Clubber Lang

Ideas! Good. We always need more. Just test em first before you pour in the cash.

I remember popping into Cotic HQ a couple of years ago to look at/pick up a Soul frame I'd bought as I couldn't decide on colour/wrap. Walked through the reception area, into the despatch area and Cy got a couple of frames from the warehouse. Or as we know them… lounge, kitchen and hall way 😀

An old maxim is "you either have to be first or be the best". First in a new / niche area and people will buy and you might build up a large enough business to continue. Be the best and people will buy off you.

Good luck.

I guess that what I really am unsure about is how feasible it is to actually do while working full time and not having thousands in cash that I want to put up right from the start.

First off, you need money from somewhere. I put in my own cash to get started and have continued to top it up rather than take money out. I am getting there though. The more cash you can get your hands on the better. I think to do it 'properly' you need a sizeable investment, and a good idea of the product, promotion and distribution. Very hard to do strictly by yourself part time while working a full time job. I'm not trying to be discouraging, but don't expect much of a social (or even personal) life.

here you go , speak to these chaps , some of the builders on here may know them

xacd are absolute lunatics who I had the utmost difficulty even getting past drawing stage.

patent it

patenting is quite hard work.

ps: been doing sums in my head all day. I think in terms of capital to drop on stuff, in order to support yourself properly within a year of startup, you'd need £20-£50K to invest, plus whatever salary you'd want to draw.

Thanks brant. V useful to have some approx numbers.

20-50k, there goes my plans 😡

buy into a small or dormant brand and build up from there – a lot cheaper, and you might not repeat their mistakes.

clubber , is it your passion for bikes that make you want to start a company up OR do you ride and think "its getting bigger, i can make a kill here" ?

I have a mate here (oz) who has a really good job but is basically obsessed with riding and bikes , he has the strongest passion i have ever seen , hes no weight weenie or elite rider , he just loves the sport and everything to do with riding.

Basically he has provided a service to an out of city bike shop of servicing bikes for them , he has a website and does a bit of servicing from that too . He has just got a dealership for a brand of bike and is in the process of trying to "get it out there" , really nice frames too .

In this day and age the idea of "support your local bike shop" is dead in the water , places like wiggle and CR have cornered that so getting rich owning a bike shop is pretty rare now.

Saying that i know a small bike shop here and the guy has owned it for 45 years , he can build a sturmy archer 9 speed hub with his eyes shut , he can beat any price on bike bits hands down as he works there himself and has done for around 40 years , all he's doing now is topping up his pension … if he ever retires as he's now 67 and no sign of the end , no spotty 15 year olds servicing your bike at his shop . He makes a good living from the name he has made for himself over the years.

So my thinking is start out servicing bikes , carry stock of seals and stuff , then go from there …. a lot of manufacturers are very reluctant to give "packs" to new perspective dealers. You need to home in on a unpopular brand then sell it hard.

I love bikes and I have an engineering background (lapsed mind…). I'm pretty clued up business-wise. I'm also very driven when there's something I want to achieve. A combination that in theory should be good for what I'm talking about but I'm trying to work out if it'd work in the real world for my circumstances.

Just to put my oar in, I put in the kind of money Brant is talking about, and then put some more in over time and didn't take anything out for over 3 years. That got me to the point of doing it full time.

If you're passionate about bikes and won't lose the farm if it goes tits up after getting your first 100 frames made, then go for it.

When you're an old man and laying on your deathbed, you won't regret the things you've done, only the things you didn't do.

Good luck!

Agree with what Brant and Cy said with regard to size of investment.

buy into a small or dormant brand and build up from there – a lot cheaper

Not really many costs you are likely to save by doing that. The main drain on cash is paying for large numbers of frames before you've sold them. Then you've got R&D, insurance and marketing costs etc, none of which will be reduced by having an existing brand. 'Brand' is an indistinct concept, but a critical one. Buying someone else's which may have other baggage attached to it which you may not want.

Why not do some proper market research? you can test any ideas you may have and actually get some input into what people want. Not sure what the rules are about this on here but its not hard to use something like survey monkey which costs peanuts to run for a few months, put a link on here with some wiggle or CRC vouchers as an incentive for completion and I'm sure you'd get a lot of responses, be happy to give you some advice on setting it up…or get it done independently to give you evidence of potential market if you want to approach some possible investors

I love bikes and I have an engineering background (lapsed mind…). I'm pretty clued up business-wise. I'm also very driven when there's something I want to achieve. A combination that in theory should be good for what I'm talking about but I'm trying to work out if it'd work in the real world for my circumstances.

I appreciate your motives and ambition Clubber, but if you value your time with your family the security of owning your house, car and personal belongings then I'd steer clear, I've just signed off a 10K guarantee which is scaring the hell out of me when business is bad and I have a child on the way.

I've no doubt you have the ability, but if you want to make a living from it it's going to require massive financial outlay which will need to be guaranteed by you, are you and your wife ready for / want that pressure?

I've been running this business on my own now for 5 years and it scares the hell out of me sometimes, even with it's 40 year heritage it's a very uncertain lifestyle.

What YETIboyJAY said about getting the actual bike right (geometry really) is imperative. It may sound obvious at the outset, but I have designed and made (or had made in the case of one) three bikes, and all could have done with a couple of iterations, despite 'borrowing' geometry from solid performing existing bikes.

Go for it and good luck I say!

Just out of interest and because they have already been mentioned. How much does a an XACD frame cost? Is that where druidh got his onion from?

Andy M? Spooky, that's me too!

If you want more info on XACD have a peek at Spanner Bikes

Druidh's onion was off of the 'Bay and might be a Hi-Light I'm not sure…

"xacd are absolute lunatics who I had the utmost difficulty even getting past drawing stage." Now there's a quote 🙂

…and to answer your question about £500 – £650 depending on what you go for…

Druidh's bike is a Hi-Light.

I reckon the Apollo Creed is a better name than the Clubber Lang. 😉

Congratulations BTW Kingtut. 🙂

Don't skimp on the graphics/brand identity.

So many nice frames are ruined by dreadful sticker and badge designs.

So many nice frames are ruined by dreadful sticker and badge designs.

what the decals look like is irrelevant if the rear dropouts don't line up with the BB :rolleyes:

If someone said they would make bikes only from recycled aluminium, that would get my interest.

Clubber: unless you get scale its cottage industry territory.

However if you can put a financial £notes figure on what you need to live and ideally be happy then its worth a shot but there are very few rich people in the bike trade. But happiness doesn't have a value.

The reason Madison bought Saracen is purely because the cost of launching a new bike brand from scratch is prohibitive, especially if you want that brand to go beyond the niche enthusiast. Madison is one of the biggest players in the UK bike trade so I think that says alot.

The Pastey example is a brilliant one. They got all that press a few years back and where are they now? If I were you I'd ask them.

Get yourself a internship / apprenticeship with a framebuilder and learn everything you can.

Be careful you don't buy yourself a job which is something I see in the bike trade all the time.

Plus, has anyone mentioned currency fluctuations? If you're building overseas you are at the mercy of the strength or weakeness of the £ versus dollar / yen / euro etc and this is something forecast to run for a few more years yet. This will play havoc with your costs and price points.

UK bike imports are down this year but the cost of the bikes /frames is significantly up.

find a nice frame, copy the geometry, add a couple of features swiped from other brands (e.g. seatstay bridges) paint it a with a micro layer of cheap ccolour, make it out of gas tubing, charge 150 quid and try and find a factory in taiwan with an excellent warrenty so you just fill up a container with broken frames and get replacements for free. it helps if you use sonmeone elses money and have contacts in the mags

bobs your uncle.

you'll need a snappy name too.

– design your prototype on CAD software
– Get in touch with a frame builder and start to build up a relationship
– understand what their minimum order requirments are (possibly they want you to order 200 steel frames or 80 ti frames as a minumum or possibly not)
– Get said framebuilder to build your prototype from the CAD design (aren't they mainly in Taiwan not China BTW) and ship it to you
– ride the prototype and/or get it ridden by others and get feedback
– decide what changes you want to make
– update CAD design and send to framebuilder
– get a second prototype made and shipped over
– ride and test and submit any final adjustments
– get frames built to order in a variety of sizes and shipped over
– you've started marketing these already right or are they just gonna sit in a warehouse/your front room?
– pay import taxes, shipping costs etc.
– sell your frames to the general public who will feel comfortable shelling out on an unknown brand (you've thought of an amusing name for the frame too right?)
– make a fortune or as someone said above you can make a small amount of money provided you started with a large amount of money…

Probably millions of things i've overlooked like have you designed and ordered stickers for the frames, what finish are they going to be in, what colours are the frames gonna be painted, can clients order specific colours and frame sizes etc, have you set up a website to market them, can you accept payment by card or is it postal order only, what warranty will you give, mleh,mleh, mleh

But yes, some people do that and enjoy it. Good luck to them and i dont begrudge them anything.

The reason Madison bought Saracen is purely because the cost of launching a new bike brand from scratch is prohibitive, especially if you want that brand to go beyond the niche enthusiast. Madison is one of the biggest players in the UK bike trade so I think that says alot.

but they have spent a lot of money on marketing that brand this year, far more than they spend on genesis/ridgeback/cervelo/commencal (probably close to the combined budgets of these 4?) they didn't buy the saracen brand to save money on marketing/promotion etc but for the ready made names/identities. coming up with a brand name and a logo is the cheap bit. advertising space/trade stands and snazzy websites is what costs.

you could argue that the negative connotations could go against the brand but a few years ago not many would consider a genesis mtb but if the product is good (it is) this perception soon changes. by all accounts the saracen mtb's are very good and likely to sell well, possibly not niche enough for the STW bikesnobs though

RE: Genesis bikes, I remember thinking pfffft, a rebranded Ridgeback – and then I bought one this year lol.

That said, even when Saracen had kudos, I always thought it was a naff name then (yet was perfectly happy with Orange, fickle world eh!?)

Love Saracen and the new Kili Flyer looks lovely. My uncle had a conquest and a friend the Kili Flyer all from 88.

Used to sell tons of the old tufftrax in in 89. Came in a huge box ready to go and I mean literally ready to go, all you needed to do was fit the pedals and turn round the bars.

I'd happily buy one but I am not in the market.

Has anyone considered the ratio of exciting time (designing, liasing with manufacturers etc) to mundane time (sticking bits in boxes and taking them down to the post office that's likely to result?

Having said that, I'd say that there's a gap in the market for a reliable singlespeed cassette hub for £50 to £70.

Has anyone considered the ratio of exciting time (designing, liasing with manufacturers etc) to mundane time (sticking bits in boxes and taking them down to the post office that's likely to result?

Hehe, I remember once when I was having a drink with WIll@HunJub and he told me how he'd spent the day packing up bags of single ring chainset bolts ready to go in the post. That's life in the fast lane in the bike trade…

Mr Smith: yes Madison have spent alot but not nearly as much as if they had to start totally from scratch. My point is that they want Saracen to be bigger and more mainstream than their other bike brands hence the investment.

Genesis is being directed to the more niche steel / Ti mtb / fixie user and Ridgeback is essentially a commuter staple. Saracen is going into the lions den if you like, competing with established big guns hence buying the brand – rather than creating – and putting cash behind it.

just get some made here http://www.maxway.com.tw/
that's where everyone else gets them, then pretend you made them and stick some snazzy graphics on.

How does starting a bike company differ from starting any other company? Any new start-up needs time, money (usually lots!), knowledge and energy – if you've got all those and are prepared to accept the risks then go for it. If you're lacking in any area then its probably best to consider other options!!

Take it to say orange and develope it with them or similar
and then sell it as a percentage of sale.
If worth the risk they will put the money in.

Less risk also you get there experiance and guidence
which is worth its weight in gold and also contacts.
And more chance of getting it reviewed.

To expensive to buy into a workshop etc.

Are these out yet?

Holy **** thread resurrection!