In an era of global sourcing and computer-aided design, Gregory Townsend builds custom steel bicycle frames in his Monrovia garage.
The 50-year-old British expatriate, who learned metal crafting in a high school shop class, is part of a small but growing number of craftspeople in California catering to bicycle enthusiasts who eschew the super-light carbon fiber cycles of the Tour de France for hand-built frames with meticulous fittings and elaborate paint jobs.
Although most of the bicycle manufacturing business fled to low-cost production centers in Taiwan and China years ago, a small high-end industry continues to percolate in California. It's characterized by small companies, typically with just a handful of employees, making handcrafted bicycle frames and specialized hubs, brakes and other components used for touring, fitness and recreational cycling.
Townsend's creations sell for $2,300 to more than $4,000, depending on how loaded the frames are with highly polished stainless steel detailing, paint colors and other fancy features.
"People come because they want the personal fitting and the communication on their riding style directly with the builder," Townsend said.
He's selling to hobbyists such as Roy Kohl, a vascular surgeon from Monrovia who rides several thousand miles a year.
"I just liked the concept of having a steel frame that was custom built and fit for me," Kohl said.
"My other bikes were aluminum and carbon fiber, but there is nothing that rides as nice as a good steel frame."
Townsend typically takes prospective clients on a bike ride. He wants to see how they fit their existing bicycle and find out about their riding preferences.
Like Townsend, other tiny operators in this niche typically work out of homes and small workshops.
Henry Folson, a former office furniture designer, operates perhaps the last business to domestically manufacture bicycle lugs. He works out of his house in Redondo Beach.
Lugs are sleeves of metal used to connect the eight tubes that make up the classic diamond-shaped bike frame. They were used for nearly a century but faded in importance in the 1990s as bicycle design shifted to welded aluminum and then woven carbon fiber.
His market is the roughly 100 to 200 professional steel-frame bicycle builders in the United States and legions of handy enthusiasts.
"Part of our market has always been people who have a 9-to-5 job but want to build a bike on the weekends as a hobby," Folson said.
