Walking onto the workshop floor in Stinner’s Santa Barbara, CA facility on a Monday morning, there’s a palpable buzz of activity. TIG welders pop and glow in the distance from the welding stations at the far end of the building. A drill press hums as a bit pierces through steel tubing. Boxes are stacked in the loading dock in anticipation of a courier pickup. Frames are busily moved in and out of a paint booth. Staff consult plans for a busy day ahead of bicycle assembly. That could describe most small framebuilders. But the scaled-up Stinner of today is quite different from its humble beginnings.
From his start in 2010 as a one-man show producing custom builds in his garage with an annual output of about 30 frames, Aaron Stinner has grown output exponentially to a capacity of around 3,000 bikes per year. This includes both Stinner’s own house brand, Stinner Frameworks, in addition to contract work for other companies under the moniker Stinner Manufacturing. In the process, he's quietly built what is now one of the largest domestic bike fabricators in the US.
And, contrary to a likely assumption, the ramp-up was not due to economic pressure from the current wave of tariffs implemented by the U.S. government. Rather, it's been in the works for years as Stinner identified what he views as a lack of localized manufacturing in the American bicycle supply chain and production model that could use some redirection. On my way home from Sea Otter last month, I spent some time at Stinner HQ to learn more about where the operation is headed.
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A life in bikes
Fifteen years ago, when Stinner decided to make building bikes his livelihood, the world of bespoke bicycle fabrication was a much different place. Instagram only launched in October, 2010, and other social platforms like Twitter and even Facebook weren't much older, which put most of the focus on getting noticed to bike blogs and trade shows like the now-defunct North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS).
Newer builders needed to make even more of a bang than they do now in order to draw the eyes of potential customers away from long-established and legendary craftspeople. In the feast or famine environment, some made it and some did not. And those that did often needed to run a marketing campaign on par with how well they could lay down a "stack of dimes" – industry parlance for the clean row of TIG welds joining two tubes.
Stinner grew up around bikes. From the age of 14, he raced competitively and worked at local Santa Barbara, California bike shops in exchange for free tires and inner tubes. He stuck with it and eventually built up his own fabrication shop.
“I raced road and mountain bikes competitively across the US until I was 22,” Stinner told me as we stood on the mezzanine of his Santa Barbara facility, overlooking the shop floor.
“I went to college at UCSB, raced throughout school, and worked at a shop during that time as well,” he continued. “After graduating, I managed a bike shop and started a bike fitting service. I wanted to deepen my understanding of bike design, so in 2009 I took a framebuilding class at UBI. I started building bikes for friends shortly after – and the rest is history.”
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