A Crowd-Sourcing Plea for NAHBS Exhibitor Data

[landshark]

I'll cut straight to the chase here and then fill in the backdrop of who I am and why I am asking for this. Apologies for cross-posting here and "across the hall" but I'd like to maximize visibility.

I am trying to reconstruct a complete and accurate list of exhibitors for every edition of NAHBS, but especially from the inaugural edition in 2005 through 2009, in Indianapolis. I am hoping that there may be some people out there on the forums who have attended one, or all, of those editions and may have also held on to some kind of documentation that would help me to compile a master list of exhibitors. While paper versions/copies of such documentation would be great (and I could arrange to have them sent and returned), I would be perfectly happy with phone camera pics of documents, posters or whatever might be available - and this would obviously keep the materials safe and sound.

Fortunately, the NAHBS website(s) provides exhibitor lists back to 2010. Unfortunately, though, I don't think these are entirely accurate as it would appear they were not updated immediately prior to the show to reflect the very final list (e.g. this year's show in Louisville had a number of late-addition exhibitors who do not appear on the NAHBS site). In recent years, NAHBS has provided a simple paper printout for attendees with booth numbers (and presumably the most accurate summary) for all exhibitors. Pictures of these sorts of materials would be fantastic!

I anticipate people might wonder: why can't he just get this information from Don Walker/NAHBS directly? I've already gone this route this past year, and Don has been quite nice on the phone and in person. However, my outsider impression is that this has been complicated by staff changes behind the scenes over the years, changing software systems for managing the business as well as an overarching (and understandable!) focus on getting the show put together each year rather than keeping perfect archives for future academic research. In short, there is no single file containing all exhibitors from all years. Although I am continuing to try to figure out what Don/NAHBS might have, I'd like to make progress on this compilation while waiting for the official data.

So, are there any forum-ites out there who might have saved some of this NAHBS documentation? Could I bother you to dig it out and take a picture? Or, any other suggestions for where I might find this?

As to why I am looking for this information, apart from being a long-time racer, rider and fan, I'm a sociology professor working on a new research project, centered on the relatively recent resurgence (in the past 15 years) of the "handbuilt" bike market in North America (and beyond). As an economic sociologist, I’m fundamentally interested in the social organization of market life and business enterprise, and I’ve been focusing my attention first on NAHBS as a social and economic space in which a particular notion of how this “market” should be defined and bounded, and the kinds of economic opportunities this has opened for builders…as well as the limits. Most of my earlier research has focused on global value chains and global inequalities, but for this current project I’ve aimed to start “small” and then build up the analysis over time to situate the hand built “layer” of the industry within these larger dynamics.

In the longer run, this would be a book-length project that would compare more recent developments to past "waves" in the handbuilt bikes (e.g. the wave of original handbuilt mountain bike builders, the rise and fall of Schwinn) as well as investigate the conjunctural factors that facilitated the current wave of builders. I have actually started a project blog for this work (www.handbuildingvalue.com), though I have never advertised it much because I have written so little there! I'd be happy to eventually house the data on that site or make it available to others in some other format. While I cannot offer much more than good vibes for contributing to this effort, I will be happy to make these data available once I've finished my analysis, and hopefully people would at least find the articles and book I would publish from this work interesting!

Thanks for your time!

Ben

Benjamin D. Brewer, PhD
Associate Professor of Sociology
Sociology Program Coordinator
James Madison University
brewerbd@jmu.edu

[dolface]

In case you're up for digging through posts to compile a list of builders, here are a couple I found (apologies if they're not what you're looking for).

Here are some pics I took from 2007 if that's any help: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dolface/sets/72157594574583751/

Flickr search for "nahbs 2006" https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=nahbs%202006

Here's some stuff from 2009 http://bicycledesign.net/2009/03/2009-nahbs-links/

[echelon_john]

Easily done. Use the Wayback machine at www.archive.org.

You can search permutations of www.handmadebicycleshow.com from 2005 to the present (in later years they used the year as part of the url; eg. 2015.handmadebicycleshow.com)

Like this from 2005:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050310182815/http://www.handmadebicycleshow.com/exhibitors.htm

[pdmtong]

Just emailed you NAHBS #3 San Jose 2007

[OtayBW]

Ask Google. They know....:cool:

[mistermo]

..

[RudAwkning]

I'm sure there are enough forumites who have kept their NAHBS literature. I attended from 2006-2009 and 2012-2013. I'm pretty sure I still have the NAHBS Exhibitor Guides from some of those years.

[landshark]

Thanks for the quick replies.

echelon-john - I'm embarrassed to admit that I actually had looked into the web archives for NAHBS, but had just figured NAHBS changed the basic url scheme starting with 2010...and that the others were lost to time. So, I'll do some digging.

Regardless, having multiple sources for the same year is ideal. Although some years' exhibitor announcements can be found in the archives here and elsewhere (as OtayBW suggests with google), I've found that these posts in the run-up to the show often didn't include all of the final exhibitors in years when I can compare those posts to the final list.

On that front, big public thanks to pdmtong for the fast reply with 2007 scans!

Ben

[Louis]

Ben, this isn't right - work should be work.

No fair doing a research project so closely related to something you do for fun. ;)

[Dave B]

Why not shoot an email to Don Walker or even some of the early founders and see if they don't have some memento literature that might list everyone?

[soulspinner]

Ben, this isn't right - work should be work.

No fair doing a research project so closely related to something you do for fun. ;)

:)

[landshark]

Ben, this isn't right - work should be work.

No fair doing a research project so closely related to something you do for fun. ;)

Yes, I suppose this an advantage to tenure! However, making "fun" into "work" has its dangers...as many frame builders can acknowledge. Thus far it's working out for me though!

[oldpotatoe]

Ask Google. They know....:cool:

I hear a black helicopters

[Doug Fattic]

I suggest there are several influences effecting NAHBS exhibiting numbers that are not related to the custom framebuilders market. These factors are its high exhibit cost, the personality of the owner and the development and growth of competing regional shows. It is expensive to exhibit at NAHBS. Probably more than the average framebuilder can afford from his framebuilding profits alone. In the beginning many might have thought it necessary to show to maintain or create their market share and drew on funds from other sources just to be able to exhibit. Eventually they figured out that if the show was not in their region of the country the rewards did not equal the cost so they stopped going. If it had cost less to exhibit more would have continued. And 2nd, the show owner has a personality not everyone gets along with (like me) and made decisions not everyone agreed with (like awards) so those factors has discouraged some from continuing to participate. And 3rd, other newer regional shows with much more competitive rates and friendlier circumstances have drawn exhibitors away from NAHBS.

A brief history of the beginning of modern American framebuilding. Adults in the US didn’t ride bicycles for exercise or fun much before 1970. When I rode my bicycle in the in the Midwest in the 60’s, it was seen as unusual. Suddenly all at once as a Time magazine article announced “America discovers the 10 speed bicycle”. This was a big change. Besides Schwinn Paramounts and Albert Eisentraut (the father of modern American builders), there weren’t framebuilders in the US. The guys that had made them after WWI had retired or died. Americans bought their custom bicycles from framebuilders in England, Italy and France. These were the very best bicycles in the world at the time. This vacuum in the American market created by this new demand encouraged a dozen or so Americans to go abroad to learn how to build frames. There were about 12 of us in the early to mid 70’s that mostly went to England.

[landshark]

Thanks for the reply, Doug. On this:

I suggest there are several influences effecting NAHBS exhibiting numbers that are not related to the custom framebuilders market.

I completely agree. Though I'm focused on NAHBS to start, I am not making the mistake of assuming that NAHBS attendance is a direct measure of the overall "health" of the market, nor an indicator of the number of builders.

Unfortunately, though, it is very difficult to make reliable estimates of the number of builders working at any given moment in the past. Were there some kind of centralized registry of frame builders - a place where they all needed/wanted to register as they went into business - I'd be able to trace the number of builders over time. But, so far as I know, no such thing exists!

One thought I've had is to ask about overall sales of building supplies (tubing, mainly) as a proxy for building activity...but that is complicated by there being multiple distributors and different "size" builders sourcing materials in different ways. Still, there aren't that many ultimate sources for tubing and supplies, so measuring tubing sales should give a good high-level snapshot of building activity.

Another option is to look through magazines or other periodicals (I just knew those saved back issues of Bicycle Guide and Velonews from the mid-80s would come in handy!), looking for any kind of "buyers guide"/list of builders issues that might give an estimate for a given year.

If anyone out there has particular issues like this that jump to mind, by all means chime in and I will try to track them down. The Rodale Press library in PA actually has a pretty good library with periodical back issues and other industry stuff. I thought there was some library being put together in Colorado a few years back with cycling periodicals...but I've forgotten where it was hosted and who was the organizer.

I've even considered whether there are data out there from business license registration records; I believe there are commercial data compilers who put these things together into national records. Perhaps that would capture people who listed "bike builder" or some such on their business license registration.

Ben

[Doug Fattic]

I’d start with the list of framebuilders William a member of Paceline has created. It is going to be difficult to get accurate numbers because of the nature of the business. Many framebuilders wear different hats. Some are full time, some are part time, some paint,others don’t, etc. Almost every business model is different. Another problem is that many will not want to pass along information they would not want their competitors or customers or the IRS to see.

Framebuilding does not have a regulating body. In fact it would probably be impossible to implement. When to hang out a shingle is based entirely on the shingle hanger and not because they passed some organizational test. There is no agreed on way to gain sufficient knowledge and there are arguments among framebuilders themselves which road is the right road. It is in their self interest to say whatever way he learned was the best way and other ways are inferior.

I wish you well and am curious of your results but recognize the difficultly to get accurate findings.

[landshark]

Just a follow up with RudAwkning specifically, who said:

I'm sure there are enough forumites who have kept their NAHBS literature. I attended from 2006-2009 and 2012-2013. I'm pretty sure I still have the NAHBS Exhibitor Guides from some of those years.

If it's not too big a bother, do you think you might be able to dig them up for any time during the 06-09 period? I've got 07 now, but having 06, 08 or 09 would be great. Wayback machine/web archive is useful, but I'm hoping to get multiple snapshots of the same year to work out discrepancies between multiple reports.

[steelbikerider]

I have a t-shirt from the first one in 05 in Houston with all the participants listed. I can send you a scan