Also that year, Ross bought Barracuda Bicycles, saying it would use the Colorado-based brand to break into the high-end dealer market. In 1995, Rand said made plans to build a factory on Long Island to build thermoplastic and carbon fiber frames domestically. It made some partnerships with high-end brands, including Waterford frames, and brought out frames using a novel thermoplastic carbon fiber construction technique. Under Rand, Ross made some attempts to establish itself again at the high end of the mountain bike market.
#Murray bike history professional
After leaving Ross he became a professional expert witness in product liability cases.
Jerry Ross was well-known in the industry, serving as president of the Bicycle Institute of America (predecessor of the BPSA) and the Bicycle Manufacturers Association. Jerry Ross went to work for Rand, the new owner, for about five years. That program turned out to be disastrous and was blamed for Ross’s decision to declare bankruptcy in 1988. Ross began moving production out of Allentown to Taiwan in about 1986.Īlbert Ross' son Sherwood “Jerry” Ross, Randy Ross’s father, repurposed the Allentown factory to make ammunition boxes for the U.S. "I sold thousands of those bikes," he said. He could have been Specialized or Trek,” said one veteran industry executive, who was a Ross dealer in the 1980s. “If he had been able to keep it going, Ross would been a real player. Ross also promoted a three-day stage race in Massachusetts that helped get the sport off the ground and showcase its team.Īccording to some reports, Ross was selling 100,000 mountain bikes a year in the mid-1980s. Team members included Joe Sloup and Cindy Whitehead. The following year the company supported the Ross Indians, the first professional mountain bike race team. Ross was well ahead of the curve when it came to mountain bikes, showing its first production MTB at the 1982 Interbike show. In Ross’s long history, it might have only had a good reputation among bike enthusiasts for a brief period in the 1980s. "They gave me a lot of opportunity and the associated responsibility." Ahead of the curve " I enjoyed working for the Ross family," Cunnane said. For them to get the Ross brand was the most amazing thing in the world to them,” he said.Īfter the bankruptcy, Cunnane joined a new rival, BCA, which launched in Pennsylvania just down the road from Ross’s Allentown factory. “Basically if you were in New York, where the Goldmeiers were, Ross was your Schwinn. ( see related story)Ĭunnane didn’t work for Ross after the bankruptcy, but suspects the brand still enjoys some home town cache with the Goldmeiers. The regional strength might explain some of the emotion behind the Ross family’s efforts to regain the brand, and for the Goldmeiers' desire to hang on to it. The company then was managed by father Larry and sons Allen and Steven. Rand International, the importer that bought the Ross brand out of bankruptcy in 1988, and its owners, the Goldmeier family, were based on Long Island, and still are. Ross was to New York what Schwinn was to Chicago: the home brand. “There was one market where Ross outsold Schwinn and that was Manhattan and Long Island,” said Pat Cunnane, who was a Ross regional sales manager in the 1980s. Through the 80s, Ross’ brand was strongest in its home market. Until then, bikes were mostly sold at either auto parts stores, department stores, or Schwinn stores.
Ross was one of a handful of brands that helped establish independent, non-Schwinn, bike shops starting in the 1970s. The company was renamed Ross Bicycles in 1982. After the war, the company was renamed Chain Bike Company and focused on making bikes, first at several locations around New York and then at a factory in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that opened in the 1970s. The company initially made pipe fittings for industry and for the Navy during World War II. And in the 1960s and 1970s, it was one of the key suppliers to what was then a new retail channel: independent bicycle dealers.Īlbert Ross founded Ross Galvanizing Works in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in 1940. The brand also had a key role in establishing the mountain bike as a product category and kick-starting professional mountain bike racing.