I watched a video of about 2 years ago where Dahon had bought their first factory in China and to be honest it was more of an assembly plant as most of the bike frames and forks were bought in. They did have some very small scale frame production though with small being hte key word. Like most brands Dahon buy from other factories. Sometimes designs of their own and sometimes designs of the factory itself.UpWrong wrote: ↑7 Mar 2022, 1:51pm I've owned a few 20" folders (Dahons and a Tern) and a Brompton.The one I've kept is a Raleigh Boardwalk Lite. This was made by Dahon and is one of their "re-bar" designs. This seems to give the most compliant ride.Sadly they no longer make this style of folder.
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I've got a Bickerton bike which is really a Dahon design but it came out of a Taiwanese factory I forget the name of. Flying Pigeon made some of the Dahon bikes sold in China and possibly exported. In Europe max.com of Bulgaria assemblies many Dahon bikes from kits from China. Possibly frames and forks made by fuji-ta.
Fuji-ta made a dual suspension folding bike which was rebranded to Dahon for western markets.
https://www.fuji-ta.com/portfolio/hanma8
I have no idea if that Raleigh is a genuine Dahon design or just a design from one of the factories used.
Fuji-ta is a huge designer and manufacturer of folding bikes probably by far the biggest folding bike factory in the world but you would never know it because its an OEM factory for many folding bikes. It's made many of the Halfords, Decathlon, Go Outdoors, Muddyfox models and I believe it was used for many Bicycles4u models before they went out of business and of course its been a big supplier to Dahon and probably Tern too. I think it has even made Brompton clones that are illegal to sell in many countries. It's own brand Battle you just don't see over here maybe that will change in the future as Chinese brands are getting more acceptable.
Dahon also operates as a trade house/broker to many factories. They did the Ford folding bikes which were from Meghna in Bangladesh.
Ultimately Dahon is like many US brands they do some design work but most of their product is made for them so logistics are complicated and prices quite high for their bikes.