Quote:
Originally Posted by David Kirk
The place was set up to make 10 - 30 bikes a day of widely ranging sizes and models. All the tooling was optimized to make one offs give or take. This way they could respond to orders quickly and keep stock to a minimum. It worked very well for that purpose but the idea of making 100 unit runs of bikes in five sizes would not be the shop's forte.
One could of course change this but that means a huge investment to get things set up to deal with the numbers.
Dave
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Really good to know, Dave. More than a few of us here had hoped for a reasonably priced steel frame again from Serotta. With the one-off method of production, that wasn't going to happen in the last decade(?) or so.
At Merlin in the early days after ramping up production, we were doing runs of 25(49cm) to 120+(55cm) frames. A custom builder worked on one-offs for sponsored riders and custom Spectrums. Stock Spectrum frames went through the size runs at the same time, with different seat tube collars/top tubes/and TK specified welding.
Frames were flying out the door in the early 90's, so we didn't sit on a ton of inventory. Wholesale was $1,350; materials and labor came to $835, iirc. Merlin had great marketing, but too much revenue devoted there. Full page ads in Bicycle Guide and Bicycling for years. And top heavy in office/management. Never in the black while I was there, leaving in 1991. Maybe they broke even in '92/'93, when sales were around 2,400 units, vs. 2,000 in '91, don't know. Carbon started to take a foothold, companies like Serotta started building in numbers with Ti., and Litespeed's quality improved
a lot. Sales dropped steadily after '94.
Point being, I have no idea what the perfect recipe is for medium sized bike manufacturers. Create a workflow and staff for numbers; when things get slow, you are bleeding. Construct a more flexible chain of production like Serotta; lose the ability to make a large run, and forfeit a price point...
Better to stay small and flexible, and always be attentive to customers. Dave and Kelly get this. Great to see the lineage going forth. Serotta may be gone, but you two continue the spirit and magic that was there at the barn.