Bombay Custom Works : It’s all in the bike!
Remember that ultra fast, loud, petrol guzzling super bike you wanted? Or turning your bike into the monster of your dreams? That epic exhaust note, that mouth watering body work and all.
Guess what?! I have found someone who does an amazing job into transferring your imagination into a bike! So, I caught up with him and had an interview.
>Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you started the workshop.
My name is shail sheth. I did my BA(hons)automotive design from coventry university, UK
I was working in a company in Delhi and had always wished to start something of my own.
Having an ancestral space in south bombay i thought why not make use of it and do something creative.
So I came down to bombay. And started with a small space in my father’s office which at one point in time used to be a godown to stock paper bundles.
>When you decided to start, what were you looking for in the founding team and how did you meet the founding team?
Well I do not have a team team to work with except a fabricator and a painter to get the respective jobs.
3)What did you had to do before you setup?
Well I did not do a lot before the setup I just got one of the motorcycles in and a set of tools to dismantle the bike. Dismantled the bike completely and thats what led me to set things up..
4)How did you market yourself to get the initial customers?
I think in todays world social media plays a big role in such fields
And word of mouth is what helps creative people like us to g
et the idea through.
5)What kind of bikes do you take in?
For me it’s about design and creativity and not about a particular make or brand so We try and work on all platforms from 100 cc to 350 to 500
6)What was the most challenging modification job?
Every bike is challenging because every bike is different . We try and create something new in each bike that we work on and its always challenging to create something new and to achieve the balance between making it look good and making it work at.
7)When you get a bike for a custom work, how do you proceed? Who does what?
We design, we plan, we explore and we create. We keep doing this till we get it right
Sometime it takes once, sometime it keeps happening..
Sometime it takes once, sometime it keeps happening..
I start with a design brief and try and do the styling with a few rough sketches, discuss that with the customer and try n understand the requirements.. Its a to and fro process. I then communicate that with the fabricator and he translates the ideas.
The bike is built after much back and forth and then it then goes in for paint.
8)Over what range of prices do you offer customisations?Our mod jobs cost anything from 75000 to 250000. But its a creative field so you cant really decide on the cost unless you actually know what is to be done.. We normally do not work on a price bracket.. We are open to all sorts of mod jobs.
And that would be Shail from BCW stirring up the custom bike scene of India.
To know more about them and their work check out their facebook page : fb.com/bombaycustomworks
