The indomitable gauls

The Caminade adventure began with the simple idea of building my suspended mountain bike frame to participate in the Transvésubienne (4th in 2010) : it was the birth of the One4All in mechanically welded steel tubes. First brazed at Cyfac, I then went to train in this technique in England to internalize the process, but the arrival of Mika allowed us to move directly to TIG welding, thus opening the door to a final version in titanium. The anti-pumping kinematics based on a neutral point of the chain effect had also been patented: a pride at the time, but a vision error if the goal is to prevent others from doing it. The man has patented everything except his stupidity....

Caminade manufactures 5 to 6 welded frames per month, from tandems to full suspension, including our flagship: the gravel bike. This assembly line employs 2 people full-time because it is also necessary to purchase and then assemble the parts to equip these bikes, which cost between €5,000 and €8,000. Even with an investment of €100,000, manufacturing a custom-made rigid, mechanically welded titanium bike frame takes more than 20 hours; and it's no faster with steel or aluminum... which is why most brands have their bikes manufactured in Asia.

However, there was a faster method, used by Look in the 80s : glued connections. This is the technique that we brought up to date 4 years ago, with carbon composite sleeves on titanium tubes, allowing us to divide the working time by 4 while continuing to make custom-made products. To do this, we had to invest around €100k in molds from which 6 AllRoads come out every month, including our best-selling AllRoad with Pinion gearbox , manufactured and assembled by a single person.

We can always do better, especially when the ultimate goal is to show that in France we still know how to make bicycles and thus help with the reclassification of 50% of automobile workers who, without that, will remain on the straw. It's not me who says it, but the PTEF of the ShiftProject. Their reasoning is based on 2 simple ideas :

• Some french people will soon no longer be able to afford to fuel their combustion engine cars with oil that is becoming increasingly expensive, as it is increasingly scarce. Of course, we could revive our colonial spirit and do without intermediaries to lower prices... but war is bad !
• Since the electric car engine is easier to manufacture, we are going to lose a lot of engine manufacturing jobs: and I know this well, I am one of them.

But we can also decide that a 1-ton car with 5 seats (including 4 empty ones) is oversized for many of our daily journeys and opt for the bicycle, which is more... made in France. Some will call this degrowth, others frugality, I like the term conviviality dear to Ivan Illich, whose theory of the generalized speed of transport (which dates from my year of birth) demonstrates the superiority of the bicycle.

The time saved by going faster is actually lost by working more to pay the social cost of this speed : infrastructure, accidents, regulation... and complexity of the technical object "car" compared to the bicycle.

So, when Protoform contacted Caminade's design office, after a 40% drop in their order book for injected car parts, we jumped at the chance to create with them and for Ultima , a production tool for frames, forks, stems and seatposts in recycled carbon composite.

Protoform , based in Châlon sur Saône, has total control of the production tool: from an "injectable" 3D file provided by Caminade's 2-head design office, they ensure the design and machining of the mold, the fine-tuning injection, the mini-validation series and of course the first series of 1,400 parts, intended to meet Ultima's needs during the second half of 2022. The bicycle activity is on track in the short term to exceed 50% of their turnover, allowing them to save jobs... and the icing on the cake, as they are the leading players in this field, to create others.

This "chassis" production tool will have cost only three times the sum of the two production tools currently in operation at Caminade and will supply the 15 Ultima employees to manufacture 5,000 bicycles per year. LEAN operation would allow the St Priest site to easily double production, or even deploy other units, if the demand for bicycles, and more particularly for bicycles manufactured in France, continues to grow.

Ultima 's leitmotif is to make the first 100% French bicycle: we're almost there! By relying on the historical players in the cycle industry in France and the young shoots, Caminade was able to help Ultima source 90% of the components manufactured in France and less than 1% outside the EU. This is already an achievement, which will improve further next year in view of the desire for change that drives certain automotive manufacturers: Valéo in the lead, with an engine including an automatic gearbox. But soon MIF brakes and lighting will be added :

• Mavic wheels which thereby formalize its shift towards urban use,
• the Baramind handlebars are an evolution of the ones I used for mountain biking,
• Hutchinson tires,
• Look pedals (inventor of the automatic pedal),
• Stronglight trays,
• the Novaride chain tensioner specially developed for the Valeo engine,
• the Joker cargo fork that easily transforms any bike into a mini-cargo bike
• ...and of course the frame/fork/stem/seatpost assembly designed by Caminade.

Once all these small world specialists in cycling had been brought together, all that was missing was the creation of a micro-factory for assembling local components: the first was created in St Priest and therefore bears the colors of Ultima , which offers on the basis of the same platform : an urban bike, a mini-cargo, a trekking bike and a bike dedicated to carrying children.

Without a doubt, we should see this kind of micro-factory appearing in every department, creating many more jobs than those which simply assemble parts from very far away, where neither the work aspect nor the pollution aspect of the induced transport are respected.