How this works

Two titles, one owner

Handbuilt Bicycle Guide is a directory. Shows, custom frame builders and small manufacturers pay an annual fee to be listed. That fee is $200 a year. It buys a listing. It buys nothing else.

Handbuilt Bicycle News has reported on this industry since 2016. It is where we report and where we argue. Some of what appears here is promotional — features about companies who have asked us to write about them. That work is paid for, it is available only to companies listed in the Guide, and it is labelled so you can tell it apart from everything else.

What is not for sale

Our reporting and our commentary. No listing, no promotional feature and no advertising buys favourable coverage here, or protection from unfavourable coverage. A company that pays us gets the same treatment as one that does not. If that ever stops being true, this page is the first thing that will have to change.

What we don't cover

Both titles exist to promote this industry, so we set a high bar for critical coverage. We do not write about disputes we regard as petty, and we are not a venue for settling personal scores. Where something can affect the industry at scale, we cover it — and we cover it whoever is involved.

Where we stand

We are not neutral and we do not pretend to be. Handbuilt Bicycle News exists because we believe the handbuilt and small-scale bicycle industry is worth sustaining, and we measure what happens in it by whether it helps the people who build the bicycles. That is the reason the publication exists. We would rather declare it than have you work it out for yourself.

Why the two titles are separate

Because the jobs are different. One sells promotion. The other reports. Keeping them under separate names, on separate sites, means neither has to pretend to be the other.

If we get it wrong

Tell us. We correct errors of fact in public, and we say what changed.