Metal to pedal: in North Carolina's high country, BREW builds high-end frames for high-performance bicycles.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Feature - Blue Ridge Electric and Welding - Company Profile

The line between craft and art is thin. In a nondescript industrial park in mountainous West Jefferson, it is drawn in the blue glow of tungsten inert-gas welding and showers of orange sparks from saws biting into exotic tubing. Cold steel and hot beads of melted metal become bicycle frames.

At Blue Ridge Electric and Welding LLC, Steve Garn and wife Kim--its president and vice president--and 10 employees will build about 6,000 BREW frames this year for riders from preschoolers to brawny Olympic hopefuls. They sell the frames direct and through bicycle dealers, at prices from about $300 to $1,700. Buyers typically add their own choice of components--wheels and handlebars, for example. The Garns don't reveal BREW's revenue.

Performance, not price, is the issue. "That is one reason we've come as far as we have," Garn says. "Kids--especially BMXers--prefer U.S.-made bikes and higher quality." BREW produces four kinds of frames: road, for racing such as the Tour de France; mountain, for off-road use; and two kinds of BMX frames--for racing on dirt courses or doing stunts in extreme-sport competition, which involves jumps and acrobatics.

Florida native Garn, 46, learned to weld at 12 and made BMX frames to earn money--$400 a week--to race motorcycles. He and Kim--she had lived in Boone before--moved to North Carolina in the early '80. He is also an electrician, though he no longer does electrical contracting.

They began making BREW bikes in 1987 and got a marketing boost in 1990 when Garn provided bicycles for the...