How It’s Made

Made in Taiwan can unfortunately conjure up ideas of high volume and low quality for many people. It’s sad that this stereotype exists and it’s simply not correct. Taiwan has been at the centre of bicycle manufacturing for decades. Practice anything for that length of time and you’ll likely become a master at it.

As tariffs and labour became cheaper elsewhere, many brands upped and left to seek cheaper manufacturing and import costs, often still in Asian countries. That has left cities like Taichung a rich and dense hotbed of talented, passionate and incredibly experienced manufacturers and individuals.

Taiwan remains top of the list if you want to take a bike-related idea off a piece of paper, or out of the computer and bring it to life. While there are facilities in Europe that might be able to do the same, none can come close to the production processes, know-how, and experience of the leading companies in Taiwan.

One of the very best is Genio.

Every bike engineer has probably spent a fair amount of time in Asia. There are pockets of bike manufacturing all over the continent, each with its own company, location and culture dynamic. We can’t lie that some past trips to Asia for previous companies came up in the calendar with a certain amount of apprehension - two weeks off your bike, on the hot and dirty factory floor, eating mystery dinners and copious amounts of gassy beer. But trips over to Taiwan to go to Genio, see the RAAW bikes in production and, more importantly, catch up with the Genio team come up with a lot of excitement. 

Genio is a family-run business. It came to be from an idea to offer smaller batches but much higher quality bike manufacturing. A couple of decades ago, Taiwan was manufacturing a lot more affordable bikes. As other brands chased a better bottom line and ventured to places like Cambodia, Genio stuck true to its founding principle, offering the highest quality of aluminium manufacturing. It’s still run day-to-day by one of the founders, Jeff, along with his daughter, April, and the other founders’ son, Calvin.

It’s always a thrill being picked up from the hotel by Calvin. His modified BMW M135i sings a six-cylinder chorus as you blast along the highway and through the country roads to the headquarters. He also sports a glorious mullet that makes men jealous and women go weak at the knees.

April’s knowledge of the business, processes and what’s possible is humbling. But she’ll likely humble you with her fantastic, and very dry, humour. She’s also beaten Calvin to the office in her Honda Jazz once.

Jeff is a quiet and considered man. But it’s often these people who know the most. When they talk you sit up and listen. It’s often easy to forget what Jeff has helped create while you hang out at lunch or dinner, having a laugh.

One thing everyone shares, though, is humbleness. It’s a very common part of Asian culture, but everyone at Genio is a master of their craft.

This trip centred around the final stages of the Yalla!! V2 samples and ramping up for production. It’s always a huge learning curve going to Genio, and doing it while RAAW bikes are in production is the perfect time to see all the stages of manufacturing, from material in, to bike frame out. And while it’s not the first time, the excitement on Ruben’s face as he examines the Yalla!! V2 is akin to a kid at Christmas.

The process starts with the arrival of all the raw material parts. Genio manufacturers a bunch of the parts themselves, but a lot come from outside vendors that specialise in things like CNC machining, forging and tube forming.

Upon arrival, these parts are inspected both visually and measured as part of the rigorous quality control process. Tube thicknesses and butting tapers are measured non-destructively using high-end equipment, but sometimes a simple go/no-go gauge works the most efficiently to make sure holes or interfaces are correct.

Once every raw part has been given the all-clear, the individual parts begin to get processed, ready for the first stages of welding. This includes trimming the tubes to fit to one another, called mitreing, interfaces for the parts to fit on the various jigs or tooling are machined and parts start to find their way onto fixtures for the mainframe, seat stay and chain stay, ready to be tacked together.

Genio’s fixture design is second to none. Simple but effective keyways in the fixtures guarantee that when something needs to be aligned a certain way, it is. The head tubes, for example, have small markings on them to make it easy to assemble reach or angle-adjusting headsets. With Genio’s fixtures, it’s impossible to properly assemble all the parts into the mainframe jig if the head tube isn’t correctly oriented. These fixtures are adaptable to cover the range of frame sizes, with each setup remaining solid and true to the designed frame geometry.

Tacks, or small spots of weld, are added around the frame to begin to fuse all the frame parts together. It turns multiple individual parts into a single mainframe, seat stay or chain stay, that can be transported around to the next steps.

Our bottom bracket design uses two halves, hollowed out from the inside, and welded together to create a single bigger structure. These two halves are tacked together in a specific jig and then taken out to post-machine all the functional surfaces, in more specific fixtures, ensuring that both bearing seats and shock mounts are concentric and parallel to each other.

The tacked frame parts then make their way to the master welders. We say that because most of the Genio welders have been with the company for decades. Their weld quality not only solidly fuses the frame parts for good but also looks fantastic and gives RAAW one element of its signature aesthetic.

One welder doesn’t weld up a whole frame in one go, though. Multiple welders focus on certain sections of the frame before passing the frame part down the line for another to weld another section. This helps spread out the heat build-up in the frame and creates an efficient production line while maintaining high quality.

Frames are then checked for alignment, and if needed, coaxed in the right places to make sure everything runs true. But it’s only very subtle adjustments that are needed, a testament to Genio’s long refined processes, meaning frames leave the welding line already pretty bang on with alignment.

Aluminium, once it’s been exposed to the intense heat of welding, needs to be heat treated. This carefully controlled process of heating, soaking and cooling cycles alters the aluminium’s internal structure and re-homogenises it to bring back its strength, especially in those heat-affected areas during welding.

Frames are then re-checked for proper alignment, again, something that experience in the process can reduce by even as simple things as which way to hang the frames in their baskets.

Clean and shiny frames go in, and weathered and dirty frames come out. It’s just a natural part of the heat treatment process, but this is where a tonne of work is done by Genio to carefully clean up the frames ready for simple clear coating or painting. With every inch of the frame on show for the raw frames, the utmost attention to detail and care is taken to provide their signature finish quality. The final interfaces on the frames are then machined, like the precise head tube and seat tube reams and bottom bracket threads.

Now that all the frame parts have been manufactured, and the various rocker link and hardware parts have been through the same stringent quality control checks, everything is assembled to make a frame kit. Specialist tooling allows things like sealed caps and stick-on protectors to be assembled quickly and perfectly multiple times a day.

Throughout production batches, Genio will take several frames for final quality control, measuring things like the geometry and pivot points through to interfaces for things like headsets and bottom brackets. Frames are also periodically in-house tested for strength and fatigue in Genio’s test lab. Development frames need to endure these destructive tests to get the green light for production, but consistent testing is one additional way to monitor the production process.

Frames are then packed up with their packaging and protection before going into the frame boxes, ready to be opened by our own QC specialist, Jo, once they’ve landed in Germany. Jo checks through all the frames one final time before assembling the various customer-ordered parts and sending them off to its lucky to-be owner.

But it’s not all work. Taichung and its suburbs are bustling with things to see and do, as well as copious places to eat and drink. There’s a fascinating and growing culture in the city. With this being an international hub for bike manufacturing, it’s quite often the case that you’ll bump into people from other brands, either also out visiting or living in Taichung full time. After a day of getting your hands dirty on the shop floors, it’s great to down tools and head out for the evening and catch up with people you’ve not seen in a while. Wandering around the city at night is a delight, and if you’re really lucky, you can take a duck in shoes for a walk.

But one of the highlights of the non-work schedule is fast becoming the go-karting session. It always involves a stop at the Dadu Trail House to see Stevie. Once an employee of Genio, Stevie is now a bit of a Taiwan man to know for anything bike-related, be that in helping brands secure manufacturing partners, communicating with them, or even building up the Taiwan mountain biking community. He’s an all-around GC. For this trip, Ruben got out for a ride with the guys on the trail network just next to Dadu. Riding a bike is always good, and doing it in a completely different country and environment makes this trip feel not like work at all. With bikes such a part of the culture in Taiwan, the cycling culture is strong, and growing.

Just around the corner from Dadu, is the go-karting. No matter your calm and composed demeanour on entry, you’ll be thinking you're Sebastian Vettel within two corners and discussing the finer points of corner entry speed in the breaks between sessions. The outdoor course is high-speed and a lot of fun. As you get schooled by the owner, it’s a lesson in how to drive a kart properly. And as the laps go by, it’s a great experience to fine-tune your driving style and skills.

This has resulted in so much fun, that the past two RAAW Christmas parties have also centred around go-karting, with it being oh so close to opening the RAAW HQ shutters and creating a private track at the office. I’d put money on there being a RAAW go-kart before an eMTB.

Calling Genio a bike manufacturing company is selling them a little short. For us at RAAW, we see them as craftsmen. Making a bike is not an easy process to do once, let alone hundreds of times. They are a big reason why RAAW bikes are the way they are, and we’re beyond proud to work with them. Every time we come back from a Taiwan trip, we’re now full of stoke, inspired and ready to dive into the next project with Genio and its group of craftsmen.