and your wealth and your response is a smile and "I can't really blame them"? They will only work with you until they no longer need you. Then you will be cast aside and they will make a fortune using your own ideas to put you out of business. Then we will see how you smile.
i lived in china...the culture is very greedy and opportunistic
Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive. And patent trolling is not the answer.
Your statement is very xenophobic. Taiwan has been innovative building high quality bikes for over 50 years.
@@brianhagan4728 they are only innovative because you take them ideas, ideas are not cheap, ideas push things forward.
Without new ideas you get stuck in the dark ages.
It is not xenophobic when it has been proven time and time again, it is foolish to take the ideas that but then again we have been putting into a society where people expect cheap things.
So I suppose we can only blame ourselves
@@thisisadebrown ofc we need new ideas. My point is that it's pretty easy to come up with good ideas. Implementing them, at scale production, is way harder. Anyone smart can come up with ideas, but turning them into a successful product is a very different league.
Instead of going to Taiwan and helping them get better at building bikes, why don't you figure out how to help them be manufactured in the USA? Why don't you look at why they are efficient in Taiwan and figure out a way to do it here? We are losing our skills, losing our infrastructure, and we are sacrificing ourselves. I finally put my foot down when I picked out my Gravel Bike. Having it built by Linskey in USA. At least with Taiwan we are being sold out to a country that is our friend. With China we are literally building the country that's number one goal is to destroy the USA.
American manufacturing was crushed by decades of state policy and unfettered corporate greed, one UA-camr isn’t going to move the needle
@@chadwells7562 and taking a defeatist attitude of one person not being able to move the needle will certainly make sure the needle does not get moved.
@@f1hotrod527 If you want to film a treatise on the past 50 years of corruption, greed, and treason degrading our industrial base and destroying the middle class no one is stopping you. There are also probably hundreds of videos talking about the same thing on this very platform.
Oh I don't know, maybe look at the salaries that one would have to pay in the U.S. for equivalently skilled labor and you might trip over the reason why
Fair point.
Next, ask yourself, how comes that in the US, one would have to pay much higher salaries ?
Take public transportation, cheap-efficient- affordable, Taiwanese industrialists can pay their workforce less because it can live car-free.
Same goes for Education, Healthcare... etc.
Can’t have a competitive workforce with an uncompetitive lifestyle.
I've never been in a position where it was responsible to buy an artisan frame so I've had like 7 or 8 surlys and Ritcheys, all steel made in Taiwan baby!