The bicycles that Zak Pashak makes are simple, Heather Smith reports on The Grist.
Not fixie simple; practical simple. Three speeds, fenders, and a chain guard, with a frame made of lightweight chromoly steel. The first one was named the Model A – a riff on Ford Motor Company’s Model T. Like the Model T, it only comes in one size, and you can buy it in any color, as long as that color is black. (A second model, the Model B, comes only in white.) The plan is to keep the selling price under $700 (spendy, but about as low as you can get when buying a new bike with decent components), and appeal to the same type of person who would buy the European commuter-style bikes made by Linus or Public (neither of which makes their bikes in the U.S.)...
...The goal is to make more of the bike in-house, and Detroit’s local maker spaces, especially TechShop, have turned out to be useful sources of information and specialized machine knowledge, as well as good places to scout out employees. “The great thing about Detroit is that people really do enjoy the process of figuring out how to make things work,” he says. “With machines and with music, actually.”
Pashak, who's from Calgary, Alberta, estimates that he’s sold 1,000 bikes so far. He’s hoping that’ll be 3,000 at the end of the year, and then 50,000 per year eventually. That would make him the biggest bike manufacturer in the U.S. several times over — which he’d have to be in order to make a living. As with the Model T, the affordability of Detroit Bikes is predicated on the hope that the company will sell a lot of them. “First it was about building the factory,” says Pashak. “Then it was about production. Now it’s about sales. It’s a very challenging transition.”
