making

Interesting thread, I don't see any reason to move it...yet.

Fenway

The UAW helped kill Schwinn in Chicago with unrealistic labor costs. Schwinn's plants elsewhere in the country were done in by not producing the products that the public really wanted to buy.

It didn't help either that in the end management's idea of saving the company was lobbying congress for protection from imports rather than undergoing a dramatic restructuring of the company. The management had no clue how to run a business in the end and managed to blow every just about every market opportunity they had for ~30 years.

Gravity Aided

Or maybe sitting on your duff on the couch caught on as
a means of exercise and eclipsed cycling
and hiking or
even walking .
And political jingoism replaced reason .

unterhausen

the company was destroyed by management. It wasn't the workers that were deciding to build tanks that nobody wanted. I wasn't paying attention when they tried to turn that around later, but a Varsity was a joke when I first started getting into bikes in the early '70s. And it was very expensive because it was designed that way, not because the workers were expensive. The Europeans were doing fine back then and they had expensive labor too. The Japanese killed all of them because they moved the parts that people wanted onto lower priced bikes, but the difference in cost of those parts in quantity were miniscule. Nobody in their right mind would sell a Varsity and a World Traveler for the same price, they would look at the Varsity and ask themselves why they were bothering. Schwinn even had the advantage of not having a middleman, so their prices were really pretty outrageous.

I worked at Trek in the early days, and in some respects it was amateur hour, but I looked at the Cannondale factory when they shut it down, and I have to say Dick Nolan could have taught them some things. The thing that killed Cannondale as an American company was the management. The guys making the bikes probably could have competed. The company was going after another $10 margin on the bikes and losing the responsibility for making the product. I don't see that as a sustainable model long-term, but I guess that's why they are making the big bucks and I'm posting here. The $10 margin could have been made up by investing in the plant, but that doesn't pay executive salaries.

Gravity Aided

Thank You for being here , Unterhausen . Good to hear some inside perspective .

PolishGuy

Worksman Cycles in New York still makes bikes in the US. PG.

Gravity Aided

And some nice ones too, I might add . Heavy, but nice . We've got a lot of their trikes at work .

auchencrow

I could find a thousand and one reasons - but I'm biting my tongue.

Sixty Fiver

It is a double edged topic in that it gives us a look back to a time when the bicycles we rode were produced here in a manner that is quite similar to what they are today... some of the modern equipment has sped up some processes and eliminated the worker from the equation and on the other hand... the faces of the workers themselves have changed as those workers are no longer American or Canadian (we had a thriving bicycle industry here as well).

I think that despite the monotony of the work on the production line, that the people doing the work were happy to have it as the money they made put food on the table and paid their bills and probably got them a good deal on a bicycle and bet a good many of them rode the bicycles they built to work and may have had a little bit of pride in the work they did every day.

auchencrow

Gravity Aided

I think they still would be happy to have that sort of work, in many cases . Saying people don't want to do industrial work seems like a plausible excuse, and it is so much easier than building sustainable and responsible industry . I've pounded railroad rails, printed pictures for photo labs, put forms in boxes for government agencies . I've also ran stores, sold media, and written newspaper articles, and all I can say is that it's all good work . Not a unique sentiment .

Mos6502

Care to list them? Because I think ultimately politics and religion has basically nothing to do with the failure of Columbia or Schwinn... bad business choices did.

Helped - but you have to remember the Chicago plant was also filled with obsolete machinery - so it didn't need much help. The plant was antiquated anyway. I think they ought to have cut their losses sooner than they did really. They persisted in throwing away money. They really could have learned a thing or two from the Japanese companies they were importing from.

In a way it was the same deal with Columbia. They were trying to competitively build bicycles in a victorian era factory - against the Japanese. The one saving grace of this was that since Columbia already had the equipment for brazing frames it was relatively easy for them to switch to lugged frames (although they did so far too late in the game). Schwinn had dumped millions into the electro-forging equipment, they were stuck with seriously heavy welded frames in their Chicago factory.

Ross very quickly took up lugged frames not having any of the industrial baggage of companies like Schwinn and Columbia, the brazing of the frames was essentially automated (I believe in a similar way to Raleigh bikes, utilizing brass billets and a molten salt bath), very unlike what you see in the movie with the Columbia frame builders hand pouring the brazing materials.

I think a lot of people overestimate the quality of the electro schwinns too. They were sturdy but they lacked the refinement of foreign makes like Raleigh or Puch which were in their price bracket. I think Customers also noticed this - a Schwinn 3 speed weighed 40lbs, a Raleigh weighed 35lbs. If you were going to pay $90, why would you spend it on the Schwinn? You got more bike for your money (literally), but that was beginning to be seen as a bad thing. You could get a Ross for less if you wanted, and all things considered the quality really wasn't that different. About the only advantage the Schwinn held was better bearings. But it was heavier, it didn't look "right" without lugs, it had its own odd sized tires...

Gravity Aided

Ross was better . But after 85 they moved some production overseas . In some cases Ross quality was better, in some cases, not so much . A lot of my friends went to Raleighs from Schwinns in the mid-70's because they were lighter, more reliable, and just plain better . Not to mention other European Imports . You can't keep building the bikes for 1965 in the late 70's . Ithink a good deal of Schwinns marketing aimed the bicycle at children . If they would have aimed for adults, we might have more bike trails and less couch potatoes .

Grim

Little story about factories and UAW.

GM was building a new plant to build parts and replace an antiquated plant in Flint. They elected to build it in TN, A right to work state as I recall for a more central location as well as to keep the plant that was producing the part running so as not to hold up production on the lines that needed the part. The new plant was going to use the latest equipment to improve the product as well as to make the job for the workers safer with automation of the more dangerous parts of the job. It also was much more productive with less people needed to operate it.

That makes perfect sense doesn't it? Safer for the worker, better quality product, lower operating cost to help make them competitive. Whats not to like? Sounds like the Company making the right choices to make their product competitive and keep the company viable and people employed.

SO in steps the Union with threats of strikes for not shutting down and retooling the flint plant.

They strong arm GM into retooling the flint plant and GM does so to advert the strikes. Now the plant has been brought up to date after having to shut down putting GM behind on the assembly lines. GM held up their end, nobody lost their job and wanted one thing in return. The new equipment was able to produce more parts with less workers in the same 8 hour shift. GM asked the UAW to step up production to get caught back up. The UAW refused saying their contract was only for X parts a shift and refused to step up production despite the actual labor being less with the new equipment.
https://labornotes.org/node/1829

Interesting Spin USA today put on GM shutting down the factories in Flint
https://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/...int-usat_x.htm

I'm from Detroit and I have a LOT of Relatives that worked the auto factories. The Union they were members of helped put them out of work.

ftwelder

It's amazing how fast the terrain has changed in the thirty years I have been doing this. It's great just being a welder.

thinktubes 

You're spot on here.

Back in 1973, we took a school fieldtrip to the Schwinn factory in Chicago. It looked exactly like the factory in the film. Most vividly, I remember the hundreds of frames moving throught the factory on conveyer hooks and the paint haze in the air.

Sixty Fiver

Some of us will carry on the tradition of making fine North American built bicycles as custom builders but I look forward to a day when some of this production returns to this side of the pond... it was not that long ago that CCM and Peugeot bicycles were built in Canada and more recently, companies like Rocky Mountain have moved almost all of their production across the pond.

RobbieTunes

Deming.
Unions.
Management.
Other countries waking up.
Transportation.
Resources.
Technology.

It's all change, and every side has a flip side.

repechage

Huffy, aka Huffman Mfg. Co. was finished off by a customer actually, WallMart.
They signed a contract that gave WM an open order, the more they ordered, the more Huffy had to make for them, Huffy sold them cheap to WM as they had planned to use the sales as a capacity filler, keeping the line humming. WM ordered way more than expected, basically as they were using them a a loss leader almost. Huffy had to put WM to the front of the line, and curtail more profitable sales, ticking off their other sales channels. Huffy attempted to renegotiate with WM, advising that they would go bust, WM did not care and demanded more. Huffy went bankrupt, basically the only way to end the contract.

Grim

Uhh Huffy was terminally equated to junk. They flopped for the same reasons Schwinn did, WM buying their low end bikes just drew the process out. Huffy did try to to build a better bike to overcome their low end reputation but is was too little too late as well as thinking the US government was going to put terrifs on the Asian imports....JUST like Schwinn and the others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffy this mentions nothing of Walmart being the reason for their demise.

Fenway

conspiratemus1

Another thoughtful and insightful post, Sixty Fiver.
Funny: years ago, "The Pond" referred to the Atlantic Ocean, separating us here in "America" from the Mother Country. Nowadays the pond rightly refers to the Pacific Ocean. How things change.

loose spoke

Don't underestimate the power of fads and the trend following consumer on company failings. Schwinn was making sturdy, long lasting bikes for generations. The bike boom of the '70s changed our tastes away from sturdy and practical to fast, light and trendy with high quality, but faddish parts. It didn't matter what Schwinn did from that point on... we didn't want them...looked down on them for no reason other than they were American when European was hot. My Paramount is every bit the quality of the best *production* euro bikes of the '70s, but that didn't matter in the long run. In the '80s, Schwinn made (make that sold) great bikes at decent prices, but we just didn't want Schwinn because it wasn't cool. When their customers went elsewhere, Wal Mart may be the only last chance.
Bottom line is that a company is doomed if consumers look down on their products, even if those products are good ones.

Mos6502

To lighten a the mood a bit, I'll post some of the Columbias I owned...



Here's a Columbia Moped I had for a bit. The engine was made in Germany, and the rest was made in the U.S. mostly. Of course the engine ran great and the rest was crap. This had a variable pulley belt drive and was actually a pretty quick little machine. Columbia caught on to the moped fad early so they sold a fair number of these things.



A 1963 Columbia five speed, and a 1964 Columbia three speed for Western Flyer.
The '63 was a top of the line model with a simplex dérailleur, Union pedals, bearings, Weinmann brakes. The Western Flyer was a low-end budget thing with wald pedals, bearings, some flimsy stamped steel Japanese brakes. SA hub though.

The Western Flyer was my beater bike for a few years until it got stolen in Georgia.



My current beater is a 1972 Columbia. Noticeably chintzier compared to the pre-MTD columbias, but they were still a few years off from rock bottom at this point. Perhaps a gnats hair or two above Murray at this point. But it makes a great around town bike. Lost over 5lbs. switching to alloy rims and pedals.

brianinc-ville

Well, I sure am glad that nobody in my family is working over those chrome-plating tanks.

OTOH, I drove through Westfield, MA recently -- that town has seen better days. Pretty sad.

Mos6502, I dig the Tourist Expert.