Cromo Steel Forks

When we arrived at the factory I was immediately impressed by how large and clean the facility was. All aspects of production take place in this one facility, from making custom dropouts with CNC machines, to welding and heat-treating the frames, to painting the frames (although we had The Tree frames outsourced to a powder-coating facility instead), to wheel building, to testing finished products in-house, to final assembly and boxing up the bikes for shipping. I suspected at first glance (and it was confirmed continually throughout the visit) that this is a well-organized operation.

Devinci currently manufactures about 20,000-25,000 bicycles in-house per year, making it one of the largest producers of bicycles in Canada and the largest producer of high-quality specialty bicycles in the country. Their current in-house production represents over half of all Devinci bicycles sold; the remainder are welded overseas in an effort to remain competitive. This is where The Tree comes in. All of Devinci’s hybrid bikes are welded in Asia (some of the models are still assembled at their factory in Chicoutimi, and some are assembled entirely overseas). This is the case with virtually all other Canadian brands as well. We believe, however, that there is a demand for a Canadian-made hybrid bicycle, and since Devinci still has a strong production facility here in Canada, they are well-suited for the job.

<– Read More–>

Shimano Deore Crankset

“A bike is designed to sell, it is made to look good on the showroom floor,” said Darcy McCord, service manager.

Much like anything, manufacturers up-scale parts on the bike that the consumer can see, and to save money downscales parts that have less visibility.

“It is really problematic from a service perspective, because we see a lot of bikes that are relatively new, and some of the better parts on the bike are in great shape and some of the less good parts are in really bad shape after not too much riding. In particular one of the worst cases of that is the hubs, which often they (manufacturers) will use off-brand hubs that are one, not very good quality and two, when they do fail you can’t get replacement parts for them.”

BOTD also found that manufacturers were trying to edge out each other in weight of their mid-range consumer bikes regardless of the quality of the components in the bike.

“We decided to favour robustness over weight for the tree,” said ilan.

BOTD decided to go with Shimano Deore on the entire drive train and many components because of the high degree to which component parts can be replaced and serviced. In short, a great balance between durability, performance and price.

“When your bike does need servicing, all parts are either repairable or replaceable,” replied Darcy.

The Tree was conceived not in a moment of inspiration but from a general frustration that was happening to the mid-range hybrid commuter bikes.

Reasons were many, but a couple of years ago Ilan Handelsman, manager of Bikes on the Drive (BOTD), started seeing changes in the mid-range bikes that were being sold by all manufacturers. These included moving the welding and painting off shore, reducing the robustness of wheels and hubs and making the bike less versatile to upgrades. <– Read More –>

Bikes on the Drive Decal