Trakhak

The Soma bikes in question - not to be confused with those offered by the modern, unrelated Soma bike company - were only on the market for a few years, from approximately 1978 to 1982 - maybe a year one way or the other. So no long partnership.

As I recall from the days when we were selling them in a Baltimore bike shop in the early '80's, Soma bikes were built by Kuwahara for Shofer's Furniture, a Baltimore wholesaler/retailer, back when many U.S. importing companies were bringing in private label bikes from Japanese factories. (Shofer's Furniture, I just learned from a search, was founded in Baltimore in 1913 as a bicycle repair shop.)

Edit:

"built by Kuwahara for Shofer's Furniture" is probably putting it a bit strongly. More likely someone at Shofer's picked a few models from Kuwahara's wholesale catalog, along with decals and paint schemes (the Cosmopolitan looked almost exactly like a Motobecane Super Mirage). Probably brought in enough bikes to fill a few containers, which they gradually sold through and didn't reorder.

The Soma mixte shown in the photos in this thread is the only one I've ever seen with a fake Ishiwata-looking decal. The top of the line, the Soma Cosmopolitan (which would have been mid-level at best for most major bike brands), had, I believe, Champion No. 2 frame tubes. The other models, the Sport (second from the bottom) and whatever the entry-level model was, had no frame tubing decals.