A Peek Behind The Curtain at Taiwan's Cycling-Specific Industry

Sit in on the average cycling industry factory presentation in Taiwan and it quickly becomes obvious that our beloved bike products are simply widgets to those who produce them. Sure, there are a select few examples of employees or owners that ride bikes, but all things presented over two days of visiting several factories in Taiwan pointed towards their numbers - and not their products. Longwinded lectures in broken English generally boasted of their factory’s production rates, and either expanding their facility, increasing production with robots, expanding into countries that are less expensive to manufacture in, or some combination of the three. There wasn’t any expectation that these few companies we visited would be filled with a bunch of like-minded cycling enthusiasts, but the disconnect from the product being produced was still much more striking than expected.

Maybe this disconnect is a good thing, at least from the viewpoint of consumers and our ideas on how much product should cost. If the main hub of cycling’s manufacturing was as horribly fiscally offset by work-to-life ratios as those found in North America, we may all actually have to get real jobs in order to afford the result of production costs based on 3hr lunch rides, long weekends for races, longer vacations to ride the Mecca du jour, and brew breaks with thankful customers. Or, brew breaks to forget those ‘other’ customers.

Taiwanese factories generally operate on a 6-day work week, and even pioneering industry kingpins like Velo’s 70-year-old Stella Yu put in 14 to 16 hour days when the lights are on. To continue picking on Yu, while rumor has it she’s earned enough to recently buy a private island to retire on, she still lives on the top floor of the factory, as she has for decades. Heir to the saddle mogul, Ann Chen, also lives above the factory, and is being groomed to take over Velo someday. It’s also obvious that factory workers of all levels seemed to take pride in their jobs, and the facilities we visited were at least as safe and comfortable as what I remember of Chrome Industries’ old Denver HQ when I was doing quality control for them back in the 90’s - actually, most of these Taiwanese facilities were at a higher standard, all things considered.


One thing that wasn’t quite expected was hearing of manufacturing competition booming in other Asian countries, and thereby taking away business from Taiwan. Thanks in part to a relatively prosperous economy over the past couple of decades, Vietnam and Cambodia are now gaining traction with cheaper labor than what can be found in Taiwan. There are also fewer tariffs put on products made in these countries, which is giving China’s manufacturing market a bit of competition, too. Some Taiwanese-based companies are expanding into these countries by building satellite factories of their own, but still keeping their headquarters in Taiwan. Other Taiwanese manufacturers are still having some or all of their bikes technically built in China, but ship the raw frames back to Taiwan for paint and assembly, then ship to distributors as complete bikes, which is a loophole that gets them out of tariffs specific to China. It’s more of a shell game than I would’ve imagined, as building new factories, or investing millions in new robotic manufacturing technology isn’t exactly something one would think could be set to pace of the ebbing and flowing of global economics, or politics.

All said, our two days spent in Taiwan to visit a few factories was more of an almost literal drive-by of what happens there - we had a 5-to-1 ratio of time spent on the bus to time spent in the factories, which left little time for digging into details. Some factories wouldn’t allow photos, and there often wasn’t time for gaining information beyond very formal presentations, but below is a gallery of what we were able to share.



One of Velo's steel saddle rail machines, spitting out rails for what could be any of the 30 major brands that use Velo for their saddle production.







Velo states they have over 100 different injection moulding machines at their disposal. This is one of the older machines; the newest version is still top-secret and may or may not use lasers.






One part of the manufacturing process that hasn't been taken over by robots is putting on decals. An off-the-tour stop at Willing Manufacturing to see an old buddy was unfortunately just a few days too early to catch the first production Saracen Myst 29er DH bikes. According to Saracen engineer, Ryan Carroll, they hit the mark on making the 27.5" and 29" versions almost indecipherable while riding, save the feel of the wheels. He also mentioned that while Danny Hart is still testing out the 29" Myst, chances are he'll still mostly race the 27.5" wheels as his shorter stature and off-the-back style cause a bit more butt rubbing on the back tire than he's comfortable with.