Fly2High

If this is truly a copy of a 2013 Cervelo frame, it is already 3 year old tech. Is there any possibility that Cervelo either gave up the rights to the molds or sold it to them?

Maybe, they were outsourced to continue to make frames for warranty repair or replacement. How long do bike companies need to continue to make replacement parts? This might be a way to keep costs down on oldr model's parts.

himespau 

Or maybe Cervelo moved on and expected the molds to be destroyed (and told the company to destroy them) but didn't actually have someone there to observe the destruction, so they didn't see when an employee "destroyed" them by walking them out to the back of his truck and over to his uncle's factory where he started working the next day as a supervisor.

softreset

We call it NBF (New Bike Fitness) in the shop. It's usually short lived but we'll smile and nod when tell how much better your new bike has made you out there.

Number400

NBF is fantastic! I always wondered what to call the boost on the first few rides with a new bicycle.

redfooj

they could just follow the italian fashion industry and bring in chinese workers on italian soil to work illegally in underpaid overworked sweatshop conditions

but its ..... made in italy fatto a mano

rpenmanparker 

Who you callin' a fat man, Willis?

69chevy

Quote from the linked article... "My guess is that the fakes are being made in the same factory as the genuine products but on the sly, either by the factory owner for extra income or by employees when the boss isn’t looking; or using old molds no longer in use in the plant."

inrng : who made your bike

There is a reason that people continue to speculate about where their frame was made. If it is the most ridiculous thing you've ever read on BF, you haven't even grazed the surface.

PepeM

Building your own bicycle from scratch is the future.

redfooj

'If you wish to make a bicycle from scratch, you must first invent the 3d printer.'

dksix

Were the Cervelo frames that this frame resembles made in China?

rpenmanparker 

Yes.

I <3 Robots

All Cervelos are from China...except for the Project Califonia frames...which are made in California.

dksix

Then these frames being made in the same tooling, with the same material by the same people is completely plausible.

JakiChan

This can be common with electronics. I remember back in the day, when I needed some WIC-2Ts (a type of Cisco interface card, really old now) you could get ones really cheap from some places. And I wondered why someone would go to the trouble of engineering a fake WIC-2T. Then the explanation I would get was that if you own the plant, and Cisco has you make 100,000 widgets, then you can make 150,000 widgets. You sell the extra 50,000 widgets on the side for way less than Cisco sells them, but way more than Cisco pays you for them. Profit off of their IP on the side.

I didn't think you could do it with bikes, but maybe you can....

I <3 Robots

Yes it is. The thing is...nobody on BF is an insider (at least the ones posting here)...so nobody here can say where these frames come from. It is possible that whoever these frame makers are...are using old molds left from previous customers. We'll never know if that is the case though.

People are also assuming that the 066 is being sold as a "Cervelo" fake...which it's not. Nowhere on Workswell's site does it mention that the frame has anything to do with Cervelo. WW looks to be the manufacturer of the frames they sell on their site. Everyone else looks to be a trading company selling their frames. If someone buys the frame, paints the frame and sells it as a Cervelo...well that's on them and not the manufacturer.

StanSeven

Two things. One is US companies aren't being greedy with overseas outsourcing. Rather each needs to stay competitive and one company manufacturing here isn't competitive.

Second we've set up a situation where a US company can't use lower priced labor even it wanted too. So we outsource jobs.

dksix

I have nothing to do with any bicycle manufacturer but I do work for a company that does custom forming and we often are quoting against Chinese companies. I design forming tooling and equipment, been in the this industry since the 80's and have seen first hand the evolution of Chinese manufacturing. People who think the Chinese need design, equipment or engineering from the US, Germany or Japan to make quality top shelf products suffer from an outdated concept of the world we live in.


IMO, knowing how a bike will ride only comes from experienced riders riding it. Once the R&D has been completed and 1 frame has been produced, copying it is a pretty straight forward process. And the copy will be as good as it's meant to be. If they want it to be an exact replica indistinguishable from the original, that can done and if it's just suppose to look the same.........then that's what it will be.



Products seem to just phase out, slowly being replaced by whatever is new for the next year and the year after that. Tooling is expensive, out of the hundreds of tools I don't recal ever having the customer request evidence of the tool being destroyed once it's be obsoleted. The company I work for has unquestionable ethics and we would never produce unauthorized products from a customers tooling for resale but it could easily be done.

HazeT

Even if they were hand made in Fiji by the blind ladies of church... It doesn't take much investment for them to buy one original take all dimensions, cut it in half, 3d scan, model and use CAD to make new molds with new adjustments.
Now I doubt the been made by same people/factory/tooling. The manufacturers building for a major brand have to abide by their contract, at a minimum they would loose the contract from all brands if they ever violated it.

HazeT

I don't think it's labor alone, its that the entire supply chain is located there, freight is cheaper, no customs, turn around time is a lot faster, and yes cheaper labor helps but china is not made only of cheap labor. If you ever been to Shaghai, Beijing, Xiamen you will see how many highly paid westerns choose to work there and they are not there for $50/hour.

calimtb

Fascinating posts from dksix and hazet.

What's most telling however is rpen's original post. He is quite obviously underwhelmed. Now, the expenditure was hardly overwhelming ($500). However, given the bargain basement price, and incredibly low weight of the frame and fork, I would think he'd be thrilled with the price vs. performance ratio.

The fact that he isn't suggests that the amount of additional value offered by the highest end, lightest carbon frames (assuming his frame is comparable to an actual cervelo) compared to less expensive, slightly heavier frames is somewhere between marginal and non-existent.

Would a cervelo owner be willing to buy one of these workswell frames and compare?

rpenmanparker 

As said above, molds are expensive. I think these frames were made in authentic molds. Maybe old, maybe obsolete, maybe even current. But these frames aren't copies IMO.

calimtb

I would think using the original mold would be far easier than reverse engineering a bike.

rpenmanparker 

Could be. But keep in mind that better bike performance isn't so important to me. All my bikes are great. Really. Top notch carbon, Ti, and steel. Another great bike? So what? But I like the building process. So this may be the world's greatest bike, but I wouldn't know it. What I do know is this was the best building project I have ever done. That's what I care about most.

dksix

No, there would be repercussions if they did it and tried to sale it off as the branded, trade marked original product damaging an established reputation. An unmarked generic product leaving those who matter not to speculate about on a internet forum............who cares, it wouldn't even warrant an internal email.

If you read my post directly before your post you will see I stated copying it to whatever degree desired isn't even hard but we don't know which is the case. I would need to know more about who made the frame original frame to really lean either direction. There are small shops producing extreme high end products mostly by hand under the watchful eye of skilled craftsmen as well a state of the art factories making part by the 1000's. It's more likely that the tooling from a low production count such as the Cervelo ends up being used than something like a Giant Devy.

StanSeven

Or the OPs new frame is priced that way because its nowhere close to the top end frames.

I'm not saying it is. But your suggestion without proof isn't valid.