But it’s not just the names customer’s trust, it’s the look and feel of our products, our superior quality, and our outstanding customer service that help us bring these premium brands to the hands and feet of our customers. Since applying that strategy to Schwinn, the brand has lost the support of most independent dealers, whose ranks are in decline. But it’s been a hit among mass merchants, with the Sting Ray expected to top many kids’ Christmas lists this season. “The bikes that we’re putting the Schwinn brand on and selling to Wal-Mart are absolutely the best bikes that Wal-Mart has ever sold,” Hornung said. Schwinn is the American icon that has built some of the best-known and most-loved bicycles of all time. Schwinn models like the Aerocycle, Paramount, Phantom, Varsity, Sting-Ray, Krate, Homegrown and more are forever firmly ingrained in biking’s lexicon.
Even the paint colors were the same (remember that the fillet-brazed frames were hung on the general Schwinn painting line). Only the round Schwinn badge, downtube diameter and pointed seatstay tops are visibly different. Although they were fabricated in the same shop as the Paramounts, from there Schwinn’s fillet-brazed frames took a different production path. Paramounts continued through their own paint and assembly processes, while the fillet-brazed models were added to the assembly line with high-volume Schwinn flash-welded frames for serial-number stamping, electrostatic painting, and final assembly. Hence Paramount serial numbers are unique to Paramounts and serve as a tally of Paramount production, while serial numbers on the fillet-brazed models were mixed in with other Schwinn models. This is also why the fillet-brazed models came in the same colors as lower-priced Schwinns, which contributed to their obscurity.
The Varsity and Continental sold in large numbers through the 1960s and early 1970s, becoming Scwhinn’s leading models. The wheel rims were likewise robust, chromed, stamped steel with a unique profile designed to hold the tire bead securely, even if pressure were low or lost. After mongoose bmx bike a series of production cuts and labor force reductions, Schwinn was able to restructure its operations. The company renegotiated loans by putting up the company and the name as collateral, and increased production of the Airdyne exercise bicycle, a moneymaker even in bad times.
Application of the rule of reason here cannot be confined to intrabrand competition. When we look to the product market as a whole, we cannot conclude that Schwinn’s franchise system with respect to products as to which it retains ownership and risk constitutes an unreasonable restraint of trade. This does not, of course, excuse or condone the per se violations which, in substance, consist of the control over the resale of Schwinn’s products after Schwinn has parted with ownership thereof. By 1990, other United States bicycle companies with reputations for excellence in design such as Trek, Specialized, and Cannondale had cut further into Schwinn’s market. Unable to produce bicycles in the United States at a competitive cost, by the end of 1991 Schwinn was sourcing its bicycles from overseas manufacturers. This period in Schwinn’s history plays a cameo role in a novel by Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King .
In 2021, Dutch conglomerate Pon Holdings acquired Pacific Cycle. The style of the seat, or saddle, can vary considerably, too, from ultra-thin lightweight supports on the carbon-framed road machines to comfortably padded and sprung models on retros and hybrids. Bear in mind that if you buy a cheap men’s bike, the saddle is an easy and relatively inexpensive item to upgrade.
Buying a Schwinn became a sign of making it in the middle class, just like the picket fence and the station wagon. About 75 miles away, in Madison, Pacific Cycle manages the Schwinn brand from a sleek office with just 80 workers. Pacific, part of a Canadian conglomerate, huffy mountain bike has a couple of hundred employees in California warehouses, taking in the bikes imported from the seven Chinese factories where most Schwinns are produced. Enhanced handlebar design improves grip comfort and support for all rider needs, from comfort to high-performance.