The Challenge of Bicycle Manufacture in Portland

Given the lavish attention Portland devotes to bicycle use, however, surprisingly little attention is paid to its ancillary, bicycle manufacture.

Our bicycle culture is one of the crown jewels that Portlanders enjoy using to distinguish ourselves from other American metropolises. Despite the often inclement weather, Portland benefits from a bike-friendly design left over from the days when our neighborhoods were built around streetcar routes, as well as more recent public investments in bicycle lanes and other infrastructure that make bicycling here safer and more enjoyable than in many parts of the country. This, combined with the outdoorsy and eco-friendly Portland culture, creates a near-perfect environment for bicycle ridership to flourish. “We already have more people riding here than any other city in America,” says Jonathan Maus of BikePortland.org, a local bicycle advocacy website. Given the lavish attention we devote to bicycle use, however, surprisingly little attention is paid to its ancillary, bicycle manufacture.

For laypeople who have trouble reattaching a thrown bike chain, understanding Portland’s bicycle manufacturing industry in the course of a single article may seem daunting. Luckily, the local industry tends to consist of small-to-medium sized businesses, without stunningly huge, globe-spanning labels like Nike or HP. What’s more, these businesses tend to fall into one of two different categories—artisans and entrepreneurs.

The artisans may seem more consistent with the appealingly idiosyncratic nature of Portland. They tend to be high-end, independent craftspeople who combine the utility of a bicycle with artistry of design to create award-winning bikes that garner national recognition. The labor and skill of these artisans has given Portland a certain cachet among bicycle enthusiasts as a place to get a fine bike.

Ben Farver of Argonaut Cycles in Goose Hollow is one such artisan. Sharing space and equipment with another accomplished craftsman, Andy Newlands of Strawberry Cyclesport, he builds custom bicycle frames to the exacting specifications of enthusiasts. Frame builders, many of whom studied at the United Bicycle Institute of Ashland (the only bicycle frame-building school in the world, according to owner Ron Sutphin), are the most common type of bicycle artisan in Portland, though there are also craftsmen who build wheels, bike tools, and even ultra-specialized products like handmade wooden bicycle fenders. Farver describes most craftsmen as enthusiastic bicyclists (usually male) who work either solo or, at most, in partnership with one other artisan. Building a bicycle frame is very labor-intensive, and each frame can take up to several months to make. The individual nature of the work and the handcrafting aspects of the process mean that, over time, frame builders can develop distinctive styles, says Sutphin, often incorporating subtle touches imperceptible to laypeople, which distinguish them from their colleagues. Many of these styles, especially among frame builders who specialize in steelwork, are inspired by historical bicycles of Europe.

Independent, labor-intensive work may provide great opportunities for artistry, but it is difficult to make a living that way. Since most frame builders are independent businesspeople, they must devote time to marketing, sales, finance, supply, and other business functions that take time away from actually producing bikes and generating income. This helps explain the top-notch prices handmade frames command. After the cost of materials, tools, and shop space, frame builders may make a profit of $1,000 to $1,500. With an output of perhaps two frames a month, “you end up making less than a barista,” says Farver. What’s more, it’s tough to charge more money for a hand-built frame because Portland is home to so many skilled frame builders—charging too much drives customers to other frame builders and prevents a craftsman from making a sale at all. To support themselves, many frame builders take second jobs as bike mechanics for other businesses.

But while frame builders may offer the lowest prices they can, Portlanders are still not willing to shell out $2,000 for a frame, let alone even more for the entire bicycle, says Jay Graves, owner of the Bike Gallery, one of Portland’s most recognizable bicycle stores. When asked how many locally manufactured bicycles he sells, Graves smiles ruefully and says, “All of our bikes are from Asia except Co-Motion... But just about every product on the Co-Motion bike is Asian-made.” Though the Bike Gallery has made an effort to partner with local builders, the numbers never added up and the project had to end.

Jay Graves, owner of Bike Gallery.

Maus confirms the price sensitivity of the average bicyclist. “Would a regular person who’s not a big bike aficionado pay $1,000 for a bike to get around town? You can go to Walmart and get a bike for $250.” Most Portlanders do not view their bicycles as artistic accomplishments, but rather as utilitarian or recreational devices, and the appeal of “buying local” only goes so far. If this is true, Portland’s current and future investments in bicycle infrastructure may have a negligible effect on local manufacturing—but they may be a boon to Chinese exporters.

The entrepreneurs who make up the other face of Portland’s bicycle manufacturing scene may seem less romantic, but they do have the potential to do something high on every local government’s agenda—generate economic activity and create local jobs. While drawn to bicycles for many of the same reasons as the artisans, these entrepreneurs seek scalable ideas that can grow beyond a one-or-two-person bicycle shop.

In Hosford-Abernethy, for example, a small business called Ecospeed is busily producing what its founder and president, Brent Bolton, calls the “best electric assist on earth.” This little device turns a bicycle from a recreational toy into a tool that gets professionals from place to place. By adding power to the bike chain with a small electric motor, says marketing director Tad Beckwith, the electric assist allows Portlanders to pedal up the West Hills with ease, or even cease pedaling altogether in order to get to a business meeting on the other side of town without arriving sweaty and disheveled.

Devices like these, explains Bolton, are revolutionary because they encourage people to rethink the role of their bicycle. It’s not just a toy for tooling around the neighborhood anymore, he says, “It’s about replacing your car with a bike.” Collaboration with Metrofiets (a local manufacturer of “cargo bikes”) may even lead to people carting 400-pound loads around Portland with bicycles instead of cars. Indeed, Metrofiets has already built a special “beer bike” (complete with kegs) that can function as a sort of mobile pub for local brewery Portland Hopworks. More such innovative devices could start competing with Portland’s established food carts in the near future.

Another entrepreneur encouraging people to rethink the role of the bicycle is Phillip Rush of Columbia Cycleworks. He addressed the problem of bicycling in Portland’s rainy climate by designing his own “velomobile,” a fully enclosed, three-wheeled recumbent bicycle with cargo space and an electric assist for the urban professional. It is not the first velomobile on the market, he admits. Such vehicles are already being sold, primarily in Europe, to people looking for an alternative to the automobile. The problem with most velomobiles, however, he says, is that they are prohibitively expensive for most people. Unlike the European models, which he compares to luxury cars like Ferraris, the Columbia Cycleworks product consists of more economical materials (some sourced from China’s assembly lines) and more modest performance parameters. Rush says his velomobile is more like a Volkswagon bug—a practical vehicle for the working person. While he currently builds the velomobile in his garage, he says that he has carefully designed the vehicle to be amenable to assembly-line production. Within five years, he plans to grow Columbia Cycleworks to a mid-sized business producing thousands of velomobiles for sale locally and abroad.

Rush’s vision of Portland as a place where bicycles and parts could be manufactured not just for local consumption but for worldwide export is compelling, and not just to him. Ecospeed only makes 5-10 percent of its sales locally and currently exports its electric assist to Korea, Australia, Finland, and Italy.

Maus even talks of the possibility of a bicycle manufacturing renaissance in Portland. “If we had the right sort of industrial infrastructure around making bikes and bike parts, we’d have a workforce ready to tool up and do it,” he says.

Oregon is currently ranked by the American Institute for Economic Research as the most cost-effective state in the nation for manufacturing, and certain neighborhoods like Hosford-Abernethy were once manufacturing districts and may continue to hold promise for that sort of activity. What’s more, mid-sized manufacturers or large bicycle companies interested in creating a high-quality domestic subsidiary could benefit greatly from the bicycle cachet associated with Portland’s award-winning artisans. In the long run, even the artisans may benefit from such a change. Maus suggests that companies eager to mine their brains and talent could do well to hire these experts for their research and design staff, or as design consultants. If Portland can find a way to produce bicycles at prices competitive with Asia (or at least only moderately more expensive and of recognizably higher quality), the city would be in a position generate both export dollars and jobs. All that would be missing then, says Maus, is the will.

Ecospeed electric assists are made in Portland's Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood.

Perhaps that will is not so elusive. Farver has temporarily shut down his steel bicycle frame building business, so he can make a transition to building with carbon fiber. The material still makes a great custom frame, he says, but it is cheaper, he can order it pre-molded to his design specifications, and once it’s in the shop, he’ll be able to assemble a new frame with dizzying rapidity compared to his old steel-frame days. In five years, he’s planning have a mid-sized shop of his own, with employees assembling bicycles under his supervision, freeing him up to focus more on design and effective business function. Perhaps people like Farver represent Portland’s best chance to realize its bicycle-building potential by successfully embodying both sides of the same coin—the artisan and the entrepreneur.