One month after Paragon Machine Works abruptly shut its doors, the company’s designs and assets have found a new home. Portland-based Firsthand Framebuilding announced today that it has acquired Paragon’s intellectual property, brand assets and manufacturing tooling, preserving the brand’s highly influential component catalogue.
While the name may be unknown to many riders, Paragon served as one of the custom bicycle world’s most trusted suppliers for decades. Countless custom steel and titanium bikes were built around the brand’s dropouts, bottom bracket shells, head tubes, fork crowns, couplers and other framebuilding components, especially in North America.
The sale includes the entirety of Paragon’s design and copyright holdings, trademarks and, even, the tooling required to make Paragon’s extensive range of parts.
“Like so many, I’ve long admired Paragon,” Blandford said.
“If the Norstads can’t make this business work as-is, then I definitely can’t,” he said. “What we’ve bought here isn’t an operating business we hope to fix or replicate; it’s a legacy of framebuilding knowledge and design that needed the right steward.”
“With the right approach, manufacturing high-quality, affordable framebuilding bits domestically is still very doable — and important — in 2026,” he said.
“Paragon’s closure was a gut-check for all of us. With Paragon’s IP in hand, I’m excited to see what the Firsthand team and I can do to bring a fresh perspective to framebuilding component supply in the future.”
