Hey i decided to just get on that thing rather than wait. I just send BF, Urbane and Surly the mail that follows below. Following below that mail was 95% of the 2 discussions we have had on Bike Fridays/frame only etc. stuff.
I guess now we wait and see what they say. I think i can more or less guess. Hope they take it in a good way, see it as encouragement or some free market research and feedback rather than an attack of some sort. Unfortunately people and companies rarely can muster some critisism so i am a little apprehensive, but hey.
V.
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Dear Bike Friday People,
(N.B. as you can see i have CC ed Surly and Urbane as well as i think this mail may be of interest -see discussion below!- to them as well.
Since i found out about your bikes (and the benefits of small wheel/folder riding) i have been a huge fan of your product. I hope that one day i may be able to purchase on of your bikes. However, there is a chance that i won't be able to, or will have to save for a long period of time as my budget is limited. I am also a regular poster on the Bike Forums.net (mostly the folding sbuforum). Recently we have had many discussions on Bike Fridays.
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=145049
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=144739
The gist of those discussions is that we would love to buy one of your bikes but that we find the cost (especially when compared to other good Folders such as Swifts and Dahons) and the fact that no bare framesets are available (despite many requests for them) rather prohibitive. As you know a few other manufacturers do offer bare framesets, and many of us are convinced that BF is one of the very best bikes out there but we find the notion of buying a complete bike only to ditch the components in favor of the ones we like rather undesirable.
Anyway, in this letter i have included a sample of those discussions. I (and i think with me other bike forums folder & BF enthousiasts) would be most gratefull if you could read through our thoughts and writings and give me your view of them in a reply. What i mention about framesets and such is one of the points we raise in the discussions. I hope you can enlighten us on that as well as the other points.
Sincerely Yours,
V1nce
www.rhizomes.nl
www.rhizomes.nl/twenty.html