Originally Posted by
vintagebicycle
Most bike shops back in the day had one, sometimes two marquis brands that they sold and were direct dealers for. For instance, a Schwinn dealer would deal direct with Schwinn, a Columbia dealer, a Ross dealer, a Rollfast dealer all dealt direct with their main company supplier. In the late 70's I worked at one who sold Raleigh, Motobecane, and Ross as their main brands, then they carried various lesser models that were bought from their general suppliers that also on occasion sold a line of bikes.When Trek came about, they took on Trek as well dealing directly with Trek.
Peugeot came from Franklin in NJ, Motobecane, Atala, Lejeune, all came from a distributor, just as Sun Cruisers and Jamis bikes do today. They were sort of pushed as house brands, often with limited parts support.
Peugeot was an exception, for a distributor brand they basically had full parts availability.
Brands that I remember dealing with direct were Schwinn, Ross (Chain Bike Corp), Rollfast ( DP Harris), Columbia, Trek, and a handful of small BMX manufacturers. I seem to recall that Raleigh, Motobecane, and Univega all came from the same vendor back then, at least in the later years.
Most imports came through some sort of importer but in the early days Raleigh was kept separate and run more like an American bike company with full parts lines, catalogs, and a visiting factory rep who you saw pretty much weekly. Raleigh was almost always paired with another major US brand.
Many smaller companies were run by the builders themselves, calling to place an order often got you the owner of the company on the phone. I also believe that Giant was their own distributor, they had their own reps, their own catalogs, and they answered the phone as Giant Bicycles. When the bike business was booming back then each factory rep would call daily to see what you needed. An end of buisness day order usually got your bikes delivered the next afternoon. I worked a lot of late hours assembling bikes for the next day back in the 70's. For the most part, the biggest boom seemed to be in the mid to late 70's, after Breaking Away hit theaters, it seemed everyone wanted a road bike and we sold thousands of them. before that, it was 20" kids bikes, middle weights and three speeds.
While I was talking only about foreign brands, I should have made the distinction between foreign and domestic brands. Up to and during the boom, foreign brands were handled almost exclusively by importers. Domestic brands were dealt with directly through their internal sales departments. There was a 3rd case where foreign brands had domestic manufacturing (such as the Raleigh and Sekine factories opened in Canada during the boom), in which case sales were through a domestic sales department.
Giant did have their own American based sales and distribution division but that wasn't until the late 1980s. By that time most of big foreign brands had their own American absaed sales and distribution divisions.
The LBS where I worked and that I later managed sold primarily 10 speed lightweights during the boom years of 1971-1974. The consumers who bought them were primarily teens and young adults. The 30+ crowd bought primarily 3 speed city bicycles. The pre-teen crowd was mainly hi-risers at the being of the boom era but had switched to mostly junior racers by the end.
I was out of the bicycle retail business by the time of Breaking Away but still had lots of contacts and was indirectly involved via competition and coaching. So, I still ran into a lot of the reps and owners and was cognizant of what was happening in the industry. While there was a mini-peak around the time of Breaking Away, it wasn't nearly as big as the peak boom year of 1973. There was another peak in the mid-1980s with the advent of television coverage of triathlons, Grewal's 1984 Olympic gold medal and LeMond's European successes but even it didn't approach 1973. Sales didn't surpass the 1973 peak until the early 1990s, courtesy of the booming popularity of ATBs. Of course, your local market may have been different and not have reflected overall market trends.