An AI proof career? An in-depth chat on the bicycle frame building craft

The latest Cycling Industry News Podcast takes a deep dive into the craft of frame making, its past, present and future and how it fits into the cycling industry in 2026.

Sean Lally once again guides the conversation for this latest CIN Podcast, with a full discussion on the topic with Ellis Briggs’ Paul Gibson.

While the broader industry has experienced a tumultuous half decade, the framebuilding sector has received significant blows, with some big names going to the wall (with a lucky few saved from closure). Likewise the supply chain for the sector is arguably somewhat precarious – a point picked up in the discussion.

Yet the fast-moving nature of the modern world means that a resurgence of craft – and skills that are unlikely to be undermined by AI and US tech barons – indicates the sector’s future might have some interesting potential.

Gibson picks up the point and also touches on the thorny topic of bike prices: “How are we going to bring young people into cycling generally? We can’t expect a lot of young people to buy a £6,000 road bike. Maybe we need a more repair and reuse culture. There are thousands of steel frames out there that can be reused and turned into usable bikes for not a lot of money. Then a whole industry can grow around doing that – repairing them, renovating them… all the things the big corporations aren’t really interested in.”

How to get started in frame building

Skills and training is an existential discussion point for many industries, not least framebuilding. Gibson says: “I think where we slipped up as an industry is that we didn’t really train anyone under the bigger workshops… we could have kept it going by training apprentices. But there was a bit of a vacuum…

“The frame building courses that we run [at Ellis Briggs] are something I see as experience course. But if you want to seriously have a career in frame building I really believe you have to do things in depth. Otherwise you don’t build up the muscle memory, learning to see what lugs are supposed to look like… when I was starting, I wasn’t interesting in lugged frames. I thought they were old fashioned and obsolete. 6 years later of daily experience I began to appreciate them… that has to be built up, you can’t learn it in an afternoon.

“There’s a distinction between what craft is and what manufacturing is. When you manufacture something you take the human out of the process as much as possible to make it scalable. Craft that is the opposite of that, where you are relying on the human’s judgement and skill. It’s not knocking things out as much as possible.”

The chat unpicks some key points that affect the shifting nature of the business. Gibson notes: “When we were selling bikes pre-2000, most of the cyclists we were selling bikes to where lifelong cyclists. They all knew the top tube length they wanted, what seat tube size… and all the rest of it. We went through a period where we got a lot more new people into cycling, but when you don’t have the club structure in place, there needed to be something else that sized people up.”

The expanding remit of what is required to do business has also had an effect: “The problem for a solo framebuilder is you also have to be a businessman and most of them out there are frame builders first… it’s often a different personality.”

Craftspeople have also had to learn to do outreach through the likes of social media too: “Back in time, people rung up and sent letters. Nowadays you have to do more outreach to get customers realise you still exist and see what you’re doing.

“I think we stand for a working class craftsmanship that was supposed to be accessible, so we have shied away from being very boutique,” Gibson says. “As the demographic has changed, we can’t rely on the older clientele that have a lot of money, we have to change things for the younger generations.”

Listen to the fascinating discussion online now.

There’s a wealth of industry conversation in the archive too. Dig in here: https://soundcloud.com/user-740094534