Originally Posted by thechamp

It's an interesting idea, to buy old bikes strip them completely and start over from powdercoat on up. This is sort of what he did right? *edit - looking at the webarchive it looks like he had a source for new frames -anyone know who made them?* To a certain degree I do that in my basement, less the powdercoating, and I wager alot of others here do it too. The key for me doing it was, for a time, having a cheap source for great old frames and parts. Since that place (Portland's community cycling center) changed thier business strategies, elimitating the occasional $5 lejeune and $10 centurion, I'm trying to reclaim my basement and get back to woodworking. I'm left with a basement full of complete bikes that I rarely ride, but which look great.

It's interesting to try to identify what makes a good looking bike from an ugly one. A quick scan of FGG shows that some people have that innate ability to create a beautiful bike and some people just don't get it. Tall people are a bit luckier with their graceful steep frames and us short guys have a bit of a harder time, a betrayal of geometry and the standardization of wheel sizes, but it's always great to see a bike on there that just knocks you over, not with tech or bling but with subtlety and grace.

There are certainly stores around here that fix up old bikes, in a slightly less artful manner, and sell them for more than you'd expect to pay on craigslist or ebay, with warranties and service, I saw a guy buy a really cool cargo bike the other day made from a mtb with a 20 inch front wheel, extended head tube and the 'top tubes' from a mixte shooting from the BB to way out front to carry a platform and I thought, well, this is a pretty good town i live in. I think it was three or four hundred bucks.

But I think without an asthetic or an artsy overtone like momovelo had, you be hard pressed to sell that milktea bike for a grand with any regularity, not that the parts don't warrant it, infact most of his offerings were pretty solid values , I just think that's just a really tough pricepoint. You go a little lower you get Kogs or IRO, a little higher and you may need to start building frames. That's a tough middle ground, the thousand(ish) dollar bike.

I don't know much about 'the french tradition', but like a few people have mentioned, it takes money to run a storefront, or even a website. I think we'd all like to have a shop where we could go in a shoot the **** with the owner for an hour or so over coffee and then buy some tires (what;s the margin on a pair of tires?), but man, who can pay rent on that sort of great customer service? Unfortunately, that's a business model for someone who has retired with means, or it's a side job and a money loser.

Sorry, lost track of what I was saying.