With no buyers, Excelsior-Henderson motorcycles were discontinued in 1931.[5] Ignaz’s son, Frank W. Putting all company efforts towards bicycles, he succeeded in developing a low-cost model that brought Schwinn recognition as an innovative company, as well as a product that would continue to sell during the inevitable downturns in business cycles. W. Schwinn returned to Chicago and in 1933 introduced the Schwinn B-10E Motorbike, actually a youth’s bicycle designed to imitate a motorcycle. In late 1997, Questor Partners Fund, led by Jay Alix and Dan Lufkin, purchased Schwinn Bicycles. Questor/Schwinn later purchased GT Bicycles in 1998 for $8 a share in cash, roughly $80 million.
The Schwinn management team made the decision to start sourcing most of their bicycle production from Panasonic Bicycle in Japan and Giant Bicycles in Taiwan. The trend only continued from there and today Schwinn is more of a marketing label than an actual bike manufacturer. Schwinn is one of the most recognizable brand names in bicycles in the United States. The company was founded by Ignaz Schwinn in Chicago all the way back in 1895 and quickly became the largest U.S. bicycle manufacturer in the 20th century. You could find a Corvette bicycle model, the Sting-Ray, or the Schwinn Twinn tandem bike on almost any street corner in the 50s, 60s, and 70s when the bicycle craze was really taking hold. Today, Schwinn is still producing a ton of bikes, but has gone through some turmoil over the years.
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. Over the years, Schwinn has empowered millions of people, earning a special place in the hearts and minds of generations of riders. We have spent over a century building the bicycle industry into what it is today, and we’re not done yet.
Call me an easy target, but I fell for the message hook, line, and sinker. I can’t wait to pull out my old bike and take to the sidewalks for some laid-back summer fun. The Schwinn Bicycle Company emerged during the bicycle boom of the 1890s, a period where over 200 cycle manufacturers and small shops operated in Chicago alone. The company began operations in schwinn bicycles a factory at the northwest corner of Peoria and Lake Streets in Chicago.
Nostalgia marketing is a powerful technique used by marketers to capitalize on the sentimental associations that their target audiences harbor for certain products and/or experiences. Chicago was a major bicycle manufacturing center at the height of the “golden age” of bicycling in the 1890’s. Upon his arrival in America, Schwinn quickly found work with the Hill Cycle Manufacturing Company and rose readily to the level of plant manager.
Although the Varsity and Continental series would still be produced in large numbers into the 1980s, even Schwinn recognized the growing market in young adults and environmentally-oriented purchasers, devoting the bulk of their marketing to lighter models intended to pull sales back from the imports. By 1992, when the Schwinn Bicycle Company went into bankruptcy, the manufacturing of its bicycles had moved almost entirely overseas, primarily to Asia. That’s still the case for Schwinn-branded bikes sold in the United States. The book then becomes more a catalog of models that many of you likely rode during the 1950s and 1960s. Excellent photos beginning with the famed “Black Phantom” fat tire bike, first produced in 1949, characterize the book. The “Panther,” “Jaguar” and “Wasp,” with the “Starlet” catering to girls and women, follow.
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. 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.