after a few discussions with friends and strangers over the last few months, its become apparent that a lot of people I talk to perceive a custom frame to be WELL over a year away from any given builder, but I don’t imagine thats the case, though I may be wrong, i’m interested to hear from you, so here I am asking;
if someone called you right now, with fit data (or whatever you require), and their mind made up about options, paint etc, how long would you expect before you could deliver them a frame (or frames, bike, partial build, etc whichever you prefer) ?
Each shop is different: Some have one person, some have twelve, some make one bike at a time, some make multiple at one time, some weld only on weekends, some weld 7 days a weeks, some have a paint shop next door, some have to ship to get painted, some have ten custom jobs in queue, some don’t…
Oh absolutely! I totally acknowledge that even just asking for responses from framebuilders as a single category is almost crazy in itself given the broad spectrum of people and scales of operation that encompasses.
But….
Im still really interested to hear; because I think (dangerous, I know), that if everyone was booked out for two years (which seems to be what the people I’m around apparently think is the case), the playing field would look a little different…
Got it! Now, I’m interested in who you’ve contacted and said their wait times are one year out. Or is the one year a time is anecdotal or an actual lead-time? I know that some framebuilders are waiting for our parts to be manufactured.
It’s a question each builder will have to answer for their own business. For me it’s at best about 2 months if its a straight forward road build. Mostly it takes me about 3 months minimum and most end up taking up to 6 months. BUT I work a full time job during the week so my shop time is limited to about 20 hours a week at best and most weeks I get about 10, unless I’m screwing myself over and working long days.
Currently I have two frames that are pretty much ready for paint, one road frame for my painter that is half done and a couple repairs. No frames waiting to be started sadly and no enquiries. That’s ok though, as I’m relocating in the next couple months so kind of need a clear order book to take the pressure off setting back up.
I do know of one builder that is close to 2 years out and he’s putting out a frame a week or there abouts. Another builder is putting out 2 to 3 frames per week, that I know of, but have no idea of their lead time. Both at the top premium end of the market.
If Nick locks the shop door, he can probably build a complete frame in <6hrs. However, the lead time is more complicated than that.
Here is the breakdown:
designs take several months of development
3D printed parts take ~1.5mo lead time
Custom CNC parts take ~1mo lead time
Tubing, supplies, etc… take 1 week
Paint takes 1-2 weeks
Add all these up, factor in shipping times, customer communication, marketing, photos, and videos, and you get several months lead time.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have factories like Maxway and ORA, who produce a 100-300 frames per batch. They do those batches for their clients in a single week of production. However it is still a 6mo lead time for them to acquire the materials, tooling, and cater to their other customers, attend trade shows, etc…
I’m doing 1.5 frames a week. I like to keep my leadtime low. Previsously, as soon as it crept close to 3 months I stopped taking orders. In years of doing this I’d come to realise that a long lead time usually means a lot of customers on a list. Each of these customers wants to communicate and talk about their bike. Which is totally fine and expected and it’s why they’re paying more than they would for something straight off the shop floor but it sucks up a lot of time. Ideally I’d try to have less than 10 customers at any one time. More than that and too much of my time is spent on comms and not enough building frames. I’m trying out a fairly new system right now where I publish the available ‘slots’ I have to build frames and take orders for those slots. Because the available slots go beyond the next 3 months, I’m inevitably going to have more customers but I’m totally upfront about the level of comms the customer can expect once they’ve paid the deposit. It seems to be working well so far.
I also balance a day job, I’m currently renovating my shop, and restoring an old truck so my current project is likely 4-5 months from when the customer said ‘go’ until I can hang parts on it. In that time, I’ve made a couple stems and done a couple top tube replacements.
The next in the queue will start in October and will be due to the customer in the spring. He finalized his requirements about 2 weeks ago.
I can generally get 3 frame/fork/stem sets done in a year.
