CYCLE: the importance of knowing how things are made

Peter Holmes à CourtTED@AmsterdamJune 20, 2012

This is a story about a visit to a remote bicycle factory, the lost connection with the people who make things, and a failing of economics to help us understand value.

I took my son to a small French factory where I was going to watch a bicycle being built. He was going to watch from a safe distance.

I was photographing a craftsmen with nearly 40 years experience. Bernard Berthelot started by selecting the tubes, the steel rods that he would join to make the frame.

As the cutting started in the clash of machine and metal

I began to see the beauty in a process…

…in which some parts were done precisely to the hundredth of a millimetre

Other parts were done by eye.

Then something unexpected happened.  

As I watched my son, I noticed he began to stand closer

and closer.

And soon he was transfixed,

standing side by side with Bernard for nearly 3 hours.

I began to wonder “how many things has he seen being built before?”

Most of the objects in his world have arrived finished, pre-packaged.

“Doesn’t that make it harder for him to understand what things are worth?”

I know that in economic terms, something can be valued at $10 one moment, 10 cents the next.

But that’s not how people think of value.

”What's it really worth” we ask, by which we mean “what’s it worth to me”?

What transforms something from a mere commodity into something that we cherish is how it makes us feel. When we know how something is made, we understand what people did to make it and this gives us an opportunity to form a unique personal connection.

When we have this connection something amazing happens: we get an extra value that we apply to the product that comes back to us and the bonus is it can keep coming and can even grow over time.

Clearly my bike was being built by master craftsmen and women, but its just as true for cookies baked by your child. Because of your feelings towards the child you actually enjoy the cookies more. The cookies are enhanced by the emotions you add to the mix.

In general, our enjoyment of a product is the combination of its objective qualities—price, fit for purpose, expected lifespan—

plus subjective values that we attach to the product, and this is where a connection with the maker comes in.

We live in a society where many of these links have been lost. We don’t buy our bread from a baker, nor milk from a farmer. I am not saying that to find happiness we have to become agrarian traders.

What I am suggesting is that when we find the connection between our things and the people who made them, we get a number of benefits.

1: We enjoy our things more. For the same purchase price we get more from them.

1: We enjoy our things more. For the same purchase price we get more from them.

2: They last longer, because we tend to take better care of the things we appreciate.

1: We enjoy our things more. For the same purchase price we get more from them.

2: They last longer, because we tend to take better care of the things we appreciate.

3: We buy less other stuff because we are more fulfilled by being surrounded by things we appreciate.

For my son, this was a short visit to one factory. But hopefully it starts something.

Wouldn’t it be great, if he could see that the things in his life carry the finger prints of the people who made them.

thank you.

Peter is a writer, photographer, businessman and father.  His previous roles include founder of Back Row Productions, a live entertainment producer, CEO of the Australian Agricultural Company, Executive Chairman of the South Sydney Rabbitohs Rugby League Club, Founding Chairman of Brand Sydney and the Greater Sydney Partnership. Peter is writing a book on the changing nature of work since the Industrial Revolution and publishing a book of his photographs on work in rural France. 

www.facebook.com/peterhac

Thanks to Robert Holmes à Court, Bernard Berthelot and the team at CYFAC bicycles, La Fuye, France.

© all images by Peter Holmes à Court