i was asked:
>"Are you suggesting Richard, that the "craftsman" approach to
>marketing was an attempt to distinguishing smaller builders from
>production builders in a lagging sales environment?"

actually, no - that's quite far away from what i am suggesting...
the essence of what i was saying is/was that prior to the 70s era,
an era in which one saw many young americans going to europe in
order to pursue a framebuilder's life, the vocation was always one in
which one was born into as in a family business, or one which one
entered after grade school because further education was not an
option. the line in the sand, if i may prophetic, is/was that a common
calling seemed to exist within the personalities of these yanks, none
of whom knew each other, that framebuilding was a "creative process"
that was worth pursuing. quite a few folks, myself among them, imagined
that the european culture that we'd soon be immersed in included frame-
builders that had like-minded paths. the truth is - and it took me at least
a decade to be comfortable with this - is that none of these european
builders could discern why any american with all the, er, opportunity
available to us here...why ANY of us would eschew it for a blue collar
job such as framebuilding. so, the short answer is that the "craftsman"
approach to marketing was NOT an attempt to distinguish, etcetera,
because what we ended up doing has little or nothing in common with
what our forbearers did except maybe that they are all "bicycle frames"
at the end of the day.
e-RICHIE