Cannondale, Schwinn, GT, and Mongoose. Four iconic cycling brands, and indeed mountain bikes brands if we go a bit more era-specific, in various states of decline. That’s both relative to their heydays and relative to their peers and I don’t think anyone remotely associated with the bike industry doesn’t think that their new owner, Pon Holdings, won’t be significantly better stewards to their unique histories than the folks at Dorel. 

I say stewards because for 810,000,000 USD the owners of Santa Cruz Bicycles, Cervelo, BBB, and other brands didn’t just add some manufacturing, distribution, and dealer capacity. They also purchased pure cycling culture. The rights to awesome moments in bike racing history driven by the likes of Missy Giove, Anne-Caroline Chausson, Cédric Gracia, Alison Sydor,  Elke Brutsaert (I just spent half an hour looking at photos of Schwinn Straight-8 DH bikes), Brian Lopes, Leigh Donovan, Steve Peat, Juli Furtado, Tinker Juarez, and that’s just off the top of my head. There were stacks of other pros racers.

And for every pro racer there were thousands of regular mountain bikers racing and riding on the LTS, Homegrown, IBOC, F-Series, Prophet, Straight-6/8, Lobo, Super-V, iDrive, and so on. Making memories one epic ride, or average ride, at a time when mountain biking was evolving at a much more rapid rate than today. 

They’re just brands and products. But, they’re also more than just brands and products. As the largest bike company in the world, Pon.Bike is in a unique position to reinforce, and indeed revitalize, some of the cycling’s most iconic brands. I think they’re now the company most worth watching. 

But their stable of iconic mountain bike brands isn’t the only legacy that Pon.Bike holds in their palms now. Now the largest single bicycle manufacturer in the world, with an estimated 2.9 Billion USD in annual revenue, in 2021 they also purchased a well-known 12-store Northern California chain of bike shops called Mike’s Bikes. 

Overnight, Cannondale and Santa Cruz went from the two biggest bicycle brands without corporate-owned stores to joining Trek, Specialized, Giant, and Kona in single-brand endeavours. Well, in Pon’s case it could be a multiple brand endeavour but every bike on their sales floors could still be one of theirs.  

I’ve talked recently to a few shop managers and owners about the downward pressure on their margins and upward pressures on their inventory and the threat of losing key brands they have supported for years either to corporate stores or larger competitors being opened up to maximize sell-in. Online sales that limit their margins, and potentially eliminate their margins, while still expecting them to provide after-sales service and support. It’s a brutal picture and this is a time when bike sales have been booming. 

And the biggest negative I feel from the trenches is a lack of trust for companies that, in many cases, have been partners for years. Cannondale, for example, is a brand that has been total shitheads to their dealers. Some other big companies haven’t been much better. It’s a simple case of very large businesses getting to dictate the terms of their relationships with very small businesses and not really caring if everyone gets to eat long term. 

They’re just private businesses. But, they’re also more than just private businesses. As the largest bike company in the world, Pon.Bike is in a unique position to reinforce, and indeed revitalize, the bicycle-worlds unique small-dealer model even in the biggest and busiest urban centers. I think they’re now the company most worth watching.