Finally!

You may be wondering why in the world am I taking so long to finish building my Viner? My biggest hold up has been US Customs.

I have been fortunate to find a great bike shop in Europe called Square Deals on Wheels, or sdeals.com. It’s a family run operation and they really know bikes inside and out. Their prices are almost impossible to beat and they have access to a lot of components that aren’t listed on their site. Just ask them about availability and you might find yourself with this.

That's right... those are rims in there!

Rims, spokes, nipples, derailleurs, chains, shifters, and a headset fills out the package. It was not a small purchase but it includes everything I need to finish the Viner. No more hunting and pecking! I even saved some money compared to the US retail market despite the higher S&H and the weakening US dollar. It probably as a lot to do with the fact that I am eliminating the US distributor, a middle man, and getting closer to the wholesale price.

Many would say that I should stick to supporting my local bike shop or at least help a US retailer. The reality is that we all live and compete in a global economy. This isn’t charity. This is business. You could counter that with the fact that the local bike shop could provide a better service. In my case, I get terrible service at most of the local shops. I ask for a tubular tire and I’m handed a clincher inner tube. When I try to redeem a coupon for discount on a set of MTB tires the shop owner tells me that he really intended the coupon for a set of generics but just didn’t write on the coupon. Terrible! The good shops around me may know their material inside and out but their product selection is slim. It’s not their fault since they must carry what people want to buy. Unfortunately, everyone wants to buy SRAM and Shimano along with clincher tires. Special ordering a handful of separate items simply doesn’t make economic sense for anyone. I’ll happily buy cables and handlebar tape from them but not Campagnolo parts.

The only “bad” part about buying from abroad is the fact that US Customs can take forever in releasing the package. It’s not their fault. They may have a glut of packages that need to be processed or they may be confused when they read the declaration form and see “nipples” and “spokes” listed on there. Eventually it does get released and you’re on your merry way. It took about 17 days for air mail delivery in my case here, 5 of which were for transit and the other 12 were used in taking up shelf space somewhere in a port of entry. I probably could have had everything delivered within a week if I bought from a US retailer.

Anyways… ramblings aside, it looks like I have plenty to keep me busy now. When you get bored reading about the Tour de France then check back to see what I’ve done with my freshly arrived goodies.

Surprising

A couple days ago, I bought a Park Tool BBT-5 cassette lockring tool. It claims to fit all Campagnolo lockrings.

Uhhh… no.

I have two Campagnolo lock rings. One came with my 13-29t cassette and the other came with my rear hub. I can’t remember which one came with what now but here they are.

The splines are different on the two lock rings.

Different.

The tool fit the right lock perfectly but it wouldn’t go into the left one at all. I measured the distance from a protruding spline down to the opposite protruding spline on both lockrings. There was a difference of 0.07mm which is about 2.7 mils – or about the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Different.

Now that doesn’t seem like a lot for a difference but it was enough for the tool not to be able to fit. I wondered if the lock ring was out of round. Nope. I wondered if the tool was out of round. Nope.

2.7 mils!

I ended up filing the splines down in lockring number two by about 0.09mm.

I can't believe I'm filing a Campy part!

Would you believe it that now the tool fits?

Fiat used to sell cars in the US before pulling out in the 80s with a notorious reputation for poor quality. Remember the old slogan of “Fix It Again Tony”? Could it have happened because of 0.07mm difference between designed-as and built-as?

Yikes!

Syntace

In my previous post I mentioned that I would email Syntace asking where their stems are made. I got a very prompt reply from a Krischan Spranz. It turns out that the stem is made in the “far east”. I would guess that translates to China. So it looks I have a German stem in name only. That is OK though. The stem is beautiful and you can’t complain about something so well polished.

Krischan told me to check the date code of the stem to see if it was affected by a recal.

Wait… a recall? What?

It turns out that early Syntace F99 stems had a tendency to break at the steerer tube clamp. Check out this link.

http://www.syntace.com/index.cfm?pid=1&pk=1207

A inspection of the date code on the stem will indicate if the stem is affected. Thankfully, my stem was made after the recall period. If you happen to have a Syntace F99 stem then please check your date code.

I have to applaud a company like Syntace who willingly brings to attention a potential safety issue. It takes a lot of integrity, especially for a smaller company like Syntace, to post a recall like this.

Parts

First, before I begin my usual rambles, I want to say thank you to all of you who have read this blog. This blog has gotten 2300+ hits since I started it. Whoever you are, your clicks are appreciated.

It’s been around a month since my last post. The build is coming but very slowly and I’m in no rush here. So what’s new?

I got a Campy Veloce 10 speed triple crank from Rocky Mountain Cyclery’s eBay store.

Yes, count them up... one, two, three chain rings.

At $49.95 with S&H included, how could anyone say no? And yes, they are made in Italy.

Would you expect anything else?

Granted, they aren’t polished to a mirror finish like we’ve seen in the Record family but seeing smooth silver components is so refreshing! Rocky Mountain Cyclery also had a set of Veloce brakes for $24.99 with S&H included.

So small... yet so important.

The country of origin isn’t stamped anywhere on the brakes and neither the brakes or the crankset came in it’s original packaging. There are no signs of these being take-offs (like grease marks, scratches, etc). Could they be made in Taiwan? I suppose anything is possible but I also got a 13t-29t 10 speed cassette and a 111mm bottom bracket from Niagara Cycles through their Amazon.Com shop. Everything came in it’s original packaging and the packaging clearly says, “Made in Italy”.

No doubt where these goodies came from!

If Campagnolo is going to make anything in Taiwan then I wouldn’t think that they would stop at brakes. Why not make more things there? I’m sure they know that if they made anything outside of Italy then their reputation of “cycling purity” will take a hit. Let’s just assume that the brakes are indeed made in Italy. And if they’re not… oh well.  It’s hard to go wrong considering the price (as long as they work!).

A stem and handlebars came next. Finding a polished silver stem is a bit tricky. IcyclesUSA has some made by Kalloy in Taiwan, and they even fit 1″ steerer tubes, but the TIG welding just turns me off.

Can you just hear the *ptlat*ptlat*ptlat* of the welder here?

It’s a small detail but one that is easily noticed. Call me picky, but I passed it up.  eBay rewards the patient and I found this NOS Syntace from Demo Bike Sales and it is beautiful!

Shiny!

The logo was burned in with a laser and it’s really light to boot. At first I was a bit turned off by the black handlebar clamps but they match the Cinelli handlebars perfectly from The New-Old-Stock NOS Bicycle Shop.

The black clamps and Cinelli logos make for a sharp contrast.

Nice.

The right Cinelli logo is a bit skewed so I’ll have to move it. I can almost massage it down with my fingers.

The stem’s packaging says nothing of where it is made. I sent a quick note to Syntace. Let’s see what they come back.

The handlebars a bit more explicit. It says Made in Italy on the wrapping.

So what was made in Italy?

Wouldn’t it be funny if the text only referred to the wrapping and not the handlebars? Like the brakes, let’s assume that we have some Italian made handlebars. If it’s not then at least I have something Italian sounding.

A rear Veloce hub came from Cycles BiKyle. I found their Campy page through a Yahoo search but the page was retired, meaning I couldn’t get to it from their main site. You never know what lurks in the dark corners of a shop. It’s always worth a call to see what a shop has. It turns out that they had one rear 36h hole in stock. Perfect! I don’t have a front hub but having a rear hub means I’m one hub closer to a full set.

With some parts in hand, it’s time to start putting things together. I figured the cassette and hub would be the easiest.

Wrong.

It was immediately obvious that the chain would be rubbing against the frame when riding on the 13t cog.

Now that is a snug fit!

Just look at the lack of space around the chain and seat stays. I took a section of chain and draped it across the 13t cog. Sure enough, it rubbed.

This is not good.

I posted this to the Bike Forums site and got some good responses. It looks like I got two things going against me here. First, I have an excessively large cog in the last position. If it were smaller then I might have some more room. Second, I had my drop out adjustment screws all the way out. Turning them in lowered the position of the hub and bought me some room. The hub now sits half way down the drop outs with the screws all the way in.

Just a little lower now...

I ordered a set of longer screws from Loose Screws so I can have some extra threads in case I need to adjust the alignment. Having the hub sit half way down the drop outs is probably as low as I would want to go.

The simplest fix here was to add some washers/shims to the hub. This would increase my O.L.D. spacing but it would also spread the frame out giving me more room. I found some closely matching washers at the local Home Depot and got busy forming them. The washers had the right inner diameter but they had enormous outside diameters. I secured the washer on a screw with two nuts, put the screw in a drill, and spun the washer against a file to get the right inner diameter.

Spin spin spin!

It sounds crazy but it worked. Thankfully, I only had to do one washer like this because the other one fits inside the hub shell without any problems. And, you can’t see it with the lock ring on.

It looks like it was almost made to be there to begin with.

The Veloce hub started out with an O.L.D. of 131mm and it now sits at nearly 134mm. It’s a tight squeeze into the frame but with a little spreading it works just fine. Now the chain does not rub!

Clearance has been achieved.

I thought about getting an 11-25 cassette and creating a hybrid cassette. Two things turned me off from this. First, these cassettes aren’t cheap. The washers cost me $0.40 for a pack of three. Second, the cogs are specially designed to facilitate shifting from one specific size to another. The 17t is meant to jump up to a 16t – not a 15t. Each cog is ramped for this.

Follow the circles on the teeth to see the ramp pattern underneath them.

Substituting in the wrong cog size could lead to poor shifting. I say “could” because it probably wouldn’t be worse than shfting from a 24t to a 28t cog in a 6 speed freewheel. There were no ramps on those cogs and we survived on them just fine.

And so here it stands… one Italian Viner build in progress.

What better backdrop than my water heater and home heaters?

The Art of the Bike

As the Cannondale waits its turn at the beauty parlor, let’s start tailoring a dress for the Viner.  Tipping the scales at 2340 gram, this steel frame is no anorexic waif and that doesn’t include the 777 other grams for the uncut fork. That comes out to nearly 6.9 pounds of steel which is an impressive quantity for weight weenies and steel enthusiasts alike. Cutting the steerer tube will shave that fork weight down a bit but only by a bit. Then again, how much does weight really matter? As I always say, there’s more I can do around my waist line than on my bike.

Todays bikes are not made and crafted as much as they are engineered and built. Back in the days when steel ruled supreme, there were no computer models of some fancy finite element analysis that pointed out areas of strain and flex. Materials in well built frames were chosen carefully based on the experience and feel of the builder. Who in the world would have understood something like, “vertically compliant and laterally stiff”? Frame building was a craft and something done by feel as much as by a ruler. It was a talent as much as a skill. Being a craft meant that frame building and bikes were art. Everything had to look as good as it felt and it had to ride as well as the quality of paint on the frame.

I think a lot of the art is lost on the today’s pack of riders. Technology, and computer modeling in particular, has superseded the hmm’ing and scratching of your head. Automated robotic structures in Asia weld, braze, glue, and rivet everything together. The people pushing the buttons on the machines may know as much about cycling as anyone can know the nature of God. They just follow the designers and engineers drafting things up in AutoCAD or some other modeling software. While this may not directly impact the quality and performance of the products we receive, it does make for a disconnect.

Have you noticed how almost every handlebar, stem, and seatpost is black? The black can hide manufacturing marks.

How many polished hubs do you see? Less and less, I can guarantee you that. That’s manual labor.

How much more are we concerned with aerodynamics than stability when we look at a set of wheels? Everything was designed with a computer. It has to be stable.

This is what I mean when I say that the art of the bike has been marginalized, at least to some degree. Subtly has given way to loud flashy graphics, aggressive designs, and quantitative (vs. qualitative) summations. I find this a bit sad when I look around and see the plethora of cheap components littering the marketplace. Personally, I hate seeing the individual TIG weld marks. My Flyte is covered with them.

Can you just hear the weld marks being put on? Plat-plat-plat-plat...

Ghastly.

And the plastic coated Deore quick release nut on the DS is nothing to write home about.

Plastic is great for Tupperware - not bikes.

Form follows function here and it doesn’t have to look pretty. It simply has to work when every other option would lead to failure. The Flyte has to make it work when others are fixing their flats. It has to climb when others have to be walked. People look at it and say, “You made it on that?” Yes, the Flyte is one ugly beast but it works.

This is not say that modern bikes are necessarily trash. I ride several of them in aluminum and one in carbon fiber. All of them use modern components and everything is of recent manufacture from places like China, Taiwan, Italy, and Japan. They all ride great and show no signs of fading into the limelight anytime soon. Yet, despite all the refinement today’s bike can offer, there is something missing – a certain feeling.

What of beauty? What of refinement? What of the craft? Where is the feeling?

That is what I hope to capture with the Viner. It may be a cheap imitation of a Colnago somewhere and it certainly won’t have the media flashing their bulbs like Schwinn’s 70th Anniversary Paramount. Like I said in my one of my previous posts, the logo bled, the chainstay protector is off, and the headbadge is just a cheap puffy stick. The bike will weigh more than it should and probably not everything will be polished to a mirror finish but that’s not the point.

The point here is that it let’s me say, “I told you so.”

Wheel Fanatyk

Check out this blog.

http://wheelfanatyk.blogspot.com/

This blog is run by one of the founders of Wheelsmith, Ric Hjertberg. The posts are thoughtfully reflective and you get a sense of deep perspective.  There’s no huff and puff going on there.

I can’t say that I ever met Ric but it would be interesting to hang around him and hear what cycling is all about from his eyes.

While we wait…

So what mischief have we been up to? First, there’s Turbo Tom. He went from one of the world’s most successful cyclists to one of the most totally wasted ones. Poor kid.

Definitely not the proudest moment of his career. (Source:http://www.cyclingnews.com/newsphotos.php?id=/photos/2008/news/jun08/jun11news2Boonen/bettiniphoto_0028259_1_full)

We were so concerned about EPO that we forgot about narcotics.

The Giro is in full swing and in good European fashion there have already been tragedies and protests. Poor Horillo. What a way to put a pause to a great cycling career. I think it’s a good time to stop here and wish him all the best in recovery. Imagine if that was you! How often do we go out riding thinking, “Hmm… I better be careful. I might end up in a coma.” We forget how soft and fragile our bodies are and just how fragile. I don’t consciously think about unless I am going downhill. There are so many risks involved and riders give up so much control at those speeds. Just ask Joseba Beloki when he crashed out on Stage 9 of the ‘03 TdF. There was absolutely nothing he could do to regain control. What if your tire flats and peels off the rim at 40+ MPH? Will you be the lucky contestant whose handlebars decide to fly off the bike like George Hincapie had happen to him in the ‘06 Paris Roubaix?

It kind of makes you shudder when you think about it, doesn’t it?

CyclArt received my Cannondale frame. I packed the frame in a box that could fit a small refrigerator and filled it with enough packing peanuts to drown a baby elephant. The box was of odd dimensions and the frame would only fit sideways.

The box is almost bigger than some homes.

It was the biggest box I could find at the local box store. FedEx took my box and delivered to CyclArt within two days. Not bad. I had some problems getting in touch with Jim and Susan at CyclArt. E-mails and phone messages asking to confirm the delivery of the frame went unanswered. “Oh great,” I thought. “The frame was mis-delivered and they must think I’m a nut case for harping on a package that they never received.”

Place an emphasis on ART in their company name and you may begin to understand them better. They seem like a small setup with a handful of employees. Nobody rushes through anything and they take their time to do everything right – even if that means others have to wait. It took a while for them to generate their first draft of a quote. They didn’t hold back and came up with a plan to recreate the original finish and even make it better. However, at $956.60, it’s a bit too much for what I am aiming for here. I asked Susan to remove the two-tone fade and the exact color matching. That brought the quote down to $781.60. It’s probably as low as we could go so I agreed to the work. Yikes! This isn’t turning out to be a cheap project and this is just the paint!

The work will be done by around the 1st week in July. So now… while we wait…

A little piece of Italy in America.

WTF? Where did this come from? You must think I’m a total bike whore and you’re probably right. What’s up with this?

I have wanted to recapture the feeling of a solid steel ride for a couple of years now. It’s like my own version of a two wheeled wet dream. I don’t care what advantages carbon and aluminum may have over steel in terms of weight and rigidity. There is something super smooth and luxurious about a well crafted steel frame. It will feel planted and stable but not cumbersome. You know that the steel will last a lifetime as long as you don’t let it sit in the rain and rust. It can be bent back if it is ever bent out of whack. Best of all, a good lugged steel frame is handmade – even if it is a standard size. You know that there was someone with an oxy-acetylene torch, smoking a cigarette, and drinking a beer or a glass of wine as they are putting together this frame. I think a lot of cyclists are missing out on the craft of the bike and simply go for the motion of the pedals.

Enter this steel Viner. Do a bit of a web search and you’ll find very few negative things about a Viner, if any at all. They are considered to be Italy’s best kept secret due to their good prices, quality build, and good design. Like most of my purchases, this came from eBay. The seller’s name was italtecno1. Read the description of the auction and you will see that this bike was built back in the 90s and sat unpainted in a warehouse for many years. The seller claims that they saw these raw frames, snapped them up, gave them a simple paint job, and now offer them to the world.

It takes a leap of faith to believe something like that. What if the frames are really made in China? What am I really getting? This is one of those instances where you are buying the seller more than the product. I guess I have no reason to not believe them. If they ever get found out then they will be in more trouble than the frames are worth. Besides, wouldn’t Viner step up to the plate and file a “cease and desist” edict against them? It’s not like italtecno1 is selling these under the table.

Greater money has been blown on smaller things so I picked up a 50cm frameset for the grand sum of $350 shipped. Heck, maybe I should have gotten a couple.

What kind of build am I going for here? Well, if the Cannondale is to be the most American bike possible then this Viner will be the most Italian build possible. Yes, that means Campagnolo, Deda, ITM, Selle Italia, and Cinelli components will be draped on this frame. Fans of Shimano and SRAM are probably cringing now! You must think I am bipolar or something like that. Maybe I am.

The frame is a beauty with a deep blue finish but you can see where corners were cut. Some of the lettering is not sharp. It bled.

A "fade to" effect of sorts. Shall we call it a feature?

The headbadge is plastic puffy sticker.

A simple sticker for a headbadge... how uncouth!

The chainstay guard, while spiffy looking with the carbon weave finish is a bit mismounted.

Just a little more forward...

And, it’s the only place that says it’s made in Italy.

Is this proof enogh of it's origins?

My biggest angst is the lack of a second water bottle cage mount even though ital-techno said that there were “2 sets” of them. For this reason, I had to give a neutral feedback on this auction. It’s not worth the effort to return the frame and demand a refund. Nor is it worth taking the frame to a framebuilder and ask for two more bosses to be brazed on. There are lots of different ways to neatly attach a second water bottle cage without resorting to hose clamps. I’ll figure something out.

Gotta look the part

I have always enjoyed metallic finishes and a metallic blue is one of my favorites. That is partly why I am so enamored with this frame. The color scheme is gorgeous! It also has a two tone fade from black to the metallic blue so the colors look really deep. I had a hard time capturing the color with the cloudy skies and gloomy weather.

If sex can equated to aluminum, this would be it.

Not everything is perfect in the finish though. Like I showed in an earlier post, the finish is pocketed with divets and chips in the paint. Here’s the worst example. It’s around the bottom bracket.

Can you hear the grinding of the chain here?

Look closely and you’ll even see scratches from the hand sanding of the aluminum after it was all welded together. This isn’t texture. It’s called a thin paint job.

Little scars like this "decorate" the frame all over.

Then there are little chips in the paint from who knows what. Maybe a flying rock. Maybe a crash. Maybe just plain ol’ poor handling. Even the “Handbuilt in the USA” decal took a bruise.

Nothing was left unmolested here. Even the American flag took a scratch.

Most people would say, “Don’t sweat it. You’ll put more scratches on this frame than you ever got to start with.” That could be true but it would probably happen over a span of another 17 years. Why should I carry someone elses? That’s their history. Not mine.

I have decided to give this frame some TLC and give it a new paint job. Oye! What am I getting myself into here?

CyclArt down in Vista, CA seems to do pretty good refinishes according to their website. Do a websearch and you won’t find many complainers. They do respond to e-mails and they answer their phone. I had a chance to talk with Susan Cunningham and I explained to her what I want. My tastes are simple and I’m not even going to try to be “vintage correct”. Coming close is good enough for me. Blasphemy? Maybe. More affordable? Definitely.

While I love the two tone paint, I can also live with out it. A single color of perfectly applied metallic blue that is thick enough to hide all the hand sanding is better in my book than a thin two tone fade. Decals are important and I want the full kit: both sides of the downtube, the head tube, and everything on the seat tube. The frame should proudly bear the message that it was handbuilt in the USA and list the patents that cover it’s design.

Cannondale was not shy to firing a warning shot to possible copycats.

Protected! If you're hungry for a lawsuit, then infringe.

If you never read a patent before then go ahead and try it. The language is kind of screwy because it’s all in legalese. Here is the text for the first one listed, 4513985. Crack it open and at least scroll through it. You can look up the rest on the US Patent Office website.

I’m not asking for any fancy pinstripes, gargoyles, or family portraits to be painted on here. Let’s focus on the frame and the ride.

The only thing that could kill this whole project is finding out that the frame is crooked and bent. I don’t have a frame jig so I can’t verify squat. I’ll ask the folks at CyclArt to check the alignment befor anyone opens a bucket of paint. Besides the waste of money on the frame, I would have spent quite a bit of money on the box, packing material, and S&H. It’s a risk.

Let’s weigh the frame before and after the refinish to see what a difference paint can have on the weight.

Not bad!

This weight here includes the seat post clamp and four water bottle cage bolts. The plastic cable guide under the bottom bracket and the steel front derailleur bracket and screws are not mounted. Still, at 1184 grams, this is a huge improvement over steel frames of the same era. In fact, this rivals some carbon and titanium frames made today. Not bad indeed for 1992.

I’m guessing the frame will come back significantly heavier due to the thicker paint. Let’s take a guess and say it’ll be 1300 grams when all things are said and done.

So it’s off to CyclArt for this frame. Let’s see what they come back with. They’re going to have a picky customer here.

Future Tour de France winner and his champion frame!

Cannondale: It’s an idea

With all the hullabaloo in my last post about stuff being made in America and overseas, I turn to my recently acquired Cannondale frameset. I mentioned it in my March Round-Up post on April 2nd. It is about 17 years old. I was a young high school kid when these tubes were being welded and put together. Back then, I rode a white steel Bianchi Eros. Steel was still reigning supreme but it’s grip on the cycling world was starting to crumble. Aluminum, carbon fiber, and titanium were slowly inching their way into the mainstream.

The Bianchi was my second road bike after I outgrew my 48cm Panasonic DX-2000. I remember what it was like shopping for the Bianchi. It was a pretty expensive bike back then. I want to say it cost around $650 and it was considered to be a damn fine bike. There were higher end models but there were fewer above than below it. Cannondale bikes were one of the few that stood above it.

Cannondale stood right alongside Klein. Both made thin walled, large tubed aluminum frames. Every configuration I saw had nice parts on it. There were no dumpy aluminum framed bikes back then. The Kleins were especially snazzy with their fluorescent two color schemes. Those frames alone cost more than my whole Bianchi back then.

Aluminum framed bikes were quite a novelity. Everything we knew about them came mostly from trial and error. We build, we test, we sell, and then we improve. This was before the day of finite element analysis being available to every desktop computer user. Component and frame failure was not unheard of. Most, if not all, of the aluminum frames were built by hand. There was a lot of variation between one individual frame builder and another. You can see the hand sanding through the paint finishes that were too thin. Some welds weren’t exactly symmetrical. Working with aluminum is difficult because of the high temperatures required. Nowadays, everything is put together by machine that carefully hold the tubes in places and welds the joints. Temperatures and materials are carefully controlled. Go to Walmart and take a look at their bike racks. Nearly everyone one of them is a perfectly made aluminum frame.

My Cannondale isn’t so much a frame as it is a memento. It’s a souvenir of an idea that came from a certain time period. The frame represents American innovation and labor at a time when it could compete against all others. I’m sure most of you have heard of Cannondale shuttering their US frame production.  All Cannondales will soon be made in Asia. Read the article and you will Cannondale will compete with what American business do best: innovation.

Being 17 years old, you could almost argue that this frame is obsolete with a 1″ headtube diameter. It’s only saving grace is the 130mm rear drop out spacing. To most, it would probably be worth nothing more than it’s scrap metal value.

Some American worker put this frame together and now this American will use it start a new build. Just how American of a bike can I make here? Can I buy American made cassettes and shifters? Is there an American made saddle that I can sit on while I ride this bike?  I’m going to try and find out as I set out to find an American manufacturer for as many components as possible!

Made in the USA

With so many things made elsewhere and imported into the USA, seeing this slogan brings a smile to my face. There is no doubt in my mind that American manufacturing is losing some of it’s competitive edge but the loss isn’t coming from the lack of innovation. It’s all about economics. American labor can cost anywhere between $20 and $100 per hour whereas Chinese labor can cost as little as $3 to $10 per day.  The throughput in both cases is about the same. Everyone wants to work hard and do their best regardless of their nationality or location.

Can you imagine this in America? (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/renesteffensen/3192251080/)

It is for this reason that America sometimes cannot compete. Take pencils for example. When was the last time you saw an American made pencil? Not often I bet. Toys is another example. Nearly every toy in the world is made in China. Clothing comes from Latin American countries. Even most of our bicycles and their parts are made in Taiwan. If all of those things were made in America then the price of those products would jump 10 to 100 times in price. Labor wouldn’t be the only reason the cost would go up. America’s environmental laws are much more stringent than those found elsewhere in the world. Where America must carefully try to contain pollution and dispose of it in a controlled manner, China is dumping it’s waste products down every toilet, river, and sewage grate. Don’t believe me? Read about it for yourself.

But not all is lost. America does have some cards to play and it lies in the local market. Take shampoo or soap for instance. Guess where that’s made. That’s right. It’s made in America for Americans. Nobody of any noteworthy status is even trying to import Chinese hygene products. Remember the Chinese baby formula scare we had recently? A businessman would have a hard time winning customers over and an even harder time keeping them. Food follows closely behind. Cereal, bagels, and waffles are all made in America to be distributed in America. Paint also falls into that category. Would an American really want to buy Chinese made paint after the lead that was found in imported toys? If none of that sounds familiar, refresh yourself here.

Nationality aside, watching your child suffer is one of the most painful and dreadul things a parent can go through. (Source: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080917/china_recall_080917/20080917?hub=Health&s_name=)

Then again, America has the infamous Ford Pinto.

Even if the products were guaranteed safe, you have to take into account the transportation costs of moving the imported Chinese products to a distribution center before sending the products to the stores. American truckers aren’t going to charge a special low rate for hauling imported goods.

These examples highlighted commodities that only go for a few dollars. There’s very little differentiation in commodities. We simply buy what’s cheapest. However, there is another hand America can play. It’s called innovation. One hour labor costs the same whether you make a piece of shit or a polished diamond. Material is sometimes insignificant in relation to labor costs. Everyone pays approximately the same amount for raw materials because they are traded on the world market. So, if you’re going to spend one hour doing something then you might as well do something that nobody else knows how or is willing to do.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you have to admire companies like Zipp and Edge Composites. Everyone knows Zipp for their dimples and Edge Composites for the molded spoke holes in their rims. SRAM developed the double tap shifting system. While the world was learning how to copycat their older designs they were busy figuring out the next big thing. Nobody else was willing to do what they did and their efforts paid off.

This kind of innovation leads to an elevation of a brand. It becomes exclusive. Take a look at watch companies like Rolex and Omega. While they were always considered to be “nice” watches, they were never the uber luxurious brands they are today until the 60s and 70s. It was the digital revolution that changed the market place. Almost overnight, you could buy a watch that ran longer, more accurately, and with greater reliability for way less money than a mechanical watch. Where a mechanical watch could lose one to three seconds a day, a battery operated quartz digital watch would lose the same amount of time only in a month! So why would anyone pay several tens or hundreds of dollars more (back then) for something that works worse?

Rolex and Omega had to reinvent themselves. They no longer make watches as much as they make pieces of jewelry. When you buy a Rolex you are buying a decoration for your wrist. Call it a work of art that makes you think back to a different time if you want. The prices shot up into the thousands and suddenly a new market was created that only they could compete in. They defined who they want to buy their products and somehow the money just keeps coming. Now you buy a Rolex because you want the world to know you are classy and rich.

You get the same feeling when you see someone roll up to a group ride with Zipp 404 wheels. Don’t deny it. You stare a bit and wonder just how much those wheels cost. Someone always has to buy something new once before it can become used and chances are you could be looking at a first time purchase there. Those wheels could easily cost $2k buy themselves. That says one thing: Homie’s got cash money.

So while America may have forgotten how to make shoe laces, America is dreaming up what will replace them. America will make what nobody else can or will. That is where America can win in the global market.

(P.S. I focused on American products here because America is my home and my country. Many of the same principles probably apply to the Western world in general. You tell me if I’m wrong.)