PORTLAND, Ore. (BRAIN) — Zen Bicycle Fabrication has discontinued operations and is in the process of vacating its premises. The company is working to find production capacity at other builders for its current customers, but it will not be getting back into production framebuilding itself.
"We are closing down completely, we are not reorganizing," said David Woronets, Zen Fabrication's founder. "We built our facility based on maintaining a certain capacity, and we had too many months below that figure to continue our business," he added. When the company closed it had five employees.
Woronets had investigated going forward with a smaller facility and was seeking investment to make the change, but decided it was better to close completely than to reinvest.
"There is interest in domestic manufacturing, but there is not the volume needed to keep us going. We wanted to maintain a 100-piece minimum order, but much of the interest is in runs of 10s and 20s," he said.
Woronets and his team are working to match their customers, including the company's Zen Bike Company brand, with production capacity at other U.S. builders. Depending on how that goes, Woronets thinks there might be a need for a broker like himself to match available production capacity with customers and help shepherd products to the market. Woronets can be reached at Dworonets@gmail.com.
