1960’s – A Decade of Change

• 1960 – Became the third largest bike manufacturer in America.
• 1962 – Horace ‘Huffy’ Huffman, Jr, was appointed chairman of and Frederick C. Smith took over the reigns as president and CEO.
• 1964 – Huffman Manufacturing unsuccessfully expanded its Outdoor Power Equipment division with the acquisition of Diele and McGuire Manufacturing. The whole division continued to make a loss over the next decade.
• 1964 – The Huffman corporate offices were moved to their current location in Miamisburg.
• 1968 – The Huffman Manufacturing Company went public with its listing on the American Stock Exchange.
• 1969 – Sales reached $42 million.
• During the 1960’s and early 1970’s, the company continued to steadily grow. Domestically, the market for adult bicycles expanded as people began cycling for fitness and using bikes as an alternative to driving.

Further Expansion

• 1970s Saw the introduction of mass merchandise retail chains that stocked large quantities of consumer goods and sold them at discount prices. This provided them with an opportunity for up a new market for bike sales. Huffy Bicycles developed a ten-speed that required the bare minimum of assembly and service.
• 1972 – Stuart Northrup, a former Singer Sewing Machine executive, replaced Frederick Smith as president of Huffman.
• 1973 – The company was employing approx 2,500 workers at five locations.
• 1975– A financial recession meant that Huffy bike sales dropped by 50%. The corporation was forced to close its Celina plant for two months and lay off 25 percent of its workers.
• 1975 – The Outdoor Power Equipment division was finally sold. The lawnmower market division had been struggling for years. The sale brought in a much needed $10 million in cash.
• 1977 – ‘Huffy Corporation’ was formed in a strategy designed to focus on promoting the ‘Huffy‘ brandname instead of selling the bikes under different labels.
• 1977 – The popularity of the Thunder Trail bike made Huffy the number one producer of bicycles in the United States by 1977 and all of the laid-off workers were called back. Net sales for 1977 were $130 million, a 21 percent increase from the previous year.
• 1977 – Realizing the need to diversify, Huffman acquired Frabill Manufacturing, a maker of fishing and basketball equipment.
• 1982 – Harry A. Shaw III was appointed as CEO of the Huffy Corporation. He immediately began to close plants and make major staff cutbacks. He then went on to consolidate all the bike manufacturing operations into the Celina plant. He flogged the Automotive Products Division for cash and put the money (more than $15 million), into developing advanced robotics and new production equipment. The restructure (although highly unpopular) resulted in a 14 percent cut to production costs and an increased production output of 5,000 bikes per day. Shaw earmarked a further $15 million to improve computer-generated manufacturing in the Huffy bike plant by 1991.
• 1982 – In a strategic diversification program Huffy Corporation acquired Gerico, a maker of infant car seats and strollers. Huffy operated this brand under the ‘Gerry Baby Products’ label. They also acquired YLC Enterprises, a provider of product assembly services for retail consumer purchases. This brand became known as as ‘Huffy Service First’.
• 1988 – Washington Inventory Service, a nationwide inventory taking service, was acquired.
• 1990 – In an ill-concieved move the Huffy Corporation spent $55 million buying out Black & Decker’s shares in True Temper Hardware and capital stock in True Temper Ltd. in Ireland. True Temper was a manufacturer of garden and lawn tools, who was claiming approximately 30 percent of the marketshare. True Temper struggled to turn a profit.
• 1990’s – The biggest problem faced by Huffy was the huge success of Asian bicycle manufacturers infiltrating the US market. Lower production costs in Asia meant that domestic manufacturers couldn’t financially compete. Where they had previously held a 30 percent share of the $1.5 billion U.S. market, they saw their profits plummet.
• 1991– Mark Allen won a 3rd straight Ironman Triathlon riding on his Huffy Triton Bike.
• 1994 – The Huffy Blades bike endorsed by Bonnie Blair – a 5-time Olympic Gold winner – sells a record 500,000 units.
• 1995 – Huffy Bicycles suffered its worse year with a crippling $10.5 million loss. Management spent the rest of the 1990’s rebuilding. The process saw the company downsize in some departments and expand into new business areas. Workers’ wages were cut, new product lines were developed, and lunderperforming businesses were shed.
• 1995 – A new approach leads them to negotiation of licences with Warner Brothers to use cartoon characters from Looney Tunes and Baby Looney Tunes one their kids bikes.
• 1997 – Huffy sold Gerry Baby Products Cofor $73 million and with the money purchased Royce Union Bicycle Co – a New York-based maker of high-end bikes. In addition, Huffy also snapped up a bankrupt manufacturer and distributor of basketball goods called Sure Shot International, for$1.5 million. Sure Shot International was then absorbed into Huffy’s Sports Co. subsidiary.
• 1997 – Huffy introduced their first and highly successful ‘bicycle motocross’ or BMX, models.
• 1998 – The ‘Rugrats’ styled kids bikes were launched.
• 1998 – Huffy closed down its Celina plant and laid off all of the facility’s 1,000 employees, – 25 percent of the company’s total workforce – after an unresolved pay dispute with its workers.
• 1998 – The Washington Inventory Service subsidiary acquired Inventory Auditors, Inc, which included 42 offices operating in 23 states.
• 1999 – Huffy Corporation introduced an electric scooter called Buzz, to the marketplace . They then struck a deal with ZAPWORLD.COM to sell – ZAPWORLD’s stand-up version of an electric scooter – called the ZAPPY, through Huffy’s distribution channels. This move was designed to strengthen Huffy’s incursion into the electric scooter segment.
• 1999 – The True Temper Hardware Co. was sold to U.S. Industries, Inc. for $100 million.
• 1999 – The Huffy Corporation shut down down all of its remaining U.S. bicycle manufacturing operations when it became clear, that due to Asian competition the making of low-cost, mass-market bicycles, was no longer viable from manufacturing plants in the USA.
• 2000 – Huffy sold 2.2 million of its new Micro scooters.
• 2004 – In August, the stock price plummeted by 40 percent and the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading of the Huffy Corporation. This drama unfolded after the company publicly announced that an audit of its finances had exposed serious accounting irregularities.
• 2004 – In October, the Huffy Corporation and all of its United States and Canadian subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.
• 2006 – Huffy continued to make a small line of Chinese manufactered bikes and proudly announced the milestone of selling Huffy’s 100 millionth bicycle.