Growing A Brand
The beginnings of Rodriguez’s frame building business, VR Bicycles, started as a mere personal challenge.
“Every year I give myself a challenge,” Rodriguez says. “Last year, I built a bike.”
Rodriguez took a welding class and got his hands on a jig borrowed from Britton Kusiak, owner of Volker Bicycles. Vincent was ready to start working on his first frame. The first bike wasn’t easy.
“With any project, it will either make you or break you—that first bike broke me,” Rodriguez says. “I made a tiny little mistake that I should have adjusted from the beginning. I found myself at a point of, here I am: I already spent $500, do I fix it or scrap it? It took another week to fix it all.”
Rodriguez has completed 17 bikes, each a little different from the previous. One bike, deemed “Poltergeist” has a steel emblem of a ghost on the seat tube. A bike he built up for the 2013 North American Handmade Bicycle Show as a new builder has mustache bars and a carbon fork. Each bicycle has its own personality and quirks, but all of his bikes have one thing in common—a respect for the materials.
There are no logos or decals on Rodriguez’s steel bikes—just a copper headbadge with a small carved out ‘v’ in the corner.
“I want them to be a conversation piece for people, not about advertising or marketing,” Rodriguez says.
Rodriguez spent two weeks in March learning from David Bohm at the Bohemian Frame Building School in Tucson to perfect the art of his fillet brazing technique. David Bohm says it is unusual for existing frame builders to seek out further education and coaching.
“Vincent did and that says a lot about how he wants to progress and grow in the business,” Bohm says. “He has some wonderful ideas about what he wants for his bicycle and overall business, and I have no doubt that sometime his name and brand will carry a connotation of quality.”
“There is a romance and special quality to making the miters by hand,” Rodriguez says. “It takes more time, but getting my hands on the file to feel the work makes it that more special.”
Rodriguez says that he has been surprised by the level of interest people have shown in steel bicycles.
“With steel bicycles, someone is able to reminisce to the moments of riding their first bicycle and the freedom that comes with that and being a cool kid on a bicycle,” Rodriguez says. “Steel is real.”
Rodriguez spent months tending to his frame building business until last December, he decided it was time to the make the next natural step—open up a shop.