One the eve of the 5th annual North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Indianapolis, a gathering fraught with artisans from several continents, comes the formation of The Framebuilder's Collective.
Eight professional framebuilders from three countries have spent the last 24 months working together to create an international organization which they hope can strengthen the trade, pay homage to its past, and work towards ensuring that its future is bright and profitable. Founding members of The Framebuilders' Collective (TFC) include Curt Goodrich, Sacha White, Nick Crumpton, Dave Kirk, Carl Strong, Dario Pegoretti, Darrell McCulloch, and Richard Sachs.
According to a statement from Sachs, all founding members are enthusiastic about the Collective's potential and are now looking forward to finally being a public entity after two years of planning.
"Efforts are underway to expand the names involved so that the The Framebuilders' Collective will be a true representation of the talent and the commitment that is part and parcel of the professional framebuilding trade," he added.
With the idiosyncrasies common among fiercely independent custom framebuilders, it was refreshing to notice among the website's Frequently Asked Questions that membership is not exclusive to a certain type of framebuilding.
"None of us has judged or examined anyone else's work," Sachs wrote. "But we do feel each other and for each other. The TFC’s members are aware that the craft and business of framebuilding attracts some fiercely independent types and it could be impossible – or take generations – to set standards for design and manufacturing that are more common in the industrial trades.
"We made a conscious decision to trust our collective instincts and be a peer group rather than a watchdog group," he added. "Like anything borne out of enthusiasm and from a group of creative types, we’ll hope we made the right choice!"
For more information, visit www.framebuilders.org.
Look for complete coverage of the 5th annual North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Indianapolis from tech editor James Huang in the coming days. To follow BikeRadar's Twitter postings, click here. To throw in your two cents on our Forum, click here.
