Close to the Wind
It's a sailing expression, but one which feels quite apt at this time - in a few different ways. I think it's been a tough year for a lot of folks, war and strife in many parts of the world, difficult times for lots of people financially, political turmoil, tariff fallout... Combine all that with the onset of winter (for those of us on the northern part of the globe) and its attendant wet roads, cold winds, muddy trails and dirty bikes - it's easy to feel a little glum.
For Singular this has been exacerbated by some recurring issues with our recent batch of Peregrine frames. These were built by a factory in mainland China, rather than Maxway in Taiwan - who I've used up to now for almost all of my production steel framesets. The reason for that change was not a financial one, or at least not directly. The key motivation was that they promised much faster delivery times. Prior batches from Taiwan have taken around a year from order to delivery - worse in covid times. Faster delivery is critical to me as it helps satisfy demand quickly, and ensures that periods for which things were out of stock are as short as possible.
Of course, I didn't take this move lightly, and I wanted to do everything possible to ensure these new frames would be of as high (if not higher) standard than what our customers have become used to over the years. So we had three different rounds of sample frames from them, each of which was tested, built, ridden and evaluated. The frames themselves were from the outset excellent - with very high construction quality, adherence to tolerances for all part fitments, frame alignment etc. However, the finish quality was not quite where I wanted it. Following extensive back and forth with the builder and the painter, the final samples I received were of a very high standard. Peregrines are not easy to paint - the contrasting headtube and seatube panels need to be exceedingly carefully prepped, masked and painted to achieve a nice clean line. In the end we got there, or so I thought...
Fast forward about 9 months (turns out the new guys weren't so fast as they'd promised...) and frames started arriving first with some of my partner stores who are closer to the factory than us here in the UK. They were delighted with the colour, and the apparent construction of the frames, however a number of the frames they received had some issues with the paint - dust flecks, pin holes, poor masking or small chips.... Understandably, they decided they didn't want to take frames from this batch. So of course I refunded their payments and had them shipped back half way around the world.
When we finally received stock in the UK and US workshops it was a similar story - a good proportion of frames had some paint issues. Some of these were able to be rectified in house - which resulted in some really lovely looking frames up to the standard I expect, they've been going out to some delighted customers. We've now sorted through all our stock in both locations and those blemished frames are listed separately (at a discount) on the web store. They still come with the full Singular lifetime warranty, and the paint issues in the grand scheme of things are quite minor. However, it's been a huge blow to my already strained finances. We're working hard to make everything right with all our customers and partners - plus try to recover from this situation and look forward.
Suffice to say, I've resolved not to work any further with the folks in China, and future steel frame production will be back with our old friends Maxway in Taiwan. I'm working closely with them to ensure that our next production run of Peregrines will be as perfect as we can possibly make them. More news on that and the possibility of pre-order early in the new year, with delivery in summer.
All this is a quite long winded way of saying that things are very tight for Singular right now, and I appreciate that is the case for a lot of people. I never do 'black Friday' deals as the whole thing really runs counter to my ethos of producing high quality products which sell themselves and not wanting to ram marketing guff down people's throats.
Nevertheless, we do have the blemished frames referenced above in our new outlet section on the site, as well as a few other things (and there'll be some more) as I try to clear some old stuff out and generate some cash - so I can buy more bikes! If you've been affected by this - that is, received a Peregrine with sub-standard paint but paid full price - please get in touch.
For those of you who observe it, Happy Thanksgiving. It always strikes me as a really lovely holiday - completely secular - no gifts - just families gathering for some good food and to be grateful for what they have. It's a nice sentiment to carry through to the silly season - and indeed all year round.
Take care of yourselves, and if you can, someone else too. *
Sam & the Singular Team
*with thanks to Stephen Dubner - who's excellent podcast I thoroughly recommend.