Not a bad speculation. I bet they can find a lot more workers experienced with carbon layup in China & Taiwan around the factories, since that industry has been long established there. Factories with newer production processes might be in high demand getting booked up, and would be hard to accept if you have a matured design ready for manufacturing, to wait for a year before market launch, having marketing material ready months in advance, and racers wanting to ride them (and prying eyes reverse engineering it).
Vietnam is much better known for their textiles. Great place to have backpacks (Osprey), dresses, dress clothes, etc. made. I much prefer them over American made clothes, being a skinny guy. Perhaps they were optimistic that such skill should transfer over, minus the sewing. Doubt there's enough knowledgeable people to be looking over other peoples' shoulders, checking work. Would have to sacrifice production rates to have the process vets take a supervisory role, to ensure consistent/standard quality, when they could be leading the production rates doing it themselves. A new site with more up-to-date machinery and processes, vs chinese factories with old machinery that are reluctant to divest and change with the times to compete with the newer factories, competing on price point instead.
Gotta consider these guys are more doing it because it's a way of living to earn money, rather than because they care about the end product, which they likely can't afford on their salary unless they really saved up a while. You might think that they don't wanna lose their job, and work based off of merit, but you should consider when there's limited highly desirable positions, there's a high chance that there's corruption to keep control of them. Corruption such as giving positions to poorly qualified friends/relatives, etc. Would suck to discover that and be stuck with delays trying to find replacements, especially after you made obligations to fulfill orders on time or whatever, and keeping your trust/confidence levels high among your commercial partners.
80k for steel molds sounds like it's more for a relatively low volume operation, considering full carbon front and rear for a full size range. It's not like they only have 1 mold per size/part, considering the production volume they need to meet.
@rynomx Hate to derail the thread with an off-topic reply, but I couldn't resist. I'd be happily surprised if either of them tuned kinematics in different sizes based on rider CoGs changing. A taller rider has a taller CoG. What's 100% anti-squat or anti-rise for a size large rider, could be 80% for a taller rider, or 120% for a shorter rider, due to how it's based on the CoG height. If they keep the pivot points in the exact same location for each size, riders of different size/shape won't be getting the same power transfer feel.
View attachment 1236697
This could be the reason why really tall people feel like Intense bikes pedal so much crisper than other brands.
Just one of those things you have to demo yourself. Each bike is different. Turner, Ibis, etc. feel different. SB130 and SB150 feel different. SB150 in size M and size L feel different. Can't generalize. That's a question we all answer ourselves, and oftentimes people here answer with imagination, bias, faith, emotions, intuition, etc. so it's hard to get a grip on reality. So I am just emphasizing the reasons why it's best to test ride.
If anyone says that they compared SB150 to Ripmo and preferred one over the other, you have to think of every single variable to find a measurable value in that opinion. Was it a size M SB150 vs size L Ripmo? What spec? What do they usually ride? What terrain? How fast/fit? I'd go as far as to backing up my opinions with my BB-to-saddle height (690mm)... this figure is like a kosher coarse grain of sea salt from the Mediterranean. This is more of a specific taste over other grains of salt people used to interpret a vast world of opinions. xD