Bike Gallery Service Manager Tours Asian Bike Factories.

In early December 2007, Bike Gallery General Service Manager, Brett Flemming toured several bike factories in China and Taiwan with representatives of Trek Bicycle Company. Brett returned to Portland with lots of pictures, a few souvenirs, a new perspective on Asian bike-factories, and a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for Trek bicycles.

The journey really began when Brett provided feedback to Trek about some of the challenges Bike Gallery faces in assembling Asian-built bicycles for our stores. Trek was listening and responded to his input and then asked him to tour some of facilities in Asia to provide additional suggestions for improvement.

On his adventure Brett toured factories, assembly lines, and testing facilities in Shenzen and Shangai, China and Taichung, Taiwan. Overall he was very impressed with the capabilities of all these plants and was somewhat surprised with what he describes as “the better than decent working conditions in these factories.” Additionally, he observed that the pace at which the factory workers moved was very reasonable.

During his tour of the various facilities, Brett was also able to have direct dialog with some of the factory workers, in some cases providing direct feedback at the assembly line. According to Brett, “It was an eye-opening experience, to be sure" and he realized that "the Chinese factory worker is superbly capable of performing tasks precisely as specified.”

While Brett thinks that there is always more room for improvement, he was impressed with what Trek is doing to deliver higher-quality Asian-built bikes. If you see Brett at our Hollywood store, don’t hesitate to ask him about his experience. He’s always excited to share what he learned with others.