CLOSURE

It's much more than a book

As you can see from the graphic at the top of the page - a photo of a new book about Waterford Precision Cycles - it’s about “Closure.”

I was hoping this entry would be an accompaniment to a podcast episode with the book’s author, but I think I can outspokenly (see what I did there?) say that my commentary will fill in many gaps about the subject.

I don’t believe anyone over the age of 40 doesn’t know the name Schwinn and what it means to bicycles. Founded in 1895, Schwinn Bicycle Company became a household name and remained so for almost 100 years. Every kid wanted a Schwinn bike under his or her holiday tree.

But as with so many things, the market changed, labor costs soared, and the fickle consumer wanted “new and improved” products, which would have required new tooling and probably a whole new factory.

The company was sold in 1991 and in 1993 Richard Schwinn, the great-grandson of founder Ignaz Schwinn and his partner, Marc Mueller, purchased the Schwinn Paramount factory in Waterford, Wisconsin and Waterford Precision Cycles was created.

My relationship with Waterford goes back almost to its inception in 1994 when the bike shop with which I was associated began to sell Waterford frame-sets. Over the ensuing years – decades actually – we continued to design and build our bikes with frames produced by the factory, becoming one of their top dealers.

I only visited the factory in Waterford, Wisconsin once. It was in the 90’s and I really didn’t understand the entire process of custom-building bicycles the way I do now. To me, it was just a big factory with noisy machines and people scurrying around.

Since then, I’ve learned so much more as we opened a new shop that only offered custom bikes, and Waterford became instrumental in our success.

On the face of it, a review of just the book should be enough. It’s truly a lovely coffee table addition to anyone’s bicycling library. The photographs are stunning and the text is thoughtful, almost poetic.

But there is a profound sadness to it too as it depicts the final days of the Waterford factory and the process of closing it – forever.

The author, Tucker Schwinn, is the younger of the two children of Richard and Debra Schwinn. Tucker grew up at Waterford, and his reflective introduction and subsequent depiction of the factory in colorful and unexpected scenes reveals ways you’ve probably never seen or thought about bicycles or factory production.

I would learn of the closing of Waterford on May 8, 2023, when I received an email from the editor of Bicycle Retailer asking me if I had heard that Waterford was closing.

As many things are these days, I thought it might just be gossip. It wasn’t.

In my call to Richard two seconds after I received the email, he said we were his next call and did indeed confirm that Waterford would stop taking orders at the end of June.

And so that is the story - albeit a brief snapshot. The bicycle world lost a good one.

CLOSURE – the end of an era, the end of a brand, the end of a valuable piece of bicycle history. It is definitely more than a book.