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 schwinn tricycle 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.
These models were a good fit because they had
very strong, almost indestructible frames. Unfortunately, the bicycles were
heavy compared to European imports because they could not be used with modern
alloys such as chrome-moly. As a result,
the Varsities and Continentals made few inroads into the adult market. To meet this European competition, Schwinn developed a line
of middleweight bicycles. The top of the
line middleweight was the Corvette, a name mimicking the popular sports car.
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 in turn led to further inroads by domestic and foreign competitors. Faced with a downward sales spiral, Schwinn went into bankruptcy in 1992.[59] The company and name were bought by the Zell/Chilmark Fund, an investment group, in 1993. In the 1950s, Schwinn began to aggressively cultivate bicycle retailers, persuading them to sell Schwinns as their predominant, if not exclusive brand. During this period, bicycle sales enjoyed relatively slow growth, with the bulk of sales going to youth models. In 1900, during the height of the first bicycle boom, annual United States sales by all bicycle manufacturers had briefly topped one million.
The museum is the successor to the Schwinn Bicycle Museum, which took shape after the family company declared bankruptcy in 1992. After a long ride on a crunchy gravel canal path, this mountain bike is completely covered with thick dust. The schwinn tricycle Paramount was developed for track and road racing by Emil Wastyn, a 6 day racing frame builder, mechanic and Schwinn dealer in Chicago, who immigrated from Belgium. Good mathematics doesn’t always help you when it comes to bicycle tires.
With catalogs featuring places like Disneyland and 20th Century Fox,
marketing continued to be a Schwinn strong point. However, management had begun
to ignore the need to retool its factory. Sales were still at all-time highs, but with the
market share declining, Swhinn’s dominance in the bicycle industry was on the
wane. The Varsities and Continentals did prove to be popular among
teenagers who were fairly rough on their bicycles.
According to old-timers, “Regression analysis
clashed with the glad-handing old boy school culture. (Crown and Coleman 1996, p142)
“ Ed Schwinn, Jr. broke with long-time managers
including the well respected Ray Burch and Al Fritz. The likes of a 25-year-old
brother-in-law was hired to take their place along with a host of financial
analysts and marketing specialists.