Sunday, August 22, 2010

Starting a Frame Biz?

Alright, here's any easy way to go. Get a credit card, a wicked slick logo and website. Start generating some hype about your love for the craft.

Go here: your shop and place an order. Get your sic logo printed. Apply said 'sic logos' to your frames. Sell the frames for a healthy margin.

BAM, you are now in the bike industry!

That route would have been so much easier, or maybe the headaches would just be different. I don't know. The one thing I do know is, the far east is making it easy to buy frames, and from the looks of them pretty darn good frames. I mean $250 for a hardtail MTB! You think that's too inexpensive for a frame, just start doing the mark-ups from a finished piece price of $250. If everyone tacks on %60 it gets to be a retail price of over $1000 pretty quick. Manufacturer ($250) to the bike co ($400) to the distributor ($640) to the bike retailer ($1025) to the consumer. Seems about right.

1 comment:

Frank Eeckman said...

I heard from some insiders that the average carbon frame enters the US (all taxes and duties paid) for about $250-350. It is then sold for about $2000-4000. If you wonder why everyone switched to carbon look no further. These kinds of markups are no possible with other materials.