It's awesome that bike companies are asking about this. I wish I could help, but I strayed into the world of custom bikes back in 1998 when I was looking for a touring bike, and I haven't looked back.

There were a couple of reasons why I went custom. One was touring. There weren't many (manufactured, off-the-shelf) touring bikes out there at the time - in fact the one that I saw was a Cannondale, which could have been OK but the frame didn't fit. OK, so that's two reasons - there weren't many bikes out there at the time that were intended for touring, and fit - and fit is probably the prime reason for WSD bikes. The other is that I wanted quality components that I could rely on when I was riding in areas where there were no bike shops to bail me out. Of course, even on stock bikes the components can be swapped out, so that's probably less of an issue.

Back to your real question though... at this point it's really hard for me to imagine buying a bike that isn't custom built for me. But - it seems to me that the WSD designs are good for a portion of the women out there - those whose bodies (length of torso vs. leg length, reach, etc.) don't fit well on the non-WSD frames. It's quite possible that I never was a good candidate for WSD because I don't remember having severe fitting problems prior to switching to custom bikes. Prior to going custom, I could find bikes that worked well for me once we swapped out components like the stem, made sure the handlebars were right, etc.

It will be interesting to see what the manufacturer who contacted you decides to do.

--- Denise