here's a cool thread about waiting lists and it lives
in its entirety here.

> So what's the goal of these "one-bike-per month" builders?
> Is it pure exclusivity? Is it to exemplify the finest spirit of
> craftsmanship? Surely there's a better balance between
> Trek's "buy all you want we'll make more" heartless capitalism
> and 47mo wait-times for a bike.Are they trying to re-create the
> Confente scenario, whereby they think exclusivity and craftsmanship
> automatically create a classic? I gotta believe there's a better way,
> because eventually the pendulum is going to swing back and then
> the train has passed them by instead of vice versa.
who are these one-bike-a-month cats? i happen to know that sasha
is way more productive that that? myself - i'm generally at 5-7 a month.
the confente reference is completely wrong. i'd wager in his short stint
working his eponymous firm, he did at least 12-15 a month. heck, back
in those early years i was a 4 frame a week guy, and that number slowed
down by the mid-late 80s when i began to realize how much longer it was
taking to build once the improvements in design and manufacture were
(more) known and hence incorporated into the gig atmo. the learning
curve doesn't always breed efficiency; when you finally find out what you
didn't know and bring it to all frames there after, it adds time to the build.
if it didn't, we all might be making the same thing we did when we started.
> It just seems really odd, this massive backlog thing. If the orders
> are coming in faster than they are going out, then something seems
> out of balance. I'm sure someone who knows more about business
> than me will tell us something about market price and supply and demand...
this came up at the show. this backlog thing is not an issue.you all
here are making it an issue. if you added up all of us who had a long
backlog (say - more than 2 years), there really would not be that many
people in the scheme of things. maybe 12 to 20, give or take. if you
added up the annual output of all of us in that group, the frames may
total about 1,000 or 1,500 a year (and that's a stretch) at most. in the
industry economy, these numbers are too small to matter. we/these
numbers live outside the lines of any economic or market trend. the
builders are making frames as fast as they can, and tending to their
businesses equally as fast atmo. if the long waits get under your
(whoever the you is), the blame must rest on the those feeding the
machine, not us on the other side of the counter atmo. we can't make
them any faster, and hiring folks to do our work would be self-defeating.
atmo good for the sasha's and the jonny's and all the others that are
getting long lines from the zeitgeists that are message board aided.
none of these issues would occur without the internet atmo.
> This forum, with it's collective knowledge, constantly "Promotes"
> certain brands which in and of itself "creates" demand.
and on other forums (http://www.frameforum.net/ for example)
i began promoting others after nahbs 1.0 when i realized we are
in a great time for framebuilding, and making waves is effin cool
atmo. to wit, there is no freaking reason on earth that some builders
are busy and others aren't, especially with message boards and viral
marketing being so ubiquitous.
> i've said this to richie in the past: i wish he had an apprentice so
> his knowledge would be passed on.
spend time on the framebuilder listserve or frameforum.net and
you will see that i do more than my share of mentoring as well as
keeping it all in the public eye atmo!
> richie, i hope you didn't feel my comments were a criticism. i know
> you share info freely.
not at all - really! it's just that, especially after a long weekend at
nahbs,i realize fully the magnitude of the virtual word, and a gazilliion
folks read posts and threads and often have no idea past one sentence
or one thought atmo. i figured i'd punctuate yours with mine atmo.
> Sacha will run his business any way he wants to, but the market
> is telling him to raise prices.
you may be misconstruing the situation; there are no prices. what
is being charged today, in mar 07, for frames ordered ?? years ago
is not what the guys will pay in ??? years after queueing up this week.
you can use the 07 price as a barometer, but rest assured that there
is no way that anyone can lock ina price a year out, much less several.
sacha and i, and others, talk about this often. he's likely still asleep, so
i'll take the heat for this information atmo.
> I have a dozen knives on order with Tony and Reese Bose (3-5yrs),
> knives on order with Horn (who knows), Phil Boguszewski (4yrs),
> Kit Carson (who knows), Tom Overeynder, Bill Ruple, Ryuichi Kawamura,
> PJ Tomes. I've ordered knives from 29 makers in the past two years
> without ever paying a deposit.
curious in chester -
would you have still queued up for these if there was a required
deposit of, say - ten percent atmo?
> In response to climb's request to E-richie...
> I asked the same of him. Would you ever take on an apprentice
> to pass on your skills. He voiced that he was of the opinion that taking
> on an apprentice would not work. His feeling is that one needs to be
> involved in production bicycles first. That way, one could learn the skill
> of each individual operation by performing it hundreds of times in a short
> time frame, rather than once every couple of weeks as it would be done
> in his shop. I pointed out to him that there were no production facilities
> building lugged steel frames. His response, with a rather wry smile,
> was the builders like himself were a dying breed. He voiced only a
> few extremely gifted individuals would be able to learn the craft from
> a limited mentorship or a course at UBI. So, I guess the answer is
> to get yourself on the list for the old masters before they are gone.
> Then, as someone else stated, get yourself on the list for the next
> Sacha White. I so lucked out in finding him before the rest of you did.
> I've got my eye on who might be the next one.
stackie - great meeting you atmo. i think you may have misinterpreted
the conversation. my point was that framebuilding, per se was not
relevant (anymore) when juxtaposed with earlier eras. the mtb and
its ilk turned industry upside down, netting mega-huuuuuuuuuuge
improvements across the board in terms of material, design, and
manufacturing quality. industrial made bicycles are quite good these
days; i think i noted that i believe many are better than those that
(may) come from hand-builders. anyway, the history lesson is/was
that the need to go to a frame-builder to get high quality is far less
than it was back then. inthe wake of all this, the, er, craft, has lost
market share, and breed reference may have been part of that
thought atmo.
> And besides, if not wanting to wait so long encourages potential
> customers to look elsewhere, to patronize the newer framebuilders,
> that wouldn't be such a bad trickle-down effect, eh?
no, it wouldn't atmo.
> I do not understand this "numbers game" at all.
> I presume that guys like atmo, Sacha, etc. are building, at their
> capacity, +/- 6 or so frames a months, +/- 60/70 a year, so +/-
> 240 in 4 years. Is it so unreasonable to think that 240 other people
> have the same desire for one of these bikes? Hell, there are probably
> 240 on this board alone, so I think not; in fact I bet these wait lists will
> either go up or orders will not be taken.
agreed atmo -
> i wonder how much of long waiting lists is caused by the "tulip" effect.
> ever-longer wait times create almost a bubble of (slightly) irrational
> exhuberance. i'm not saying that the bikes aren't worth waiting for but
> the wait creates an aura of self-generating desire.interesting to note that
> someone like carl strong has a wait measured in weeks, not months,
> let alone years. skill-wise, carl sure is up there. but for whatever reason
> there's no carl-mania. this observation is not meant as an sort of judgement
> on anyone. just an interesting insight into what makes something/someone "hot".
the wait list thing isn't a thing.the thing about the wait list not
being a thing is the thing. if you added up all the builders with
wait lists that exceed two years (as an example) there might be
12-20. if you totaled their annual output, there might be 500-800
frames. these numbers don't matter. what seems to matter is that
folks like making them matter. there are many more folks that want
than can make. the issue, if there is one, is that folks want. mebbe
focus on that. you're in marketing; there is perception and there is
reality. as we once discussed wrt the new balance account, some
product lines are easy to prop simply because the goods are top
shelf. the better framebuilders who have lists are all good makers.
but they are also small producers. what else can they do except
ask folks to wait? uh - they use their tulips and say wait atmo!
> If 60 read this thread and decide to pull the trigger on bike from a
> maker, the wait goes up another year. We kinda make our own
> market for these things.
this cat gets it atmo.
> Hopefully this show and all the great things to publicize what these
> last independent or non-OTS makers are doing will only spread the
> love around.
veer -
if nothing else, please thank don walker atmo. he brought you
this show, and the previous two. he deserves major-league props,
as well as a really big reward atmo. if there is a future for the current
and next wave, it'll be due largely to nahbs.
> Jean Baudrillard, one of his generation's most outspoken cultural critics,
> died on Tuesday. Here's a quote from one of his obits: He [Baudrillard]
> was also a fierce critic of consumer culture in which people bought objects
> not out of genuine need but because of the status and meaning they
> bestowed. If the shoe fits...
i love the, er, logo on his shirt atmo...
> In certain circles it's called logocentrism.
> p.s. hey, at least it's not screwed on.
seriously, doesn't the pose and the apparel contrast with his
statement? i realize it could possibly be a press pic, but still
atmo. thoughts?
> For me, it depends on how you're interpreting the meaning/status of t
> he pose, the logo on the shirt (which I don't recognize), the brand of cigarette,
> the book-lined background, etc. And I don't ask this as a rhetorical question,
> but out of genuine interest in how you interpret these symbols. There is no
> possible photo of him that would be devoid of meaning. Were he dressed in
> Carhartt overalls and a Mogen-David stained t-shirt, smoking a Swisher
> Sweet and sitting in front of a '72 Pinto up on blocks behind his double-wide,
> this photo would be equally pregnant with potential signals of status. How
> could his statement not contrast with his photo? That's the interesting
> question.
the gist of my earlier post had to do with the juxtaposition (atmo)
of his comment about objects bought for status versus need with
the fact that he appears to have given some serious thought to his
sartorial choices atmo. i do that, but i am vain. and i do buy objects
for more reasons than simply that i have a need for them atmo. and
i suspect archibald and jmewkill do as well.
> Well, I guess you're gistified in pointing out a potential contradiction
> between his words and how he's dressed/posed in that photo. However,
> I'm not so sure that he's trying to dress to impress in that photo. Doesn't
> look that fancy or vain to me. Can you describe how he'd need to be dressed
> so that you wouldn't sense a contradiction? So that you wouldn't feel that the
> photo belies his hypocrisy (which I think was your original impulse). But
> regardless of his personal pose, the idea that many people buy objects for
> reasons of status and not need is so obviously true that it's sometimes
> forgotten. I don't know, but it struck a chord with me in the context of
> this thread. It might be uncomfortable for us to think about this possibility
> with something like a bicycle that radiates an aura of relative innocence
> and downright goodness -- but hey, who of us doesn't lust after a handmade
> object from many of the artisans, toolmakers, and bike builders in this
> neighborhood? However, at what point does a lust for a certain object --
> based on it's perceived status -- become a type of hyper-consumptive,
> ruinous desire that Baudrillard is justly criticizing (regardless of his threads).
this is unreal. on a message board about fancy bicycles, there's
not a single post-er among us that buys out of need. we each may
attach a certain cache to a favorite brand, but we buy out of want.
i guess my original point in replying to you (about the obit quote)
is that i often tire when folks (often from the intellectual elite) pass
sweeping judgements in the fashion that i feel is represented
by this:
He [Baudrillard] was also a fierce critic of consumer culture in which
people bought objects not out of genuine need but because of the status
and meaning they bestowed.
i am not that well educated, but i do think my elevator goes to
the top floor. his statement is one in which we,as a demographic,
are asked to justify our existence.why do i/should i have to that?
i am a middle class male born into a consumer driven world. i feel
capable of making my own choices re what i can do with my money,
and i don't buy much. but often i buy more than i need, and much of
it makes me feel good atmo.
> Apparently you don't question the underpinnings of a consumer-driven
> world, but are made very uncomfortable by those that do. I just thought
> it was an idea worth discussing. And no, I don't consider myself above
> the influence of the culture we live in, but I don't feel threatened by ideas
> that undermine it.You have self-described your location as "out of the box."
> Sometimes we need to be prodded to move from an overly comfortable
> location. It doesn't hurt. Look, merely pointing out that he was photgraphed
> wearing a shirt with a (to me) undercipherable logo should not by itself cause
> us to dismiss his ideas out of hand. That's a short-cut that leads nowhere.
this is a message board, not life. and i post mostly while on the phone.
for you to infer that i "don't question the underpinnings of a consumer
driven society, but are made very uncomfortable by those that do...",
makes me think we need an annie hall marshall macluhan moment here.
"you know nothing about my work," he was heard saying. i'm not
threatened by any of this. if in fact the guy was "also a fierce critic
of consumer culture in which people bought objects not out of genuine
need but because of the status and meaning they bestowed", then part
of that means,to me, that he is judging everyone that buys anything
they don't need, no matter what the reason. that is what i have a
hard time with atmo.