Where Was Your Frame Made | Seven Cycles skip to content
Current Lead Times: Simple-Custom Framesets: 1 week. Full Custom Bikes: 7 weeks.

U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix

Where Was Your Frame Made?

This table is the simplest way we've been able to present price vs. value for high end performance bike frames. In short, the brand's warranty is a strong indicator of the company's faith in the products they offer. Where the frame is built is also an indicator of long-term quality.

Rider-Ready sizes

Footnotes for this table:

  1. Great bikes come out of Asia. However, it would be difficult to dispute the value of US made relative to overseas outsourcing.
  2. Not available as a frameset. Complete bike must be purchased.
  3. We cannot find anything that states where the Grevil is manufactured. However, based on the price and that they don't clearly state that the frame is manufactured in Italy, it is reasonable to deduce the frame's fabrication is outsourced to an Asian manufacturer.

Footnotes and Data Details

These footnotes were originally used for an article that compared Seven's frame manufacturing to Chinese frame manufacturing. Regardless, the information is relevant to the table on this page. The short version of comparing Seven's frame manufacture to most carbon fabrication is:

  • All Seven frames are by Seven Cycles craftspeople in our Massachusetts factory. The typical Seven build team of three craftspeople has 50-plus years of framebuilding experience. Most of us are lifelong riders.
  • Stock performance carbon frame manufacturing is almost always outsourced to Asia. The term "outsourced" is used because no U.S. bike company has a majority ownership in any Chinese bike frame manufacturer.[1] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Built on an assembly line in large quantities as a commodity.
    1. Obfuscation: ^ As with so many things related to governance, industry, and international business, finding clear regulations and laws is near impossible. However, our statement about Chinese manufacturing ownership is taken from numerous sources. Some are clearer than others, but none are 100% clear about what is and isn't legal in mainland China. We believe that at some point, foreign majority ownership in simple non-technical manufacturing is likely to become encouraged. If that occurs, we'll update this page.
    2. We know a bit about this: ^ We have worked with a few Chinese manufacturers over the decades. We call them "partners" because their spirit is of partnership. And they are excellent to work with. We do not have an ownership stake in any of them.
    3. The most recent reference: ^ From Harris Sliwoski Law Firm, who has locations around the world, including in mainland China, writes in 2024: "No American [...] company [...] can own a Chinese factory directly. It is possible the American [...] company that claims to own a Chinese factory owns a Chinese company (a WFOE or a China Joint Venture) that in turn owns a Chinese factory, but the odds of this are incredibly slim."
    4. Weasel words: ^ From Harris Sliwoski Law Firm, again in 2024: "What does it mean when a foreign company claims to own the Chinese factory [...] one of the following two things: 1). The foreign company that claims to own a Chinese factory is flat out lying. 2). The foreign company is fudging the truth. A lot. This occurs when the foreign company speaks of having your products made by “our factories” in China. If you push them on what they mean by “our factories,” they will usually state that the factories in China to which they are referring are the factories they have worked with for many years and know well and trust." Their emphasis.
    5. Actual vs. theory: ^ From Tetra Consultants, a business that helps foreigners set up business in China states: "China has repealed most of its protectionist foreign ownership limits in the financial sector [...] from 23 July 2020." This statement is an example of how recent and how limited the scope of business is for foreign ownership opportunities.
    6. Bicycles are nowhere shown on China's Encouraged Industries list: ^ The Catalogue of Encouraged Industries for Foreign Investments, 2022 does not mention bicycles in any categories. Of course, this doesn't mean bikes are automatically excluded, but it may provide insight as to why no U.S. company owns a Chinese frame manufacturer. (Yes, we know this PDF is written in Chinese. It's fairly easy to translate.)
    7. Frame manufacturing is not "encouraged": ^ The Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries has no industries that could be even vaguely interpreted to include bicycle frame manufacturing in the "encouraged" catalogue of industries. Granted, a lack of clarity does not automatically mean that bike frame factories cannot be a WFOE. However, it does imply why no foreigners own bike frame factories.
    8. More on "encouragement": ^ This list of potential WFOE businesses defines WFOE's encouraged manufacturing to encompass automobiles, electronics, textile production, machinery production. None of these sectors can be construed to include bike frame manufacturing.
    9. Manufacture for domestic consumption: ^ From a C.I. Process article: Consumer goods are essentially, if not exclusively, manufactured in China in order to be sold locally. The article explains more about how this is the case.