Many were quick to blame the generation of family managers after Frank W.
Schwinn but the rise of low-cost manufacturing in Asia was challenging for all American
companies. “Made in America” schwinn bicycles was giving
way to made in Japan, Taiwan, and eventually China. Schwinn was still a force
in the early 1970s, but the bloom was coming off the rose of an iconic American
company.
And while guides and charts are helpful as a starting point, there’s nothing more useful than watching your kid actually test out a bike. The Sting-Ray[28] sales boom of the 1960s accelerated in 1970, with United States bicycle sales doubling over a period of two years. We bring a proven, unparalleled education program that includes expert coaching techniques and top tier class design. They also manufactured their own rims in the Chicago factory, the “Schwinn Tubular Rim”. These rims, like the Chicago frames, were among the sturdiest ever built. The parts that say “Schwinn” were made by Schwinn in their enormous Chicago factory (which I had the pleasure of touring in the early ’70’s).
The factory quickly cranked out a new line of bikes to satisfy what they
rightly anticipated would be a new bicycle craze. After
years in the making, in the early 1960s the three legs of a strategy to improve
sales were finally in place. These included investments in innovative marketing
techniques, strengthened manufacturing capacity, and improved efficiency of the
company’s dealer network.
The factory floor in Chicago was an amicable place to work
in the 1940s and 1950s. Frank W. Schwinn made it a point to know the factory
workers by name. Workers trusted Schwinn and did not require a detailed written
contract. An element of paternalism was evident between Schwinn and its employees
but it was always correctly assumed that Schwinn would take care of its
workers. This tradition was eroded in the 1960s and 1970s with the rise in the
volume of Schwinn sales.
This meant
that the California entrepreneurs had an opening to develop bikes with
suspension for riding on mountain trails. Joe Breeze, Charlie Kelly, Gary Fisher, and Tom Ritchey were avid Repack
riders and realized that the old Schwinns being raced on the mountainside course
had their limitations. The seeds of an end to the
Schwinn family dynasty as a bicycle manufacturer had been sowed after Frank W.
Schwinn’s death in the early 1960s. The company’s struggle to maintain pace
with the rest of the bicycle industry would turn into reality in the 1970s.
Mountain bikes were originally based on Schwinn balloon-tired cruiser bicycles fitted with derailleur gears and called “Klunkers”. A few participants began designing and building small numbers of mountain bikes with frames made out of modern butted chrome-molybdenum alloy steel. Using the standard electro-forged cantilever frame, and fitted with five-speed derailleur gears and knobby tires, the Klunker 5 was never heavily marketed, and was not even listed in the Schwinn product catalog.
This was not much different
than the earlier autocycle, but they added some fancy styling features that made
it popular among consumers. The Black Phantom was advertised as having all the
popular options, such as a spring fork, chrome fenders, horn button on tank,
built-in fender light, and white wall tires. The model became quite popular
during the 1950s and today they are a collector’s item. Founded in 1974 in a Southern California garage, schwinn bicycles Mongoose has always been an aggressive brand with products that push the limits of what a rider can do. From the biggest hits on the mountain or in the park to the urban jungle, Mongoose is an authentic brand that produces durable products built for real riders. If I recall, it was what Schwinn called a “cantilever” frame, where the seat stays pass by the seat cluster and continue on in a graceful curve to join the bottom of the head tube.
It’s also home to a whole host of one-of-a-kind items made with love and extraordinary care. While many of the items on Etsy are handmade, you’ll also find schwinn bicycles craft supplies, digital items, and more. In this environment, outreach by unions to organize the factory was met with a
positive response by the workers.
With the Hollywood stars endorsing Schwinn products combined with
its reputation for quality, their bicycles began flying out of stores. Schwinn increased sales to 400,000 bikes by
the late 1940s and by 1950 had a 25% market share of bicycles sold in the USA. The seeds for how to market Schwinn products were spread during
the 1930s. Frank W. Schwinn was eager to reduce the company’s reliance on large
retailers and had begun investing resources in developing direct relationships
with small bicycle dealers across the nation. The consequence of this shift was
that Schwinn had a pipeline of information about consumer preferences from those
on the front line of bicycle sales. By the end of the 1940s, Schwinn had reduced
its relations with large retailers and focused on its relationships with bike
shops.