I get asked alot where our frames are made and recently on a web forum in a galaxy not so far away, some one obserbed that all things US made must be better than all things Chinese made so i thought i'd offer an insight - both on that issue and to clear up where our framesets are made.

We (Sunday) now use a combination of suppliers from the USA, China and Taiwan – some simply for working samples, some for full on production. We don’t now bother to state which frames are made where – we’re very much design led so we find a manufacturer who can do the ‘best job’ of a given design rather than asking for a version of what they already have. We might use the USA for their expertise on folded 6al sheet work or the guys in Taiwan for their extruded butting quality. Lynskey weld well, no disputes, but its weird that people hold them up as the benchmark for manufacturing when Litespeed have had some well documented manufacturing failures in the past (tearing integrated head tubes seem to come up a lot on web forums). We’ve had not one failure from a frame yet. At all. Zero. So that's why we've not considered changing our manufacture to the USA - what's the benefit if we have a 100% manufacturing success rate?

Well, there's the humanitaran issue, potentially. Cheap labour and all that. In fact the forum post that got my goat specifically implied our frames are assembled by 'emaciated 13 year olds'.

One of the Chinese factories on our panel of suppliers has ISO accreditation and is constantly at pains to meet international standards precisely because they are aware that they have to fight unhelpful semi-informed notions of them employing ‘emaciated 13 year olds’. On paper they are the best qualified and professional of all our suppliers. Their fees largely reflect this - They're not so cheap that we couldn't switch production to, say, Lynskey and be able to keep our retail points the same.

Sadly, the same factory has been ‘emaciated’ thanks to the recent earthquakes –the factory is about 150km from the epicentre and their community is living in camps while they wait for their homes to be re-built. Iain and I are travelling out to see them in July, firstly to see the people with whom we’ve developed a professional relationship over the last few months and to place an order – naturally they risk customers walking away as they’re unable to fulfil orders at the moment and we don’t want that to happen. For all that we use some Chinese suppliers, we at Sunday do have a moral compass and try to use it as often as possible.

When i read the forum post that invoked my ire, i made a response to it - largely what i've put here - and then ffound that I was about to apologise for having a rant and taking the topic off thread. But it wasn’t me who took the topic off thread. We use responsible suppliers and we are currently doing all we can to support people who have indeed been emaciated over the last month – though not through unethical employment practice, but by mother nature.

Greg