henry James closed?
 

so i have been looking into sourcing for drop outs, bb shell and a few other things and I had HJ on my list and i thought i was on their site not long ago. Anyone know what happened? Hate to see one of only a few suppliers close up shop.

HJ closed up a number of months ago IIRC. Andy

Yeah, it's a shame, but we're all getting older.

Which reminds me: I came across this "blast from the past" in a pile of old papers recently:

I wonder if they closed with any lug inventory left. I didn't really feel like adding to my lug inventory, but those were nice lugs

If I understand the slow closing down of HJ the popular stuff was long ago sold out.

The way these thing often go is the business tries to sell as much as possible with increasing discounts as the weeks go on and at some point the reminder is sold off to a competitor for 10-20 cents on the dollar.

When I last looked with serious intent to buy, some months ago, pretty much all the frame fittings and tubing was gone. What was left was odd bits and some HJ specific tools. I'll bet one of the up and coming suppliers got what was left. Andy

Nova cycles site is down. Last time it was up a couple weeks ago most tubing sets were sold out. I hope there not gone too. I was counting on a 29er tubing set with curved stays to build a plus size frame for myself (farm bike). I looked at Frame Builders Supply too (Columbus only). I am hoping to find something a little more generic for this project as it is only my second frame which will likely be fillet brazed.

I think Lon is a little younger (maybe more than a little younger) than Hank, but both are retirement age. At least one person has said that Nova was moving on to new ownership and a new business model, but no announcements have been made. I have also heard they expected new stock soon and the time frame of that is starting to be somewhat strained. It's a tricky time to run a small business in the cycling industry right now, because bigger customers probably get priority. and there are shortages. The main product I would miss from Nova is the disc specific fork blades. The cheapest alternative is $65 vs. $25. I'm a little annoyed that Columbus hasn't seem to have seen the need for that product.

On edit: Nova website is up for me.

Tube inventory has been bad at most of the usual suppliers lately. Nova is out of all of the 9/6/9 downtubes that I would normally use for MTB frames. Framebuilder Supply and Bikefabsupply don't seem to stock anything in 9/6/9. Vari-Wall is effectively out of the framebuilding tube business, with the exception of a few select builders.

Torch and File seems to have a decent stock of Reynolds tubes and also stocks some 9/6/9 downtubes that I will be ordering for some upcoming MTB builds.

Thanks I was also was thinking Nova had gone down too but as noted they are back up.

I'm glad to see that Nova is back up as well. When I saw that their site was down I got a little worried. As I understand it, they have are in the process of relocating (again) and have to move by the end of Oct, which would explain why their stock if low. If I hear more I will report back.

Nova just updated their facebook stating that the website was down due to hacking. It's back up now except for the NovaCycles.com redirect.