Fitness equipment accounted for 25 percent of sales that year and parts and accessories accounted for another ten percent. Adding to the
excitement and the bottom line, Waterford is building a highly-sought after,
limited run of 75th
anniversary Paramounts. The company’s next answer to requests for a Schwinn mountain bike was the King Sting and the Sidewinder, inexpensive BMX-derived bicycles fabricated from existing electro-forged frame designs, and using off-the-shelf BMX parts. At the close of the 1920s, the stock market crash decimated the American motorcycle industry, taking Excelsior-Henderson with it. Arnold, Schwinn, & Co. (as it remained until 1967) was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Ignaz Schwinn was born in Hardheim, Baden, Germany, in 1860 and worked on two-wheeled ancestors of the modern bicycle that appeared in 19th century Europe. In 1895, with the financial backing of fellow German American Adolph Frederick William Arnold (a meat packer), he founded Arnold, Schwinn & Company. Schwinn’s new company coincided with a sudden bicycle craze in America. Chicago became the center of the American bicycle industry, with thirty factories turning out thousands of bikes every day. Bicycle output in the United States grew to over a million units per year by the turn of the 20th century.
Week-to-week, the diversely talented crew
of 18 workers move from milling machines to welders to oxy-acetylene torches,
joining steel tube with walls as thin as 0.4 mm with perfect tig welds,
artfully cast lugs, and spools of precious silver. Our technicians are skilled in repairing and maintaining Schwinn fitness equipment. Find all your favorite Schwinn products at the retailers listed below. It was soon followed by even more accessorized models such as the Stingray Deluxe and Super Deluxe. However, to properly answer the question above – it’s perhaps easier to think of it in terms of which Vintage Schwinn Bikes aren’t worth buying. That being said, the small-ish 250W motor isn’t going to be a powerhouse on hills.
Despite their fall from grace, Schwinn produced high-quality bikes for decades. Many were made in limited quantities and are considered highly desirable nowadays. Schwinn also faced increasing competition from other high-quality US-based brands such as Specialized, Trek, and Cannondale. Schwinn themselves began increasingly importing bikes from the Japanese producers Bridgestone and Panasonic, which were able to rival prestigious models such as the Schwinn Paramount, yet could be sold at half the price. In conjunction with this, Schwinn, along with other USA-based bike manufacturers, successfully campaigned in 1955 to raise import taxes on foreign bikes.
Schwinn celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1995 by introducing a new line of bikes, sending dealers various small gifts, and putting on a show in Las Vegas called the “SchwinnDig,” with 100 cycling Elvis Presley imitators. The company also offered a limited edition of the classic Black Phantom bicycle schwinn beach cruiser for $5,000, some of which sold to celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld and Hugh Hefner. The real celebration, however, was for Schwinn’s reentry into the mainstream of the bicycle market; in 1995 the company was selling high-performance off-road bikes, knobby-tired cruisers, and BMX children’s bikes.