<
According to Bike Pittsburgh:
Earlier this year, Cannondale announced all manufacturing will end at their facility in Bedford, Pa, moving all production to Taiwan. The company was recently bought out by Dorel Industries, the makers of the department store brands Pacific, RoadMaster, Dyno, and Mongoose, as well as GT and Schwinn. Cannondale, one of the largest manufacturers of bicycles in the United States, has had their manufacturing hub in the small central Pennsylvania town since 1983, so the loss of over 200 jobs will be devastating. The facility produces 400 to 500 bicycles per day, and over forty hands touch each bicycle before it leaves the facility.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary George Cornelius, himself a cyclist, wants to convince them to change their decision. On May 5, at the first ever Pennsylvania Bike Summit in Harrisburg, he asked bicyclists, bike shop owners, and anyone who wants Cannondale to remain Pennsylvania made to contact Cannondale’s corporate headquarters in Connecticut. He wants the public to let them know that “Handmade in the USA” means a lot to them when they purchase a bicycle, and that Cannondale has a great manufacturing home here in Pennsylvania.
Read more at www.bike-pgh.org.
let cannondale get absorbed by dorel and come out with another brand, smithandwestondale maybe or cougardale (i don’t know many weapon names) they make good bikes and test the limits of design, but everyone needs to sell out
Perhaps you didn’t read the whole story on Bike-PGH…
Cannondale has been absorbed by Dorel. The point of the post is that hundreds of Pennsylvania factory workers will be out of a job because Dorel plans to outsource the production of Cannondale bikes to Taiwan. Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Community and Economic Development is calling on people to write to Dorel and protest the closure of the plant.
Cannondale is dead already. The only thing left to do is to pull the emotional plug on the brand and move on. Soon you will see the franken-clones of it’s corpse on the wallmart shelves next to GTs, Mongooses, and Schwinns. All formerly actual bicycle brands. The company responsible for headshocks, leftys, and carbon fiber pivot-chainstays had this coming. If the state of PA wants to save the manufacturing jobs they should invest in the workers. Loan them money to start their own company like the workers at Fat City did when Chris Chance punked out and sold the brand to Serrota.
why is cannondale corporate in ct and not pa?
if cannondale was doing so well, if it had such a great strategy, or if it cared so much about its workers and other stakeholders why did it sell to dorel?
does cannondale have a successful business plan/future as an independent company manufacturing in pa? can it remain competitive doing so?
aside from cannondale, how many production bicycle brands are still truly, completely ‘handbuilt in usa’?
should bicyclists base their purchasing decisions based on nationalistic feelings?
should we ask the government to nationalize cannondale, and bring back schwinn, gt, mongoose, etc to the usa?
i agree with dirt 35’s suggestion: ask government to offer generous business incentives to people who want to start small, custom, family-owned, local bicycle companies so ‘green’ jobs can be saved/created.
Remember when Cannondale gave George Bush that $5000 mountain bike?–
out of the kindness of their heart, they claimed.
Now they’ve taken the money and run.
I hate to see working class people hurt by this, but this is simply the pattern of right wing American business.
Cannondale is dead.
boy oh boy are you guys a bunch of ______ saying somethings are dead bla bla bla. and wow even a shot at bush nice like that is adding garlic to the coffin?
The truth is this is a classic 80″s strip and dump take over the company is not in a good position to stay afloat but the boat is good so you kick the crew off and sell the boat in little bits and use the name to make a quick buck, and then after you kill a town get ride of the people you just move on and do it to some other poor company.
All this does is make our country weaker the dollar goes down import taxes go up
you want better schools and health care you need industry you need the constant jobs for the workers.
you want cheaper say gas or anything really get things local and in country rather then off the boat that just drank $1million dollars in fuel.
it goes deeper then just the brand people.
william, your message is good but gets lost in your run-on sentences. I will keep my “hand built in the US” as a relic.