(BRAIN) — Since the European Union first imposed anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese e-bike more than a decade ago, Portugal has become the bike-making capital of Europe, producing about 3 million bikes and e-bikes a year. The nation has built a bike industry cluster where suppliers of various components work with assembly factories to efficiently make and assemble bikes, much like Taiwan's famed manufacturing cluster.
So it makes sense for American brands, looking to onshore bike production in a time of high tariffs, to look to Portugal for a little inspiration, and some help.
Cardinal Cycling Group, the owner of the Time bicycle brand, is partnered with Unibike, a Portugal assembly factory, to open a painting and bike assembly factory in the Spartanburg, South Carolina, area this year.
Tony Karklins, the CEO of Cardinal, said the facility will be called Unibike America and is already talking to potential clients to begin painting and assembly.
“It’s the moment to do this,” Karklins said, referring to the new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. “Everybody needs this service, and we are going to be the first player here. It will be a facility not controlled by any one bike brand,” he said, similar to contract assembly factories used by multiple bike brands in Taiwan.
Unibike was founded by Sergio Ramos in Soza, Portugal, in the heart of Portugal’s “Bicycle Valley” region. Following a factory fire in 2019, Ramos rebuilt the factory, which was re-opened in 2021. In 2023 NEOMOUV, a French e-bike brand, acquired an 80% share in Unibike. Its Portugal factory has powder coating and wet paint facilities and capacity to assemble a quarter million e-bikes per year.
Karklins is a leading proponent of U.S. manufacturing and assembly. He was the founder of Allied Cycle Works, the Arkansas-based carbon bike brand that is now owned by a Walton family investment group.
Cardinal manufacturers Time frames and forks in Europe and will begin production of framesets in South Carolina next month. Separate from Cardinal, Karklins also is a part owner of Munich Composites, which plans to produce carbon rims in South Carolina using assets acquired from a German rim company. Cardinal is also the former owner of Detroit Bikes, which manufactured its own bikes, including welding steel frames, and did assembly for other brands including Schwinn. Cardinal retains a share in Detroit after selling a majoriy of the company last year.
Karklins said he has been working with Spartanburg development officials to attract Unibike to the area, including traveling to Portugal with regional officials. Spartanburg is a city of about 40,000, 33 miles east of Greenville, South Carolina.
“Unibike is a vendor of ours (at Time) and we’ve been sort of courting them with help from the region of Spartanburg. We’ve been studying how the industry grew in Europe and in Portugal,“ Karklins told BRAIN.
“We hope that we can build a cluster of manufacturers around Spartanburg, something like an American version of the cluster in Portugal,” he said. He said Europe looked to Portugal, a relatively low cost labor market, for its bike production after the anti-dumping tariffs were imposed. In the same way, the U.S. should look to areas with affordable, scaleable labor forces, like the Southeast and Detroit, he said.
By painting frames and assembling bikes, the assembly factory will allow brands to add value in the U.S, reducing tariff exposure. Domestic painting also allows brands to keep a stock of frames that can be painted and assembled as needed. Kent has an assembly factory in South Carolina that does similar work for its mass market bikes, and Guardian Bikes does the same in Seymour, Indiana, for its line of juvenile bikes. Unibike America would be different from those factories because it would not be owned by a single bike brand.
Especially with the latest round of reciprocal tariffs affecting major U.S. supplier nations like Cambodia and Vietnam, Karklins is more bullish than ever about domestic manufacturing. He said the U.S. should look to Europe to see how it is done.
“The sky is not falling,” due to tariffs, he said. “It didn’t fall in Europe. Europe is making a ton of bikes over there now — it’s a vibrant industry. We have a road map to follow.”
