I'm late to this discussion so maybe this has been answered. Every once and a while I go to ebay and search Brompton to see what's new. More and more I'm seeing clone ti frames, forks and rear triangles. How is Brompton letting this go on? Can't they stop this. What is going on there. I'm ignorant but this on the surface seems to be easy to stop. I can understand selling parts upgrades but frames seems like copyright infringement.

Thanks for sharing your build journey.

Here's an article about such happenings. It's interesting that Dahon sued someone when the Curl is a blatant rip off of the Brompton. https://www.bikebiz.com/folding-bike...-to-be-jailed/

According to lexology: "The manufacturing is complex and the company designs all of its own tooling. Keeping this know how within the company makes the bike difficult to copy and helps to keep the company a step ahead of potential competitors." I remember Will Butler-Adams saying this in an interview as well.

Some good info here as well: https://www.gov.uk/government/case-s...perty-brompton

These explanations seems to me at least partially bull****:
The Brompton bike didn't change since more than 10 years !

The only "improvements" were some components changes, part of them to reduce the bill of material, part because the replaced components weren't available anymore.

Most of the "new" components are heavier than their predecessors (crankset, brake levers, shifters...) resulting in a bike weight increase.

All this is the results of a CEO aiming only at profit increase !

Butler-Adams built new company offices with a doubled production capacity... but Brompton sales are stagnating (while the global cycle industry sales are booming).

For remembrance, Andrew Ritchie, left the company disgusted by Butler-Adams company management.

Yes, I noticed myself this half-full glass!

Its really a pity because the Brompton is an excellent bike and with some minor changes it would become even much better (allowance for wider tires, modern transmission like its done by Kinetics... if a single man company can do all what he does on the Brompton, how is it possible that a company cannot).

Your "single man company" observation speaks volumes about the management of their current CEO...

its quite simple: their pattents are expired.
thats why the can make those copycat and walks

Sorry, Raxel.

I forgot about this thread. After getting a Brompton, I have to completely agree with you. Excellent fold. Okay ride. Nice luggage options. Horrible, overpriced, unnecessarily proprietary parts. Built like a boat anchor.........and that's a fully upgraded M6R with titanium seatpost, dynos, etc.

I'd love to pick your brain for a possible build around an EasyTi frame