Can America learn to make again?

Dream of an all-American bicycle takes shape while a toymaker struggles to survive amid Trump's big manufacturing push.

- Bhagyashree Garekar US Bureau Chief

Mr Brian Riley has confronted hard truths in his 15-year quest to become the sole manufacturer of children's bicycles built entirely from scratch in the US.

The 38-year-old from Austin has seen for himself how decades of offshoring have hollowed out the country's production capacity, making it difficult to build even a relatively simple product, such as a child's bike, in the US.

But he did not give up. His company, Guardian Bikes, today has an annual revenue of US$100 million (S$130 million) and his bikes are nearing a milestone of being fully made in the US.

The unique proposition of his high-end bikes for children, priced at US$150 to US$400 each, is a safety-enhancing braking system. He developed the idea after watching his grandfather's painful recovery from a bike accident - the elderly man had braked too hard and was thrown over the handlebars and suffered a broken neck.

Mr Riley got his big break on Shark Tank, a reality TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas in the hope of attracting funding. In his 2017 appearance, he made a pitch for US$500,000 to make children's bikes featuring his patented braking system.

An investor liked the pitch and the products. Mr Riley got the US$500,000 in return for a 15 per cent equity stake.

At the time, not a single bike brand sold in the US was being manufactured in the country.

Before this, Mr Riley had made the rounds of big US bike companies to sell them his technology, until he realised that all bikes were being made in China. When he first decided to venture into manufacturing himself, he too relied on Chinese factories.

The turning point came when the Covid-19 pandemic forced sudden lockdowns across the world, and the supply chains that linked factories in China to consumers in the US snapped. He decided to relocate production to the US to have better control over his product.