Originally Posted by
Sy Reene
Nice story, but what prevents a company like this from making and competing in the quality steel bike industry with good tubing (Kent makes the Walmart and Toys R'us stuff) on a large scale? Is it because eg. Reynolds and Columbus tubing maybe is now made in Asia now too? If it were still made in eg. UK and Italy respectively, it shouldn't cost much more to import that tubing to the US as it must cost to ship it to China, no?
I have no idea. I was just responding to the OP. It was an interesting question. A quick search on Bing turned up a long list of US Bike makers:
American Made Bicycles |USA Brands & Manufacturers List most of them are custom. Kent stood out as a "factory" as OP asked about. This list also includes Trek.
Trek Bikes
Trek Bicycles is the largest U.S. bicycle company and they're the only major manufacturer still producing two-wheelers in the U.S. Overall, Trek makes roughly half of the bicycles manufactured here in the United States. Despite Trek's American-made legacy, U.S. made bikes account for only about 1 percent of Trek's total production.
Trek makes 4 models in their Waterloo manufacturing facility...the Session, Madone, Speed Concept and Emonda.