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Ahhhh, the Schwinn Stingray. Our first real bicycle at 7 years of age was a Stingray in blue, with a five-speed gear shift on the top tube, banana seat, coaster brake, sissy bar and baseball cards fitted between the spokes. That Stingray sparked a lifelong love affair between the bicycle and us. Over the years we've saddled atop a seeming score of other Schwinns, including our current bike, a 2000 Mesa GS that's logged over 40,000 miles in eight years of riding.
There was a time during the post-WW II boom period when one out of every four bicycles made in America was a Schwinn. Rolling out of a factory at 1718 N. Kildare on the west side, gleaming with chrome fenders, welds that could hold through an apocalypse and balloon tires designed to roll over rough terrain and broken glass with ease, Schwinns earned their reputation as the "Cadillac of American bicycles." With a lifetime warranty on their bikes unprecedented in the business, Schwinn backed up the claim.
The Arnold, Schwinn & Company was founded by German immigrant Ignaz Schwinn and Adolph Arnold in 1895. Arnold, who made his fortune in the meat packing industry, was the money man, Schwinn the designer. They eventually bought the factory on Kildare, set up offices at 1856 N. Kostner and started churning out bicycles. Schwinn also made motorcycles up to the Great Depression, when Ignaz's son F.W. "Frank" Schwinn took over the company and charted it on a bold course to separate the Schwinn brand from other bicycle companies.
Under Frank Schwinn's leadership, the company filed 40 patents, convinced tire maker American Rubber Co. to make the balloon tire for a smoother ride and added the detail aspects (the ersatz gas tank on the frame's top, chrome-plated headlights) that launched the beginning of the cruiser bicycle movement.
By 1950 Frank Schwinn hired Ray Burch as the company's sales promotions manager. Burch and dealer relations manager Bill Chambers pored through reams of distribution receipts and found that 27 percent of Schwinn's retailers sold 94 percent of their bikes. Knowing that they could get rid of three-quarters of their distributors with little effect on the bottom line, the research led to the formation of Schwinn's "Authorized Dealer" program. Moving Schwinn away from the department stores, dealers were required to carry Schwinn's as at least half of their inventory in showrooms that rivaled car dealerships. Dealers and salesmen were given extensive training in th brand, including bicycle construction and repair. The most successful dealers were offered group health care, bonuses and assistance in finding prime locations for new showrooms. Schwinn ads featuring the biggest stars of the day also added to the brand's cachet.
The Authorized Dealer program also signaled the beginning of the end for Schwinn. The company was sued by the Department of Justice in 1957 for restraint of trade and price-fixing. The case took ten years and went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Schwinn was found guilty. During this time, Schwinn launched the Stingray, and the Varsity and Continental series of ten-speed bikes.
By the 1970s, however, Schwinn had four regional warehouses in response to the Supreme Court decision and was unable to keep up with changes in customer tastes and advancements in materials, missing out on the BMX craze in the process. The company was slow to recognize that the industry was switching to lighter alloys for making bike frames, and profits dropped significantly. The final Schwinn rolled out of its west side factory in 1982. Eventually the Schwinn brand was purchased by Pacific Cycle in 2001. Although you'll find some Schwinns in bike shops, the brand is mainly relegated to the department stores Frank Schwinn shunned over a half-century earlier.
Chicago History Museum Reference for Arnold, Schwinn & Company.
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Son,
did we rock it, back in the day!
What they know bout dat!?!
And you know I had to have the reflectors on ma wheels, yea and the skinny rubber drags on the back wheel, a small 8 track radio( blasting Bounce, Rock, Skate)on the botom tube and you know I had - attached to the sissy bar -the glow in the dark orange bike flag that read "Jewel Finer Foods"!
Yea son, it was the summer of 79 and like Planet Rock, I just keep rocking em hard, then came the wallabies! I was on like dat!
If you have an old Schwinn and are a total fun-loving nerd, you can find out what year, month and sometimes exact date your bike was rolled off the assembly line.
Find your serial number and then choose which year your bike was made and decipher the serial code using this guide.
For my own purple Collegiate, it rolled off the assembly line in Chicago in May 1968, or in other words, during the Paris riots and in between the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
Chicago is also the final home and resting place of the lost and great art form that is the pinball machine.
My first bike was a 1979 red Stingray I got for Christmas in first grade. It was my bike for five years. One speed, coaster brake. No other bike will ever compare to that one. It's the bike I learned to ride on. I fell down. I wrecked on it so bad once that I missed two days of school. I learned how to take care of it and fix flats. I stupidly removed the fenders when they were no longer "cool." It made my world smaller. And of course, it was stolen. At the beginning of this past summer I bought my girlfriend an early 70s 3-speed Breeze. Stingrays are popular and expensive now, but I love the fact that you can get an old Chicago-made Breeze, Racer or Collegiate for $50-$100. Built to last.
My little brother, years ago, got a Schwinn almost identical to the one pictured for his 9th birthday. A two-speed kickback, and oh boy did he love that bike. Back then a Scwinn was something to be coveted!
It was the envy of all the boys in the neighborhood. The poor thing...he had the bike for not even a week and while he was out riding it one afternoon, a gang of kids knocked him off and stole it.
I can still remember him walking home with tears in his eyes.
I had a number of Schwinn's going up... a little blue one I got when I was about 3, a silver dirt bike w/ blue vinyl pads on the nadlebars and crossbar, and a blue varsity 10-speed I got in 5th grade.
The story of the decline of Schwinn seems to be an example of head-in-the-sand manufacturing.
They simply did not want to adapt.
They could have used their well-known brand name to transition to mostly larger radius, thin-wheeled bikes. That's where the market was headed. Schwinn declined, keeping their fat-tires, even on larger-radius bikes.
Also, they could have transitioned to different metal, away from the heavy, expensive steel that they were using. That's where the market was heading. Again, Schwinn declined.
The result? Schwinn went belly-up. Almost as if that's what they wanted.
"a gang of kids knocked him off and stole it."
yea sh*t happend to me on my first ride of my first new bike. It was a rainy day, but I wanted to ride. It took my cousin about a week to find out who did it, and for him and his crew get the bike back with "street interest"from the Collins brothers. But when I got the bike back, it had been stripped and spray painted back. When they put it back together it never road the same and we couldn't remove all the cheap black spray paint.
There must be an specially warm section in deep hell for people who knock small kids off bikes and steal them.
Also, they could have transitioned to different metal, away from the heavy, expensive steel that they were using. That's where the market was heading. Again, Schwinn declined.
as one who was employed by them they were in decline long before that. the writing was on the wall for a while.
@groggy, WOW! I'm so looking up my Schwinn's serial number! Thanks for that tip!
He think it's a Schwinn!
@artdude: No problem! It's pretty fun. Makes me wish I had more bikes to look up!