In celebration of PeopleForBikes’ 25th anniversary (founded as Bikes Belong in 1999), we reached out to bike industry veterans who lived through the dramatic industry changes from 1969 through 1999 to identify what led to the formation of our organization.

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One major theme repeated over the decades: The U.S. bike industry desperately needed a collective voice to support the growth of bicycling and the bike business in America.

We collected four tipping points across different time periods that ultimately shaped our march toward unity and progress in 1999.

Tipping Point One: A Schwinn-dominated bike industry gets a major rearrangement due to the 1971-75 bike boom.

It’s hard for us to imagine in 2024 a time when the current “Big Four” bike brands and dozens of other industry companies were just “the Big One” — Schwinn Bicycle Company of Chicago, Illinois.

Not only did Schwinn lead in unit market share (with an estimated 25% of bikes sold being Schwinn), they also dominated the floor space and branding of bike retailers across the country.

Then came the bike boom of 1971-75, which makes the surge of bike sales during COVID seem feeble by comparison. Driven by high gas prices and a growing consciousness for health and the environment, bike sales leaped from five to 15 million units each year.

Unable to meet retailer demand, Schwinn allowed dealers to ignore previous agreements and bring in other brands. In 1974, a federal court decision invalidated what was left of those agreements and Schwinn’s domination was broken.

Schwinn had been a benevolent top dog. They had a full-time employee stationed in Washington, D.C., to influence bike-related legislation, a high-profile spokesman (Dr. Paul Dudley White, President Eisenhower’s cardiologist) encouraging Americans to ride bikes, and Captain Kangaroo and his shiny new Schwinn appealing to the kids every Saturday morning.

As Schwinn’s influence and financial clout waned, new brands sprang up — most notably Specialized in 1975 and Trek in 1976. Schwinn closed its venerable Chicago factory in 1979, and the Schwinn-led industry efforts to get more funding for bikes gave way to intense competition for market share.

Tipping Point Two: Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN) and the ISTEA transportation funding bill of 1991 open the industry's collective eyes.

Direct industry support of advocacy efforts was meager throughout the 1980s. While the Bicycle Industry Association (BIA) received small and sporadic industry contributions, the main bike-centric players in Washington, Rails-to-Trails and the League of American Bicyclists, were primarily funded by consumers.

Fortunately, the industry had a legislative champion in D.C. Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), a member and later chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, who led the way in fighting for more funding for bike infrastructure. Also instrumental were Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Rep. Thomas Petri (R-IL). It comes as no surprise that all three representatives were avid cyclists.

Going into 1991 negotiations for the reauthorization of federal transportation funding, there was a fortuitous shift for the bike industry. With the interstate highway system nearing completion, Congress was prepared to redirect funds to assist alternate forms of transportation to help alleviate urban congestion.

In the three previous transportation bills enacted between 1973 and 1991, a total of $40.7 million was dedicated to bike and pedestrian projects. In the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), that funding soared to more than $1 billion.

Industry leaders were stunned and delighted by such good fortune. This funding, combined with a landmark “Cycling Consumer of the Nineties” study commissioned by Bicycling magazine,  opened up a new era of potential progress.

When American consumers were asked why they weren’t riding their bikes more often, a very different view of bike riding emerged than the industry consensus. The number one reason given for not riding more: A lack of safe, scenic places to ride.

Armed with these insights and a massive new source of infrastructure funding, the industry moved into the 1990s with a renewed sense of purpose.

Tipping Point Three: The Bicycle Industry Organization (BIO) forms and fails due to flawed strategy, setting the stage for a more inclusive industry association.

The one thing that had not changed was our industry’s less-than-optimal margin structure. Bike companies were feeling especially run thin by their annual investment in the well-established Interbike trade show, founded in 1982. The industry loved Interbike, an annual gathering of the brands. Suppliers, spending as much as half of their annual marketing budgets to attend and exhibit, were less enthusiastic.

Bike company leaders turned to the ski industry for an alternative example. Rather than dollars being diverted to a for-profit show promoter, the ski industry was running its own show and directing the revenue toward its own advocacy and trade initiatives. So, in late 1993, the Bicycle Industry Organization was launched and plans were announced for a September 1994 trade show in Las Vegas to compete with and ultimately supplant Interbike.

While the industry’s large companies were generally supportive of BIO, cracks in the hoped-for united front of supplier supporters began to appear. Exhibitors had finally escaped from the trade show wars of the 1980s and were now being asked (again) to invest in two shows.

BIO held two shows in 1994 and 1995, with the second show drawing fewer exhibitors and retailers than the first. What had started out as a promising effort to make the industry more self-sufficient ultimately ended in failure in early 1996.

Tipping Point Four: Industry suppliers, advocates, and retailers conceive of Bikes Belong in 1996 and the organization is funded and running by 1999.

With the downfall of BIO, hopes diminished that an orchestrated industry effort would be made to get the landmark ISTEA bill reauthorized when it expired in 1997. Through separate yet interconnected efforts by legislators, industry members, and advocates, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) legislation passed in 1998, built on ISTEA's foundation of funding for bicycle projects. 

TEA-21 made bicycle and pedestrian projects eligible for a wider range of federal funding programs within the transportation budget and provided the framework for the formation of Bikes Belong (now PeopleForBikes).

Advocates led the way for the industry toward the passage of TEA-21. “We were frustrated by the lack of industry support for our efforts, and we could see the upcoming reauthorization of ISTEA as a great opportunity to change that,” says Linda DuPriest, Specialized’s advocacy director at the time. She and other advocacy leaders like Dave Snyder, Randy Neufeld, and Charlie Gandy decided that a breakfast meeting at the upcoming Interbike show was the way to get the wheels rolling.

“I got Mike Sinyard from Specialized to sponsor that meeting, Charlie convinced Trek’s John Burke to show up, and we walked away with $100,000 pledges from both companies to help fund our reauthorization efforts,” remembers DuPriest. Trek later upped their pledge to $200,000.

At the same time, suppliers were hearing from legislators who pushed the original ISTEA bill through in 1991 with very little industry support. “A super important historic moment was receiving a phone call from Rep. Oberstar in early 1997,” says John Burke, president of Trek since 1997. “He told me, ‘Your companies need to get your shit together to make this next bill happen, so come down to Washington and see me.’” 

Oberstar was known in Washington as a very convincing fellow. “I spent a couple hours with him and he let me know what I needed to do,” says Burke. “So I got in touch with people like Bicycling Magazine’s Publisher Mike Greehan, Leslie Bohm from Catalyst, Chris Kegel the Wheel and Sprocket retailer, Patrick Seidler from WTB, and QBP’s Gary Sjoquist. We put together a meeting in Chicago and outlined a plan for what became Bikes Belong.”

The yet-unnamed industry organization took up residence in the Rails-to-Trails offices in Washington, D.C., in 1998. RTC’s Andy Clarke and their lobbyist Hal Heemstra did a lot of the heavy work that ultimately got the new TEA-21 legislation passed later that year, raising the total funding for all forms of transportation from the ISTEA level of $155 billion to $198 billion.

With the heavy lifting done in D.C., the industry’s attention turned to crafting a more formal structure for Bikes Belong. Ten industry companies comprised the original board of directors, and Bikes Belong was officially launched in 1999, demonstrating that a spirit of cooperation could co-exist with the competitive instincts of company leaders for the betterment of all.

Today, PeopleForBikes represents more than 320 brands from across the bike industry. Our collective work benefits bicycle brands and riders in all 50 states. Is your business interested in adding your voice and influence to our efforts to grow bicycling and the bike business nationwide? Join the PeopleForBikes Coalition today.