Greenville, MS Schwinn bicycles

[CCTiger]

Can anyone point me to a list of which models (and years) were produced in Greenville, MS? I have tried searching with not much luck. TIA

 

[Xlobsterman]

Can anyone point me to a list of which models (and years) were produced in Greenville, MS? I have tried searching with not much luck. TIA

There is not much info out there for Greenville, and it operated from 1983 to 1991

 

[Eric Amlie]

Here is some info for 1986.

 

[cyclingday]

Interesting read.
I couldn’t help thinking about the Mountain Bike boom that was brewing at the time that article was written.
Schwinn was investing heavily into a style of bike that was going to be all but dead for the next 15 years.
I remember during the MB boom, nobody even wanted to look at a road bike, much less buy one.
That Greenville plant should’ve been ramping up to build Mountain Bikes.

 

[Xlobsterman]

Interesting read.
I couldn’t help thinking about the Mountain Bike boom that was brewing at the time that article was written.
Schwinn was investing heavily into a style of bike that was going to be all but dead for the next 15 years.
I remember during the MB boom, nobody even wanted to look at a road bike, much less buy one.
That Greenville plant should’ve been ramping up to build Mountain Bikes.

This is one of the reasons Schwinn "FAILED MISERABLY" during the 80's, and it was business decisions like this that ended up being their demise in the early 90's!

 

[Oilit]

This is one of the reasons Schwinn "FAILED MISERABLY" during the 80's, and it was business decisions like this that ended up being their demise in the early 90's!

I get the impression that Ed Schwinn was proud of the family name and the company's reputation, but he didn't have much interest in actual bicycles. Has anybody seen a picture of him on a bike?

 

[Roger Henning]

Nope only Richard rode bikes and if he had been in charge we might still have a Schwinn. Ed was interested in blondes and sports cars. Roger

 

[cyclingday]

Keith Kingbay or Al Fritz should’ve been put in charge.
Those guys had their fingers on the pulse of the company.

 

[SirMike1983]

You also have to remember that hindsight has proven it became very difficult to manufacture bicycles in the U.S. in a large-volume setting the way Schwinn did in the 1950s-60s. Schwinn's partnership with Giant showed that the Taiwanese company was situated better to produce reasonably priced, reasonably decent bicycles in the mass-produced range. Schwinn was stuck with an aging plant in Chicago. The traditional notion was that raw materials went into one side of a massive plant, and a bicycle came out at the other end. That style of manufacturing proved too expensive in the US by the 1980s, at least if you're looking at a mass-produced, low or mid level bicycle.

What I could see succeeding would be to try to negotiate a deal with a foreign supplier for the lower-end line up and then Schwinn's USA operation would scale back to making just higher-end bikes (something akin to what Trek was doing or what Waterford became). But even then, you have to give up on the notion that a large plant will be operating in the U.S., with raw materials coming in at one end and bicycles leaving the other by the thousands and thousands. And this had to be done years earlier - basically you need to think several moves on the board ahead, that you're going to give up on large-scale manufacturing of US-made Schwinns and convert the US operation over to premium bikes, while having a foreign supplier work the lower end of your product line up. Not easy stuff to predict, and certainly many other companies in the US got caught by the same trap in the 1970s-90s.

In a way, Schwinn is still operating in the US as Waterford today. And Waterford seems to have better grasped the US-made bicycle as a premium product for a higher-level consumer.

 

[Xlobsterman]

You also have to remember that hindsight has proven it became very difficult to manufacture bicycles in the U.S. in a large-volume setting the way Schwinn did in the 1950s-60s. Schwinn's partnership with Giant showed that the Taiwanese company was situated better to produce reasonably priced, reasonably decent bicycles in the mass-produced range. Schwinn was stuck with an aging plant in Chicago. The traditional notion was that raw materials went into one side of a massive plant, and a bicycle came out at the other end. That style of manufacturing proved too expensive in the US by the 1980s, at least if you're looking at a mass-produced, low or mid level bicycle.

What I could see succeeding would be to try to negotiate a deal with a foreign supplier for the lower-end line up and then Schwinn's USA operation would scale back to making just higher-end bikes (something akin to what Trek was doing or what Waterford became). But even then, you have to give up on the notion that a large plant will be operating in the U.S., with raw materials coming in at one end and bicycles leaving the other by the thousands and thousands. And this had to be done years earlier - basically you need to think several moves on the board ahead, that you're going to give up on large-scale manufacturing of US-made Schwinns and convert the US operation over to premium bikes, while having a foreign supplier work the lower end of your product line up. Not easy stuff to predict, and certainly many other companies in the US got caught by the same trap in the 1970s-90s.

In a way, Schwinn is still operating in the US as Waterford today. And Waterford seems to have better grasped the US-made bicycle as a premium product for a higher-level consumer.

One other thing that helped kill the Schwinn Company in the 80's was the labor strike, then subsequent unionizing of the labor force! This shot the cost of operating higher for the increased wages and benefits for the now unionized employees! Just one of the MANY nails in the Schwinn coffin that ultimately led to their demise in the early 90's.........!