Smooth ride: years of tinkering in his garage led Brent Foes to develop a high-end racing bicycle now coveted by competitive riders at home and overseas.

BRENT Foes has always enjoyed building things - hot rods, motorcycles, race cars. So in the late 1980s, when he saw a picture of an early full-suspension mountain bike, Foes walked into the machine shop he had set up in his garage and made one for himself.

By today's standards, the bike was a clunker--"I didn't have a clue what I was doing"--but a new magazine, Mountain Bike Action, snapped a photo of the creation while Foes was testing it in the San Gabriel Mountains.

"The next thing I knew, I was getting phone calls from Japan, from distributors saying, 'We'd like to order 50 bikes,"' he said.

And so Foes Racing was born. In carving out a niche in the market for high-end mountain bikes, which by some estimates accounts for only 5,000 units per year, Foes has done what others have not been able to: manufacture bikes domestically and stay in business.

With 10 employees, the Pasadena company turns out 1,000 hand-built aluminum frames a year with retail prices ranging from $1,549 to $2,799. Customers, mostly competitive racers, typically spend another $2,000 to $3,000 on gears, handle bars, seats and pedals to finish the bikes.

"Generally, there are very few posers riding Foes," said Samuel Weaver, a sales supervisor at Helen's Cycles in Santa Monica. The shop sells one or two Foes bikes a year, he said, adding, "You've .got to be an aggressive personality to spend that much money on a bike and to ride it."

Over the years, the Foes name has become popular in the downhill races of the National Off Road Bicycle Association. In part, the exposure of the televised 50-mile-per hour downhill races has won the company 90 dealers in the United States and another 12 overseas, where Foes sells 35 percent of its bikes.

Two years ago, Foes finally moved the company from his garage, where it had operated for eight years, into a 5,500-square-foot building on North Sierra Madre Boulevard. With more space, three computer-controlled metal milling machines were added to boost production to 1,800 bikes a year and keep up with back orders.

Tinkerer by trade

Foes, now 48, became enthralled with the suspensions of off-road vehicles while racing motorcycles professionally in the 1970s.

He started tweaking the machines he rode so they would better absorb bumps and jolts. By the early 1980s, his handiwork had attracted the attention of Nissan, Ford and Dodge, which contracted him to build suspensions for their off-road racecars. Professional drivers Rick Mears, Roger Mears, Steve Millen and Jack Johnson began winning races like the Baja 500 and Pikes Peak Hill Climb in machines cushioned by Foes' suspensions.

When he applied what he had learned about automotive suspensions to bicycles, people outside the specialized world of off-road motor sports took notice--and Foes had to quickly figure out how he was going to begin producing 100 bicycles.

He took his bike to the University of Southern California where he stood before a class learning how to write business plans and explained his dilemma. A student named Julio Chan called with an idea: he would write a business plan if Foes would turn a Ford Mustang Chan owned into a hot rod.

Foes agreed, and soon afterwards Chan's father invested $50,000 in the venture.

"That money went really quick," Foes said. "For the first couple years, we were constantly in the red." (He bought Chan out in 1995.)

At the time, dozens of small manufacturers like Foes Racing were sprouting up, and it was unclear if the business would ever be profitable. Numerous owners of small bike companies had sold out to bigger companies with nationally recognized names. But Foes has been determined to keep control and mindful of the fate of those small firms, many of which fizzled out after expanding.

"What makes companies like Foes strong is their pride in craftsmanship," said Sean Petty, vice president of marketing for USA Cycling, which organizes cycling races and events. "A lot of high-end users like the handmade aspect of bikes. They're willing to pay for craftsmanship. But in an acquisition, pride doesn't always transfer with the assets."

A few companies have made informal offers over the years, but never at the right price. "I wasn't interested, I still wanted to see the thing grow' he said.

Through it all, Foes said he has been torn between his love of tinkering with machines and his desire to build a company that eventually could be sold for enough money for him to retire.

Shifting production from Pasadena to Japan would help, but Foes is resistant. "I'm probably doing it the hard way," he said. "I'm not as much a businessman as I am a fabricator. I like seeing it made."

So much so that the man who has spent years making people comfortable on race courses is now switching gears by building furniture. Aluminum tubing and machined brackets are made with many of the tools he already owns.

"There's really nothing that I can't make," he said.

RELATED ARTICLE: PROFILE

Foes Racing

Year Founded: 1993

Core Business: Mountain bike frame building

Revenues in 2001: $1.8 million

Revenues in 2002: $2.3 million (projected)

Employees in 2001: 8

Employees in 2002: 10

Goal: To double sales next year.

Driving Force: Designing and building bikes that people love to ride.