For three decades one family company made one in every four bicycles sold in America. Ignaz Schwinn opened Arnold, Schwinn and Company in Chicago in 1895. His son Frank gave the world the fat balloon-tyre bike in 1933. In June 1963 a designer named Al Fritz noticed kids in California bolting motorcycle handlebars onto their bikes, and Schwinn built the Sting-Ray: banana seat, ape-hanger bars, fat rear tyre. It sold 45,000 the first year and nearly two million by 1968. In 1974 Schwinn sold a million and a half bicycles.
Then two things happened that nobody in Chicago took seriously. In Marin County, California, riders went looking for the toughest bikes ever made, settled on balloon-tyre Schwinns built between 1937 and 1944, stripped them and raced them down Mount Tamalpais. The mountain bike was invented out of old Schwinns – and Schwinn’s engineers laughed. Its one attempt, the Klunker 5, never made the catalogue.
And in 1977 Schwinn hired a five-year-old workshop in Taiwan called Giant to build its bikes, sending over its dies, plans and know-how. After 1,400 Chicago workers struck for thirteen weeks in 1980, Giant was soon making two of every three Schwinns – three quarters of Giant’s whole business. Schwinn tried to buy a stake and was turned down. Giant put its own name on the frames and is now the largest bicycle manufacturer on earth. Schwinn filed for Chapter 11 on 7 October 1992 with about $75 million of debt, and after 98 years in the family it was sold for about $40 million.
This is File 010 of The Collapse Files: how billion-dollar companies die.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The bike in the garage
0:48 The Family
1:57 The Sting-Ray
3:15 The Dealers
4:16 The Klunkers
5:37 The Strike
6:23 The Workshop
7:45 The Bankruptcy
9:09 The Schwinn File
Sources: the Wikipedia entries for the Schwinn Bicycle Company, Al Fritz, Joe Breeze and Giant Manufacturing; Judith Crown and Glenn Coleman, No Hands: The Rise and Fall of the Schwinn Bicycle Company (1996); the Marin Museum of Bicycling on Repack and the klunkers; Deseret News and Washington Post reporting on the October 1992 bankruptcy and the 1993 sale.
Archival images via Wikimedia Commons, public domain and CC0 where marked, plus CC-licensed photographs by turbojams (SchwinnAeroCycle, CC BY-SA 2.0); Rudi Riet (1938 Schwinn head badge (295873940…, CC BY-SA 2.0); Copyright 1984 Alba Vasconcelo (Joe breeze, CC BY-SA 4.0); Andrew Ciscel (Cycling in Chicago 05, CC BY-SA 2.0); Joe Mabel (Schwinn Sting-Ray Chopper 01, CC BY-SA 3.0); Joe Mabel (Schwinn Sting-Ray Chopper 02, CC BY-SA 3.0); Greg Gjerdingen (63 Chevrolet Corvette StingRay & 5…, CC BY 2.0); John Phelan (H R Sawyer Schwinn Bicyclery, Have…, CC BY 4.0); Coronium (Giant-Headquarter-Taichung-2024, CC BY-SA 4.0); WC-QHS (Giant Sales Company headquarters 2…, CC BY-SA 4.0); Kenming Wang (2011-10-13 高雄市區捷安特自行車店 (8432486126…, CC BY-SA 2.0); whappen (1948 Schwinn Hornet 01, CC BY 2.0); Nick Number (Grave of Ignaz Schwinn (1860–1948)…, CC BY 4.0); Rico Shen (2007TaiwanSportsEliteAwards KingLi…, CC BY-SA 3.0); Don’t B. Silly (Klunker and old mtb 5039805557 582…, CC BY-SA 2.0); Nels P Olsen (Schwinn StingRay OrangeKrate 5spee…, CC BY-SA 2.0); Timothy Vollmer (Marin Museum of Bicycling (4461853…, CC BY 2.0); Thirteen Of Clubs (1986 Schwinn Paramount bicycle, CC BY-SA 2.0); Lambtron (1949 Black Phantom, CC BY-SA 4.0); bs (1950 Schwinn Spitfire, CC BY 2.0); whappen (1957 Schwinn Spitfire, CC BY 2.0); Wordcraft (Biking on Mount Tamalpais, CC BY-SA 3.0); Wayne Wilkinson (His and Hers Vintage Schwinn Touri…, CC BY 2.0); Lauren Mitchell (Schwinn Typhoon, CC BY 2.0); Kenneth C. Zirkel (1955 Schwinn Whizzer motorized bic…, CC BY-SA 4.0).
Archival footage from the Prelinger Archives on archive.org: Bicycle Today, Automobile Tomorrow (1969); Drive Your Bicycle (1955); In the Suburbs (1957); Steel: A Symphony of Industry (1936); The Welding Operator (1942); You and Your Bicycle (1948).
Music from the YouTube Audio Library: “Missing Persons” (Jeremy Blake) and “Little Drunk, Quiet Floats” (Puddle of Infinity).
Additional scene illustrations were created for this film; no real person is depicted in them, and the factories, riders and offices in those illustrations are representations, not photographs of Schwinn’s or Giant’s premises or staff. Narration is synthetic.
#Schwinn #StingRay #Bicycle #Nostalgia #Documentary #CorporateCollapse
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