Will new gov. regs wipe out the BMX industry?

Have you ever watched one of those shows on the Discovery Channel about what would happen if a meteor hit the Earth, wiping out civilization as we know it? Suppose you got confirmation today that it was, in fact, happening. What would you do?

Well, yesterday, a thread was posted on VintageBMX saying “[I] took the kids to the track last night and the scuttle butt was that Kuwahara is out of business… Something about getting shut down by the federal government. Well, as usual with rumors, most of the content is puffery, with a few grains of truth mixed in.

The truth of the matter, according to Ryan Birk, is that, because of new regulations enacted by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), they have decided to stop selling Kuwahara complete bicycles in the United States.

These regulations, passed into law on August 14 as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), spell out new requirements for third party laboratory testing of all products that fall under CPSC jurisdiction to certify that lead-based paint, and overall lead content of all parts therein are within very specific limits…

One lab test, on one part, is said to run about $100. Seems harmless enough, right? Until you add the part where EVERY part (so between 45 and 80 parts per bike, depending who you talk to), on EVERY different SKU needs to be tested (so that XL Pro complete that comes in Yellow, Blue, White and Red…works out to four full tests at $4000-$8000ea). And industry insiders say they are hearing from their attorneys that EACH container needs to be tested in the same way, not just the XL Pro in Yellow once for that model year.

And it is not just complete bikes. If you make grips, for example, each color needs to be analyzed (one test per color), as do the end plugs, the bag that they come in, the header card that they are stapled to…all individual tests @ about $100ea, per production run.

Thus, manufacturers who bring in one container with a mix of, say five wheel and frame sizes, in two colors each will have to pay nearly $80,000 in testing fees to get that container of 532 bikes in (an addition of $150 per bike to offset the testing costs).

Back to completes, larger manufacturers have been on this since the law was signed on August 14. DiamondBack BMX Brand Manager Mike Hammond said "I just got back from China where I was working with our assemblers to get inline with all test(ing)." Whereas a sampling of smaller manufacturers we called were not even aware of these regulations that could cost them a $100,000 fine for each occurance.

So, while it may not spell the end of the world as we know it–or even the BMX world as we know it, things are going to get a lot more expensive in 2009, so if youre thinking about a new bike, nows the time.

BMX News will be interviewing an expert of CPSC law in the coming days and will report those findings, as well as any new developments as they happen.

Meanwhile, were talking about it in the forum , whats your take on all this?