Giant builds Trek, Specialized and Gary Fisher frames????

The owner of the LBS told me today that Giant builds frames for Trek, Specialized and Gary Fisher. Can this be true?

 

Not that I know of. Trek builds its own frames and Gary Fisher and Lemond are under the Trek heading, though use different designs.

 

Giant is the largest bike manufacturer in the world. I'm not sure that they build for the companies you mentioned (As far as I know Specialized has a factory in China) but they do build frames for a number of companies.

 

My LBS owner (who is a current Giant dealer and was previously, at another shop, a Trek dealer) recently told me the same thing -- that Giant helps out with manufacturing some Trek frames. No word one way or the other with Specialized or Gary Fisher.

 

If you look over the Trek bikes in a shop you will notice that most of the low to mid level bikes are labeled either Made in Taiwan or Made in China. I have heard that some of these bikes are made by Giant (which is a Taiwan based company), but maybe they use other Asian contractors as well.

Specialized bikes are made by another big Taiwanese outfit, Merida. In fact I think Merida actually owns Specialized. Some of the large Asian companies make bikes under a quite a variety of well know brands, but hardly anything under their own names.