March 2008 Archives

Pacific Bicycle Company is one of the largest Bicycle Conglomerates in the world. Some of its brands include, Schwinn, Mongoose, GT, Pacific, and NOW potentially Cannondale.  Cannondale, compared to Pacific's other brands is a high end bicycle company with made in the USA tradition and a strong racing history. This is similar to when Pacific bought Schwinn and GT in the late nineties since their purchase, these companies have declined in quality and do not offer the range of bicycles they used to. The thing about Pacific is all of its brands before Cannondale were slowly outsourcing to Asia. Cannondale has a handful of models that are made in Taiwan, the rest of its line is made here in Pennsylvania. If Cannondale is successfully integrated into Pacific Cycles, will they start to outsource more of their bicycles? Its very likely more of Cannondale's line of bikes will be outsourced to Asia, reason being more of costs than influence by it's owner, but the ownership by Pacific, a Taiwanese based company, is not going to help keep the Cannondale brand in America. Since Pacific is now breaking into a higher end market by buying Cannondale, will they be on the verge of bicycle monopoly in the next few years? A monopoly implies having control of the majority of the market, in this case Pacific has a long way to go, but is it better to have all these bicycle brands under one ownership? Or is it better to have a bunch of smaller companies? Having lots of smaller companies will definitely promote innovation with new products. The only thing to do is to wait and see what happens....