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Road Bike Frames, Wheels & Components / Re: Which Chinese Brands Offer Custom-Painted and/or Branding-Less Framesets?
« on: June 02, 2025, 11:05:22 AM »I think the assumption that a branded frame is generally higher quality is probably incorrect. The more prominent brands used to hire third-party QC; I suspect they still do. They supposedly have dedicated lines in their factories too, but you won't be getting any of those frames unbranded.Thanks; this really helps
OEM-makes a frame to customer specs, customer usually owns the designs
ODM-designs frame to sell through other brands (more or less in this case), factory owns the design
Most of the reputable factories discussed on this forum are functionally ODMs (despite the posters throwing shade about what an OEM is or isn't; but whatevs we can play loose with definitions). The top OEMs aren't selling low-volume framesets and seem to have no problems kicking out brands that don't meet their expected volumes (see the somewhat nasty divorce between Xiamen Lightweight Composites and Seka and all the leaked Seka Spear RDC stuff that resulted)
If you're talking about something like Quick Pro vs. Carbonda vs. Flybike (are they mainly an OEM or an ODM at this point? but I digress), they are all related companies, so if you get a better price on a Quick Pro with custom paint from Carbonda, I doubt there is any difference in quality.
The Same goes for Tavelo vs. Adapt (ODM who you cant buy direct from as a consumer) vs. a small brand like Oak who sells the same frameset. I highly doubt there is significant extra QC happening from a one or two man bike company.

Rightly or wrongly, I lean towards purchasing a frameset from a brand because of the supposed "extra" QC you mentioned. That's why I reached out to the brands/companies listed in the first post, and it seems, contrary to what you stated, that some brands (Elves, Tavelo, Yoeleo) will sell custom-painted and/or logo-less framesets, as indicated in their response e-mails. They've basically stated, "No logo or branding? No problem. Send us the color(s) you want. We'll just a few extra weeks." Others have straight-up said no, and interestingly, upcoming brand evolve (from Elitewheels) told me that while it won't do it now, they'll consider it for the future and to contact them again in a few months.
Perhaps I'm still not fully understanding the different terms, but all I was initially looking for is information on which (Chinese) brands/companies, outside of the ones I already contacted, sell framesets with choose-your-own colors and don't require branding/logos. B2B entities don't matter for obvious reasons. For whatever reasons, some people felt that understanding the term "OEM" was relevant.