Jitensha should not be included in a list of me too Riv companies. Jitensha has been around for quite some time, possibly longer than Riv, though I am not certain on that. It is a local bicycle store operated by a Japanese American that makes Japanese small shop bicycle parts available in the United States. Jitensha has never tried to be a mass marketer. It has an online catalogue, but no on line purchasing. Jitensha rather quaintly shuts down when the owner goes to Japan.
Frankly, I never really saw VO as a me too company for that matter. True Riv and VO sell steel bikes and market more toward the commuter/ tourer than sporting cyclist. But Riv is and always has been focused around GP's rather unique ideas on how a bike should fit and look. VO's bikes are admittedly copies of classic French designs. The components Riv sells are usually not GP's designs, but rather nice stuff Riv finds that seem like good matches for their bikes. GP will usually only get into the component design fray when there is concern the components manufacturers will otherwise stop making a useful part. Riv does not distribute much, if any, components to local bike shops (heck, it hardly distributes its frames to local bike shops any more). As with its bikes, VO sells mostly reworked French designs made in Taiwan shops under the VO label. VO sells its components on line, but its main business is distributing them to bike shops around the U.S. and even abroad. On Feb 3, 2:36 pm, Minh <[email protected]> wrote: > Allen, > > I'm with you, i've been a Rivendell customer going back to 1999 but i > hadn't bought anything since 2005 until 2010 building up my > Hillborne. So all these new sources for what i considered Riv'ish but > i guess others would use a more generic term, bike parts like Velo > Orange, Jitensha, etc was a surprise to me. I don't know how long > they've been around and i don;t attribute the resurgence of classic > bike parts to Rivendell (but i'm sure their advocacy didn't hurt). > But i do wonder how they all interact with each other. > > It's also nice for me to have VO on the east coast as packages come a > lot faster, and i can drive there in 2 hours in a pinch. I know some > people are one or the other, but i don't find them mutually exclusive, > there are things at VO i would not put on my own bike but that's just > my style. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
