Fred's Bike: LeMond plans re-entry to bike market

Friday, February 22, 2013

LeMond plans re-entry to bike market

DENVER, CO (BRAIN) — Tour de France hero Greg LeMond said he expects to begin selling bicycles again, possibly showing prototype models as early as this year's Interbike.

Greg LeMond

"I've got quite a few different ideas," LeMond said in a Skype interview with BRAIN this week. "Ultimately I'm looking at coming back into the bicycle business, integrating some technology and stuff that I have used in my cycling career."
LeMond, who was still wearing a back brace as he recovers from a car accident earlier this month, said he had decided to avoid a licensing agreement like he had with Trek Bicycle, and instead look for a "partnership" with a manufacturer, with a goal of eventually bringing manufacturing in house.
"I want to build a company that can be around for more than a few years; I'm still young," he said.
LeMond sold Seattle-based LeMond Fitness, which sold stationary bikes and trainers, to Hoist Fitness last fall. Then he and investors set up a new company, LeMond Inc., that bought back the trainer business from Hoist. Hoist is focused on selling LeMond stationary bikes into the health club market.

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The new company, based in Minneapolis, is selling the trainers and will expand from there. Among its employees is sales director Gene DiMenna, who is a former regional sales manager at Trek, involved with the sales of LeMond bikes when Trek still sold the line.
Trek began licensing the LeMond name for bikes after LeMond's retirement from racing in 1994. The relationship ended badly with a suit and countersuit that were finally resolved in 2008. Since then LeMond said he has received several licensing offers from bike manufacturers and had considered re-entering the bike market with a consumer direct sales option, but has since swung around toward selling through bike shops.
"There was a period when I needed to digest the whole end of the relationship with Trek and decide where I wanted to go and whether I wanted to get back into the bike business," he said.

LeMond plans re-entry to bike market | Bicycle Retailer and Industry News

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Bike Quotes

As I get older the tendency to stick my foot up someone's ass is starting to subside. - Fred on Pump Track Pricks

The 29 inch chingaderra rolls best downhill! ~ Fred

I thought of that while riding my bicycle.

~ Albert Einstein on the Theory of Relativity

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving ~ Albert Einstein

If constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles. ~ Prof. Carl Sagan

It never gets easier, you just go faster. ~ Greg LeMond.

~ Charles M. Schulz

The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind. ~ William Saroyan Nobel prize winner

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I have hope for the human race. ~ H.G. Wells

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~ H.G. Wells

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it, if you live. ~ Mark Twain Taming the Bicycle. 1884

PEDAL. Pray Every Day And Listen. ~ Rev. Johannes Myors, The pedaling preacher

The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. ~John Howard

A bicycle does get you there and more.... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all the fun. ~Bill Emerson

Until mountain biking came along, the bike scene was ruled by a small elite cadre of people who seemed allergic to enthusiasm. ~Jacquie Phelan

Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own. ~Louis J. Helle

The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash. ~Julie Furtado

If you worried about falling off the bike, you’d never get on. ~ Lance Armstrong

Never use your face as a brake pad. ~ Jake Watson

Refrain from throwing your bicycle in public. It shows poor upbringing. ~ Jacquie Phelan

When I was sick, I didn't want to die.
When I race, I don't want to lose.
Dying and losing, it's the same thing. ~ Lance Armstrong

"It is no longer a beast of steel,
no it is a friend it is a faithful
and powerful ally against one's worst
enemies. It is stronger than anxiety,
stronger than sadness. It has all the
power of hope." ~  Maurice Leblanc