Titan performance said:
Hi Miffa.....those Borranis Beach mentioned are in fact Akronts. I have a Chinese contact for them, and have indeed had a few sets....and they are nice, bloody nice ! The spokes are shouldered stainless, and of nice quality too. Spoke sets of a similar quality are at least £50 here in the UK. Our wheel builder couldn't tell the difference between our Chinese rims, and Akronts bought over here. We desperately wanted to buy more, but MOQs just prevented it financially for us. I am in touch with the guy regularly, and think the MOQ could be negotiated to 65 pairs of wheels. Rumour has it that Akront were in fact getting them from China...
Hate to disagree Titan - the rims I was referring to are the ones now imported to Italy by Borrani in the raw unfinished state, prepped, drilled and indented with the Borrani logo in Italy.
That is not to say that Akront and others are doing precisely the same. In fact I'd be amazed if they weren't !
Re: the Borannis, I'm going back 5 years when I first heard about these [ and other ] rims and contacted a pal in the trade as I was unable to invest enough to buy minimum 100 rims [ of each size !] He brought a consignment over, and these came out of the same factory that now supply Borrani. These rims had NO marking at all apart from the size.
I have some original Borranis in my garage [ ex. Le Mans ] and you really cannot tell the difference.
At the time [ 5 years ago ] they were around $12 [US ] each. I tried to drum up interest for a group buy on this forum, but fell on deaf [ cynical ? ] ears. I did the same with 2 1/2" Monza gas caps [ $12 ] and again no response.
There was a recent [ last August ? ] round of letters in one of the comics starting out from Central Wheel Co. - who were slagging the Borranis as NOT being made in Italy. Borrani replied and within the letter of the EU regs. they did enough work to call them Borranis and have the "made in Italy" logo stamped on. There were pix of the rims being stamped as "proof" [ of something ? ]. I'll try to dig it out.
Miffa - I'll make some enquiries about the current prices and min. quantities, but the Chinese have cottoned on to this "start cheap - hook 'em in, them bump the prices up" business strategy [ just like the Indians ! ]. EG - the Monza caps are now $40, min 50 units.
The problem is that just to serve front and back in the two popular rims [ 36 / 40 hole ] you would be talking 400 rims !
You can get lower numbers, but then the prices zoom up. STILL cheaper than buying the "branded" makes.
I may have a UK contact for alloy rims - probably from the same source - at reasonable prices.