Factory visits

This time 3 years ago I was in Taiwan and China for vendor meetings and factory visits. This year provided me with the opportunity to see how things are done in the heart of Italian bicycle manufacturing -slowly mostly! As more and more marques take their manufacturing to the far east, slowly but surely, the bicycle manufacturing industry in Italy shrinks at a steady rate. For this reason it was not unusual to find signs of general fabrication -items of outdoor furniture and in one case MicroLite space-frames bump up productivity.


At the same time, it was mighty heartening to see the methods behind the manufacturing of steel, alloy and carbon frames when not on a mass-production scale. We were plied with Espresso and fed to the eyeballs -thanks to Lorenzo of Dedacciai.