Solid is done

[Bunky]

The problem is most of these companies don't make much money off of customs, and they take a lot of time and extra detail.

I'm willing to bet they make more money off of T-shirts than they do custom frames.

[got bike?]

That's true for most of cases, but they charge $500 or more for a frame not different than those they make and are sold for $300 to $370 with what they call additional options included in most of times. In my opinion $400 with brake stuff and one wishbone/S bent CS option included is reasonable.

[G]

That's true for most of cases, but they charge $500 or more for a frame not different than those they make and are sold for $300 to $370 with what they call additional options included in most of times. In my opinion $400 with brake stuff and one wishbone/S bent CS option included is reasonable.

Until you have built custom frames you have no idea what a ball-ache it is. Setting up jigs and machines, getting all the joints working, even just cutting the tube efficiently is more difficult... and that's before you get to the huge headache of talking to customers who have very specific wishes, want instant communication and delivery etc.

BMX custom frames have always been ridiculously cheap. If you want a custom road or MTB frame, look at the price of an off the shelf high end frame and double or triple it to get an idea of price. Off the shelf BMX frames are already stupidly cheap anyway, so expecting a custom frame for 30-50% more is totally unrealistic.

IMHO Aaron has made a very sensible decision and I wish him all the best with it.


G.

[Eggit2]

Definitely agree with that, a lot of people don't know what goes into a frame. With an OTS frame you have jigs set up for all of your cuts and welds, and parts are made in large batches. You can set the machine up and crank out 50 rear ends without having to measure each and every one. The machine set up, measuring, and jigging, is where most of the labor comes in, so in a way you can make 50 OTS frames just as easily as you can make 1 custom.

[got bike?]

Until you have built custom frames you have no idea what a ball-ache it is. Setting up jigs and machines, getting all the joints working, even just cutting the tube efficiently is more difficult... and that's before you get to the huge headache of talking to customers who have very specific wishes, want instant communication and delivery etc.

BMX custom frames have always been ridiculously cheap. If you want a custom road or MTB frame, look at the price of an off the shelf high end frame and double or triple it to get an idea of price. Off the shelf BMX frames are already stupidly cheap anyway, so expecting a custom frame for 30-50% more is totally unrealistic.

IMHO Aaron has made a very sensible decision and I wish him all the best with it.


G.

Definitely agree with that, a lot of people don't know what goes into a frame. With an OTS frame you have jigs set up for all of your cuts and welds, and parts are made in large batches. You can set the machine up and crank out 50 rear ends without having to measure each and every one. The machine set up, measuring, and jigging, is where most of the labor comes in, so in a way you can make 50 OTS frames just as easily as you can make 1 custom.

I have no problem setting the jig and cutting tubes in angles IF i had dialed precise machines i can trust without having to remeasure everytime. But certainly the hardest part is communicating with customers especially with specific requirements.

I remember times when there was some really hard to build frames, each one of them had different geometry than the other. Now that was much harder to buid.

Surely increasing prices is a sensible decision. Good luck for him.

[Sebastian]

Kind of a moot point since I guess he's not making them anymore, but yeah, I think it was a very good move to raise prices on custom frames.  I'm actually really surprised it was as cheap as it had been across the board for so long. 

I mean, look at any custom steel road or MTB frame, you're looking at $1500 base price at the VERY least.  Typically way more than that, especially for an industry leader, which I think we can agree that Solid was for BMX.

Yes, BMX is far cheaper than road or MTB in general, but if you look at an average custom frame's price compared to the price of an average production frame, as a percentage it's still way below the rest of cycling.