Simply put, I'm surprised that there isn't a US-based competitor to Shimano or Sram or even Sunrace.

SRAM is a US company, founded and headquartered in Chicago

It's so much easier to rebrand.

Probably not that hard, but you're most likely not going to survive building only brifters. It's really hard to roll out an entire product line of innovative products.

Although not US based, FSA are only a STI shifter away from having made complete groupset worth of components, they have tri-bar shifters, guessing their is somthing that is holding them up from the shifters.

One inhbitor is patent issues. Shimano and Campy have patented just about every brifter configuration they could think of and even SRAM had to scramble to come up with their "Double Tap" mechanism that avoided patent infringement. Some of the early patents may have expired but there are still problems getting around current ones.

SRAM is indeed US based but almost nothing they make or sell is made here.

There have been attempts to create an all-US made group (Paul tried) but the products were either extremely costly or didn't perform all that well or both.

as others have said, it pretty easy to design a brifter. The trick is getting it manufactured to spec at a reasonable price while the other companies are doing what ever they can to keep you out of the business. From my point of view the differences in between brands is pretty small compared to the differences between component levels. So, it is much easier to re-brand another companies brifters and sell or contract with some one to supply your group sets than it is to undertake the risk of designing and manufacturing your own.


I would like to point out that I am a Mechanical Engineer and designing cool stuff is what I do for a living. This is not some cold financial view point but from some one who is a gadget nut and still thinks it isn't worth it.

It's much easier/cheaper to draw the pictures here and make crap elsewhere.We can't make anything anymore,the powers that be have decided the U.S doesn't need a manufacturing base any longer.

I guess the idiots that run our country know for a fact that China and Germany will be on our side in the next war.

isn't Micro Shift a US company?

Taiwanese, I think.

It's strictly economics. How much more would you be willing to pay for all of your manufactured goods if they were all made here? Double? Triple? How do we protect our manufacturing base from foreigh competition? Extremely high tariffs would do it but that has a severe down side too. The countries that have raw materials we need would respond in kind. Be careful what you wish for.

If we still made stuff here, more people would be earning better salaries from those jobs, and would be able to afford the stuff made here. Not necessarily relevant to most bicycle parts, but most American made items are still worth the extra cost in what you get in added quality and longevity. Sometimes out of need and sometimes out of desire, the consumer decided cheap-fast-now was the way to go. I think it's mostly consumer choice that has made American manufacturing largely into a boutique industry.

That's what I figure has happened over the last 20 years. Fewer and fewer people will get the chance to experience the sensation of holding a fine handcrafted object in their hands.

Maybe the white collar jobs, but all their stuff is made where the manufacturing investment, for the bike biz went, Taiwan..

Their grip shifter needed a court suit win, against Shimano, to get a foot in the door,
of the OEM builds.

then they bought out the Fichtel-Sachs group, a competitor,
in the grip shift stuff & MTB's, then dumped the EU jobs and moved manufacturing.

Know a bunch of Mechanical Engineering post graduates ?


No the investment , in the US is focused on the Arms trade ,
profit margins are better, almost as good as selling narcotic drugs..

.. and the single payer is the taxpayer, for the whole weapons biz.
funny how that socialism, in the production of the tools
of acquiring power, payed for by the many , and financially
concentrating the profits in the Ruling Elite Few, has no congressional, detractors ..

SIncerelly you should have more chances to develop an electronic shifting system than a mechanical. Only because of simplicity.

Besides shift/brake lever assembly being labor intensive, and therefore the type of component where the USA would be least competitive. Also though Sram (through a lawsuit) was able to get a toe hold with twist grips only, today the ability to make/sell levers without also making derailleurs is slim to none, so we're talking serious invstments.

There's also the issue of logistics. Since the vast bulk of component sales is as OEM on new bikes and since most of those are built in Taiwan or China a US maker would have the added burden of higher shipping costs. These are significant not only in dollar cost, but inability to respond quickly to schedule changes. Most bike companies are operating on a JIT (just-in-time) basis, requiring their vendors to deliver according to very rigid timetables.

For example Jag-wire has a division focused only on making brake and gear cable kits with housings and wires cut to exact lengths and all the correct ferrules already threaded (or prepacked) and delivered to their clients daily.

If Made in USA has any future it'll start with simpler components where most of the cost is not labor, like headsets, hubs, BBs and possibly pedals. Shifters and derailleurs will likely be the last parts (if ever) to say "Made in the USA".

That's a good point. I'm sure that is relevant to a lot of other industries as well, and illustrates a kind of snowball effect, when one manufacturing sector goes overseas, others follow.

Often US competitors produce utter crap, save for a few specialty markets; but the bike component market is rather small with a few big names (Shimano, SRAM, and that Italian company I can't recall) and a number of smaller names (FSA, etc). Competition is fierce, because if any of the top three sags behind then they become a minor player (and likely die), and if they leap ahead they have security and profit.

So, if a US competitor could become one of the big names, making their own components in the US, they'd be forced to make good components. Manufacture, however, is a thing of the past for the US and we are universally poor at it. The US tends to make the worst stuff out of anywhere, really, aside from some big-name quality-focused companies like Ford (not the best, but they try) or Martin. Everyone else does a terrible job--look at Gibson Guitars, made out of random pieces of tone wood, always solid but sometimes with horrid tone qualities, prone to breaking, and the electronics are cheap crap (except for their pickups).

I tend to avoid US stuff pretty universally. I also tend to buy German products that Germans make good, but avoid German products that the Japanese make better. I avoid Japanese stuff that the Spanish make better. I avoid anything Italian; that whole country is fail. Occasionally the French make something decent, usually a bicycle, or white flags; Citroen has made some interesting things.

But look at the prices for Chris King and Paul Components products. It's impossible to manfufacture mainstream products and compete with Asian factories.

IMO it should be possible to make a go of it doing only brifters, IF you can offer the indexing spares to convert them to be compatible with anything. If that's the basic premise, I reckon it has legs. Hell, if they were Ergo style, you could offer friction brifters.

But then there's the armies of lawyers...

How about this: an open-source effort to develop a brifter using as many as possible of the most readily available spares (that aren't overpriced) as a collection of components on Thingiverse, to be printed out by Makerbots. Maybe you can start with a given DT lever and a brake lever, and print out a lever body that takes Ergo hoods and works like an Ergo using the guts of a Shimano DT shifter.

I'd say the Campy freehub is testament to that... Ergos were Sachs' baby, amirite?

That seemed like a good idea to Modolo a few decades back. Nice levers, with easily changed cams to fit a variety of systems. Lasted a few years, but wasn't sustainable. Since it's almost impossible to get OEM spec for levers only without the derailleurs, you're stuck trying to amortize big front end costs across a very limited sales base, putting you at a permanent competitive disadvantage.

I find that something "Made in USA" no longer means quality. Look at Craftsman, those tools used to be some of the best, now they are sold at Kmart. Cars? My parents bought a ford T-bird that lasted not even 100k miles and died, my GF has a ford focus that is on its last leg at 70k miles. I hate to say it but America seems to be building cheap $h!t for a while. To be honest I think so many americans want top dollar for low skill jobs, making cheap junk because the company wants to save millions to keep the rich fat cats on top rich, and then the company makes the plunge to just sell the job off to china to pay their workers half. And that doesn't bother the chinese because the cost of living is lower there, and workers dont want all the SUVs and Gucci, so they live within their means. So when it comes time to buy a shifter, or a derailleur, you can spend $400 for a Paul or $120 for Japanese Dura-Ace, who wins? DA.

I would've thought these days there'd be enough folks frustrated with having to replace entire brifter pairs for drivetrain changes instead of one little part in the right shifter, there'd be a decent market for a future-proof solution, and the legal side would be what puts the kybosh on it.

Anyway, I reckon the only way forward on this is the wikishifter. Bring it, peeps!

Think of it - how sweet are Shimano DT levers? Do they ever fail? Get those guts in an Ergolever and you have pure win.

The Big boys redesign as rapidly as possible. it's playing catch up.. for the next new guys.

OTOH, Rohloff did the engineering up front, and has been making their hub,
largely unchanged for over a decade.. whereas the other guys feel compelled
to out do each other in adding more complications every year ...

to have something New ! for the next Trade show series in the fall.