scale

They had a large stock of new Trek bikes...both road and mountain. both looked like they were great quality but something i found interesting is that the road bike head tube had a huge MADE IN TAIWAN sticker on it below the emblem.

The Mountain bikes all had the same but they were MADE IN CHINA

There were entire rows of bikes and that was what stood out the most. What an eyesore. Im not saying quality would be a problem but i certainly was turned off by this.

Granted...probably 95% of all bikes are built overseas ......
weird..

nice looking bikes. I started getting really excited for spring

Robert Foster

We live in a world economy. Parts are made where labor is cheap. Most bikes are made in Asia and may be assembled or painted in a home country. Sometimes they keep the high end bikes at home as well. You can still get bikes made in the US but you have to know what company and what level of bike.

scale

ya i get it but i just thought......what a strange and ugly place to put your build sticker. Heck even a usa one would like stupid there.

You can just remove it but most folks would just continue looking if they saw that ugly choice....

just thought it was strange.

I wouldnt mind having one.

bigvegan

FWIW:

Worksman
Seven
Serotta
Waterford
Richard Sachs (and a world of other individual frame makers)

All still make their bikes here in the USA.

thompsonpost

2006 Ellsworth Distance

Builted up and made in Clafurnia.

atetrachordof3

Excuse me OP, i have to say that I am rather offended by what you are implying here.
I understand that's not what you are saying, but if it's the placement of the sticker than bothers you than simply say so and leave out stuff like
"when I think trek I think good US built company"..."I was certainly turned off by this"

You implied that products made in Taiwan and China are inferior to US built.
Do you even know the difference between Taiwan and China?
And would you please flip your laptop over to see where it was made?
Do you know that Giant STARTED IN TAIWAN?

thompsonpost

Giant has actually been throwing frames together for a lot of companies for a while, right?

Panthers007

The sticker of which you speak peels off easily - leaving no mark on the paint. I peeled the MADE IN CHINA sticker off my Trek 7.5 FX. Not a whimper or a gummy-spot was left behind.

KungPaoSchwinn

Cheap labor in China or any Aisa country cut down the cost,if not,you will be paying more green,this is a known fact,get over it.

electrik

Exactly, before it was "Made in Japan" gasp... if you want American(that is what you expected?) buy American, but just look at the cost of living here and take that into consideration when you compare frames. Maybe you just want to play politics and not spend your money with trek, nothing wrong with having a political view instead of just being a consumer.

Mr Danw

Have fun finding anything with American components. If you do, let us know if it works as well as the imports.

FlatSix911

Regarding TREK ... only the high end OCLV carbon bike frames are still made in the USA ...

KungPaoSchwinn

Yupper,saw the actual production footage on Discovery channel's Factory made about 2 weeks ago.

DRietz

Felt like I had to help you out there.

DX-MAN

Also:

Surly
Strong
Moots
Bilenky
Calfee
Parlee

LarDasse74

not surly. That is an error.

nwmtnbkr

atetrachordof3,

Before you start defending Chinese QC too vigorously, you'd better refresh your memory on the recent food tainting scandals. The last publicized one, involving their domestic market, got some international attention but not enough. It was even worse than that involving pet food, tooth paste and other items for human consumption. It involved the adulteration of infant formula and resulted in the deaths of numerous infants in China. Until the Communist government begins to enforce standards across the board rather than simply looking for a scapegoat to punish when poor, if not outright illegal, business practices affecting health and safety get publicized, China will continue to have a poor international reputation. If factories producing food and other products ingested by humans feel they can cut corners by adding cheap but lethal substitute ingredients, one has to wonder what short cuts their other industries take.

caloso

I've got two made-in-Wisconsin Treks, an 89 660 and a 00 5200. Great bikes, but I probably couldn't afford any of the new models that are still made there.

Cyclaholic

Do you recall that several high ranking execs got the death penalty for that? ...now, what about the extremely harsh penalties handed out to the wall st perpetrators of the global financial crisis, oh that's right, they weren't punished they were bailed out. What about those that started the Iraq war based on the LIE of wmd's? what was their punishment? ...far more children have died in that one. I could cite more but I'm sure you get the idea. Perhaps you should get your house in order before criticizing others, throwing stones in glass houses and all that, and if you want bikes built like swiss watches to come out of china that is entirely possible but the market, i.e. you and everyone else outside of china, have voted with their wallets for the cheap and nasty. Don't blame china for supplying you with exactly what you asked for.

Rogue Leader

IIRC my 1992 Trek had a Made in Taiwan sticker below its head badge, and that was 18 yrs ago!

Longissimus

The only thing OP implied was that the sticker was an eyesore. He even said "I'm not saying quality would be a problem".

Longissimus

Just curious if this is a crack on the U.S. (as a country) or did you have some other point to make?

AdamDZ

He made at least two points IMHO:

Americans should STFU and stop criticizing other countries and their govts until their own are in order. Corporations in USA do whatever they want and get away with it on a daily basis. Now and then something gets done for the show in the media to provide an illusion of the govt protecting the citizens. USA is run by corporations.

American market wants cheap stuff. American companies want sick profits so they want stuff that is basically disposable to force people to buy more stuff. Chinese manufacturers comply. If Americans stop buying Walmart crap and reject poor quality the products quality will have to increase.

Adam

iforgotmename

Step one:design bikes-------------- Step three: profit

Longissimus

I see your angle and don't disagree.
Let's be real here. There is no such thing as any government that has its stuff "in order", Australian gov't being no exception. If Cyclaholic didn't like the guy's post, then he can comment directly on the post and not turn it into a criticism of the U.S. "killing babies". I'm not going to listen to that. He's doing just what he told atetrachordof3 not to do, "throw rocks in his glass house".