How is the road bike you ride produced?

Anyone who has spent any time in the bike world has probably heard the phrase:

“This is how bikes are made.”

The implication is that these manufacturers’ products must be cheap and average quality compared to the traditional brands’ bikes made in Italy.

Although perceptions are slowly changing, the magical truth still exists today:
Anything made in the West is synonymous with bespoke excellence, while anything from other manufacturers is relegated to the category of cheap and mediocre.

I personally strongly disagree with this statement.

So when you visit a manufacturer’s high-end road bikes that are at the forefront of technology, you will be proud of the care and quality that goes into the production process.

The factory where these bikes are produced is indeed huge, with a rather large sign on the outside of the building.

In this factory, it takes you two days to complete the entire journey.

A large parts truck drives by, along with trucks from other parts manufacturers.

A company of this size requires some pretty massive internal logistics solutions to keep things running smoothly.

Arriving inside the factory, this is the birthplace of bicycles.
Dozens of black spools of Japanese Toray carbon fiber are put into machines that feed the carbon fiber into another set of machines that gather the threads together and impregnate them with a special resin to form thin sheets, or prepreg, used to make the frames and rims of road bikes.
If this sounds like the norm for carbon fiber composite frame manufacturing, it is not.
Most brands, even the big ones, buy carbon fiber in prepreg form.
The fact that a manufacturer rarely makes its own prepreg means that it is able to build all of its high-end framesets from the base material.

Frames are tested in four phases, with testing standards 20 percent above ISO safety standards:

Engineering testing, development testing, pre-production testing, and mass production testing.
The test room is filled with various test bike rigs that bend and twist frames at all angles.
It’s amazing to watch, but oddly confidence-boosting.
Painting is also done in-house, a process that manufacturers are becoming increasingly proficient at.
The latest team framesets and their cool colorways are proof of this.
Once the frames are dry, they’re sent to the assembly area.
The factory assemblers are so well versed in the process that it takes just over 10 minutes to go from a basic frame to a nearly rideable bike, about the time it takes a skilled bike shop mechanic to tape up a handlebar.
About 100 complete bikes are boxed and ready to go every hour.

Of course, any bike produced here will be of decent quality and high-end quality.
Manufacturers simply cannot downgrade their production processes to produce lower quality bikes and frames, which means that the bikes produced here for other brands are of equally high quality.
Despite their size, these numerous manufacturers are still evolving.
Their approach to technology and production processes, from carbon fiber materials to starting to build complete bikes, means that their quality and prestige are constantly improving.