Cleaning house in distribution, the company pushed retailers to become family-friendly and respectable looking and offered incentives to sell Schwinn bicycles exclusively. The company also focused on leveraging advertising by including well-known stars in advertisements and famously marketing to children on Captain Kangaroo. While innovative, these business dealings brought about lawsuits that would plague the company for decades. Frank W.’s influence would ultimately shape bicycle manufacturing in America. He pushed American suppliers to create more durable parts, including the balloon tire, and in 1934 debuted the Schwinn Aero Cycle made with an attention to both aesthetics and quality unseen from bicycle manufacturers.
Dorel’s second-quarter revenues were up 8.1% from the same period a year ago, to $724 million from $670 million. Revenues for the first half of this year were flat at $1.3 billion. The company does not break out numbers for Schwinn and its other units. The offices of the Madison, Wisconsin-based company closed on March 13, around the same time the entire country began shutting down. Then, almost as suddenly, millions of stuck-at-home Americans started riding bikes, many for the first time in years, or the first time ever. Sales of adult and kids’ bicycles surged, to the point where by mid-May two-wheelers under $1,000 were as scarce as toilet paper and hand sanitizers.
The Chicago factory was basically producing the bicycle equivalent of the Mustangs and T-Birds coming out of Detroit, and the biggest challenge was just keeping up with demand. During the Roaring ‘20s, motorcycle production had helped buoy the company as bicycle sales slumped across the board . After the stock market crash of 1929, however, Ignaz took drastic action, selling off the motorcycle division and focusing on a return to the company’s roots. In 1931, a now 71 year-old Ignaz also handed over most of the day-to-day concerns of the company to his vice president and firstborn son, Frank (F. W.) Schwinn, who’d been training under his wing at the Kildare plant since 1918 . Right from the beginning, Schwinn and Arnold set the goal of producing a bicycle of undeniably superior design; something that would separate itself from the sea of cheap ramshackle models flooding the market. The company branded its product the “World” bicycle, and loaded its early catalogs with flowery language of international conquest.
The company stopped dealing with department stores and worked exclusively with proper bicycle retailers—such as Barnard’s or the Chicago Cycle Supply Company. This helped develop a legion of loyal dealers and customers, all of whom appreciated Schwinn’s focus on quality above quantity. Frank also threatened to start importing parts from schwinn bicycles Europe if U.S. suppliers didn’t raise their own quality standards, and the tactic worked—the parts remained domestic, but far superior to what most bike companies were using. In 1946, imports of foreign-made bicycles had increased tenfold over the previous year, to 46,840 bicycles; of that total, 95 per cent were from Great Britain.
To compensate, some went the extra mile to flag wave and prove their American patriotism. Having made their fame on the “WORLD” bicycle, they weren’t going to try to pass themselves off as nationalists. They would, however, make a point of celebrating the “Made in the USA” aspect of the brand above the “German engineering” element. Careful effort was also made to include plenty of wholesome “All-American” athletes, film stars, and other celebrities as Schwinn endorsers. During the World’s Fair summer of 1893 and on through the nationwide economic depression of the two years that followed, Ignaz effectively grabbed the bike industry by its handlebars. First, he worked his way up to the role of superintendent with the Fowler Cycle MFG Co. (previously known as Hill & Moffat), a large and profitable enterprise.
Giant Bikeswent from strength to strength – producing over one million bikes in 1986 and supplyingSchwinnwith 80 per cent of their bicycle inventory. At the beginning of the eighties, the factory in Taiwan was sending 100,000 bikes back to America per year. The once sprawling Kildare Avenue factory was set to be torn down by 1985, but the job was largely handled prematurely by a suspected arsonist’s fire in the empty complex in August of 1984.