Originally Posted by Bonzo Banana

That sounds like you believe that these brands actually design bike frames and then tender out the contract to manufacture them but I think the reality is they are buying an existing design that has existing certification and they just make minor design tweaks or geometry changes and give a paint design to the actual factory. These factories aren't interested in full designs unless the importer is willing to spend serious money on each bike that would make them not competitive in the market place except for higher end bikes where you need innovation. The costs of testing and certifying new frames designs are huge in comparison to using an existing certified design from the manufacturer's portfolio of frame designs. It only makes commercial sense to do that for very high end bikes.

Also many of the existing designs have been improved over time, importers have fed back issues relating to the design and the factory has improved them. So called open mould carbon frames tend to be stronger and safer than new designs. Fuji-ta make something like 20 million bikes a year for mid-level bikes for many top brands, the factory, testing centre, painting rooms and design centre are state of the art. Robots make a large number of steel frames and they also make a huge amount of titanium, aluminium and carbon fibre frames. They are fully capable of designing their own bikes which they sell under their 'Battle' brand in the far east but the same designs are used for OEM customers in Europe and the USA etc.