Why does it cost so much? We first asked if the NT$1M price wasn’t a typo. It wasn’t.
Sure, it is a pretty slick looking bike. Super integrated. Lots of aero frame sections and sharp edges that you can only really make with this type of fully 3D-printed, aka additive manufacturing construction.
And this is probably the thinnest toptube we’ve ever spotted – sorry Titici. But a custom Chinese-made titanium road bike couldn’t really cost so much to produce, no matter how much 3D-printed ti tech is baked inside. Right?
So we kept digging.
It turns out, the story is a bit more complex.
NT$1,000,000 custom 3D-printed ti Laget Aero One road bike
Yes, this is a super custom bike that’s going to cost you a lot of money. And it isn’t cheap or easy to make. Of course, designing the internal structure is a huge a part as variable wall thicknesses when creating a bike with such complex outer shapes and such thin cross sections. Plus, it is made to measure, both in geometry/fit and in the strength/stiffness required by each buyer.
Then, it is actually printed in two separate parts. TSB welds it together, then carefully ground the welds smooth so that they disappear as one piece.
But for its high cost, more of an issue is it being hard to get anywhere out of TSB’s home in China.
Laget – TSB connection
You see, Laget-branded bikes are the flagship of TSB Technology, a titanium bike maker based in China that manufactures for many other bike companies, probably including several bikes we’ve ridden or reported on. I know that, because the TSB sales manager that I spoke with today said she read about one of the bikes that they produced in an article I wrote. Without being sure (and with explicitly no confirmation from either TSB or the end-consumer brand), I would guess that she meant a Czech company that rhymed with ‘a gator‘, if only based on the bottom bracket design I saw on one of TSB’s other custom sample frames on display at Taipei Cycle. But I’ve written about enough 3D-printed or just titanium bikes in the last year or two that there could be a number of other bikes she was alluding to.
Assuming my guess was correct, or it was another fatter ti bike, I’ve probably ridden a TSB-made titanium bike quite a lot off road. And I’m always a bit brutal to ti bikes just because I know they can take it. And they often become my go-to benchmark test mules for a lot of off-road components.
TSB aren’t an “open mold” producer per se, but rather work with bike designers to build unique custom bikes that can be sold at usually affordable prices.
Custom ti bikes means slick details these days
Laget is a different story as this is an in-house brand they created to highlight their unique ti manufacturing capabilities, but generally limited to sales in China. But for the right price and/or the right quantities, they’ll pretty much work with anyone anywhere in the world looking to build a unique ti bike.
So they created this Laget Aero One aero road bike, and effectively said the 1700g frameset should sell for around $9-10,000 US.
Then they built it up as a complete bike to show off at the Taipei Cycle show this week, and needed to give it a price. It’s a fairly fancy build at 7.9kg complete, but not entirely top-tier. It totally could have been listed for NT$400-600k. But that wouldn’t factor in the hassles of individually fitting & customizing a bike in Taiwan for them to go back to China to produce (remember, they mostly sell production batches of bikes, not one-off projects.) So it they priced it like that, there would probably be several potential Taiwanese customers who would be willing to have one made. And who would remember a pricetag like that?
So Laget settled on an even million in New Taiwan dollars.
You won’t forget that number.
(Insert Dr. Evil smirk.)
Laget Aero One availability is limited, but that’s intentional
Now, if someone in Taiwan decides to buy one, they’ll get a very exclusive bike with an exclusive custom experience to match.
And in the meantime, the whole bike industry just learned that TSB can create even more extremely sleek and more integrated titanium bikes than we already knew they could produce.
Plus, their advanced 3D-printed capabilities could likely open up even more possibilities for bike brands looking for a ti frame manufacturing partner, even it they had only been thinking about 3D-printe dropouts or headtubes.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled for more refined ti bikes to come across our inboxes and workbenches.
