Budnitz Ø:G pedals up unique limited edition titanium gravel grinder

Is Budnitz still ripping off designs from more talented people? Let’s go back to a Black Sheep Bikes Facebook post from 2012:

“We rarely rant here at Black Sheep Bikes. We see no need to defend what we do as bike builders and similarly we leave others to do as they please. If you like what we do great, if not cool. There is many talented people making bikes in this world. Check out your local builder for instance. We build the bikes we love out of the passion for our trade and our love for bikes. Pretty simple. However we do feel that the we need to clarify some things as we have gotten a lot of questions so the air needs to be cleared. 5 or so years ago we were approached by a fella we will call Mr. B. He came to us with a need for a quality built bike that would suit his needs, keep him fit, and have some style. No problem. We built him a Speedster style frame, belt drive, internally geared hub, internal routing, etc.. Great commuter and he was very satisfied. So much in fact that he wanted another with a little different style and bigger tires. Kind of a urban thrasher that can fit in a travel case. Done. Another happy customer. After awhile he approached us with an idea of helping him build a bike company under his own name. He wanted us to make him replicas of the bikes we had already made with the potential to go over seas and have them massed produced. As you can imagine we felt like this wasn’t the best idea for our company and went against why we build these bikes with our own hands here in Colorado in the first place. Nothing against bikes made out of country and in Asia as many are high quality and almost all are handmade by skilled workers. It just sounded boring and not our style. So we told him we weren’t interested. Mr. B however is a man with money and the means to do as he pleases so he took our bikes had them replicated(kind of) at another American bike company and now has some being produced over seas. Damn! Wasn’t what we thought was going to happen. Oh well we suppose. We still get to build our dream bikes, one at a time, with our own hands here in Colorado. What this really boils down to is a choice. You can buy a bike from a man who has his name on it with no other connection to his product or the hard work that others have put into it. Or you can buy a bike from people who love what they do and do it themselves, pour their soul into their craft, and actually have a passion for bikes. The point is, before you drop a bunch of your hard earned cash on a Budnitz…give a guy like Curtis Inglis a call first. You will be glad you did.”

Why won’t he just go away? Budnitz is really the “Sharper Image” catalog of the bike world.