fiamme red
11-17-2009, 11:07 AM
Edit: The article doesn't say that the stainless steel tubing is made here, just designed here.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-steel-bikes3-2009nov03,0,2373141.story
The e-mail from an executive at Ford Motor Co. was blunt and direct.
"I do not have any interest in pursuing anything," the official wrote one of the company's parts developers in Escondido earlier this year, as the auto industry was sliding into a historic meltdown.
That was how tiny KVA Stainless Inc., a 5-year-old start-up working to develop lightweight, gas-saving stainless-steel components for Ford, got dumped and how it found a new direction on the shop floor...
Luckily for McCrink and his family business, the bicycle industry is discovering that new formulations of stainless steel can be light enough and more durable for frame construction.
KVA has a patented method of turning rolls of stainless steel into tubing used by the builders of custom bicycles.
"Even when we were working with the auto industry, I always thought that bicycles would be a smaller but worthwhile avenue to pursue," McCrink said.
The change in strategy already is paying off for the five-employee business.
Earlier this year, KVA began shipping high-grade stainless-steel tubing to Reynolds Technology Ltd., the British firm that has supplied bicycle frame materials for more than a century.
In the coming months, KVA will begin selling its own MS2 branded stainless-steel tubes to a small but influential group of craftspeople who make bicycle frames by hand that sell for as much as $5,000.
David Bohm, a Tucson bicycle builder known for intricate work such as inlaying mother-of-pearl into his frames, is already working with prototype KVA tubing.
"I am fairly confident this will be good, but nothing beats time to see how it works," Bohm said.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-steel-bikes3-2009nov03,0,2373141.story
The e-mail from an executive at Ford Motor Co. was blunt and direct.
"I do not have any interest in pursuing anything," the official wrote one of the company's parts developers in Escondido earlier this year, as the auto industry was sliding into a historic meltdown.
That was how tiny KVA Stainless Inc., a 5-year-old start-up working to develop lightweight, gas-saving stainless-steel components for Ford, got dumped and how it found a new direction on the shop floor...
Luckily for McCrink and his family business, the bicycle industry is discovering that new formulations of stainless steel can be light enough and more durable for frame construction.
KVA has a patented method of turning rolls of stainless steel into tubing used by the builders of custom bicycles.
"Even when we were working with the auto industry, I always thought that bicycles would be a smaller but worthwhile avenue to pursue," McCrink said.
The change in strategy already is paying off for the five-employee business.
Earlier this year, KVA began shipping high-grade stainless-steel tubing to Reynolds Technology Ltd., the British firm that has supplied bicycle frame materials for more than a century.
In the coming months, KVA will begin selling its own MS2 branded stainless-steel tubes to a small but influential group of craftspeople who make bicycle frames by hand that sell for as much as $5,000.
David Bohm, a Tucson bicycle builder known for intricate work such as inlaying mother-of-pearl into his frames, is already working with prototype KVA tubing.
"I am fairly confident this will be good, but nothing beats time to see how it works," Bohm said.