Originally Posted by Duragrouch

Oh absolutely, much better in terms of liability, and the goverment not accusing you of trying to circumvent tariffs. Plus labor is expensive, that's where people get the savings. In light aircraft, people homebuild planes from kits, not only to save money, but if you build at least 51% of it, you are allowed to do your own service on the plane instead of an A&P mechanic. However it used to take *years* for people to complete kits, all while paying hanger rental, and many not finishing. In recent decades, some of the kit companies have put together facilities; They have tooling fabricated to save you a bunch of time, and "fast-build kits"; You show up for some weeks and build your plane quickly on their dedicated tooling, perhaps not fully fitted out interior or instruments but enough for 51% of the bare minimum (and aided by some pre-assemblies by the maker) to pass FAA inspection and test flight, fly it back home VFR, and then finish the rest.

If you needed the above for bikes, it could be organized. But for bikes, you don't. People just need a work table and perhaps $50-100 in tools, which will of course pay for themselves in the initial build and over time.

This is just a guess, but I think your biggest cost would be an import agent, to handle paperwork. When I bought a crank on amazon and it came with the wrong chainrings, the seller in China said no worries, they'd send me new ones. Took a month, most of that time at their import agent in Nevada, as this was done outside of the amazon system. I think that location is big for that work, I've seen other companies routed through there as well.