Cannondale Bicycle Corporation

This article is about a company. For the Cannondale neighborhood in Wilton, Connecticut, see Cannondale, Connecticut. For the train station, see Cannondale (Metro-North station). For the cycling team, see Cannondale Pro Cycling Team.
Cannondale Bicycle Corporation
Subsidiary
Industry Bicycles
Founded 1971 (1971)
Headquarters Wilton, Connecticut, United States
Products Bicycle and Related Components
Parent Dorel
Website cannondale.com

The Cannondale Bicycle Corporation, is an American division of Canadian conglomerate Dorel Industries that supplies bicycles. It is headquartered in Wilton, Connecticut with manufacturing and assembly facilities in China and Taichung, Taiwan.

History

The company was founded in 1971 by Joe Montgomery, Jim Catrambone and Ron Davis to manufacture backpacks and bags for camping and later bicycle trailers for bicycle touring. [1][2] One of the most successful products was the Bugger, a child trailer, although Cannondale's marketing department claimed to be unaware of the connotations of the name in British English (some were, nevertheless, exported to the UK). Today, Cannondale produces many different types of high-end bicycles, which are no longer hand-made in the US. They specialize in aluminum (rather than steel or titanium) and carbon fiber frames, a technology in which they were pioneers. The name of the company was taken from the Cannondale Metro North train station in Wilton, Connecticut.[3]

In the late 1990s Cannondale attempted to move into the motorsports business, producing a line of off-road motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles. According to an interview with Cannondale Communications Director, Tom Armstrong, the company was unable to drive down the cost of their motor vehicles fast enough. Sales took off when the company was still losing money on each motorbike they shipped. This gap drove the company to seek bankruptcy protection in 2003, and to sell off the motorsport division. Cannondale's bicycle division was purchased in 2003 by Pegasus Capital Advisors, which supported the company's renewed focus on bicycle production.[4] In February 2008, Cannondale was purchased from Pegasus Capital Advisors by Dorel Industries. In April 2009 it was announced that all production would be transferred to Taiwan.[5]

Ownership

Originally a privately held company, Cannondale became publicly held after a $22 million IPO in 1995.[6] The business continued as a publicly traded company until declaring bankruptcy on January 29, 2003.[7] Cannondale's full assets were then purchased at auction by Pegasus Partners II, L.P.[8][9] The motor-sports IP, manufacturing equipment and inventory were quickly sold off as the company returned its focus to bicycle manufacture.[10]

In February 2008, Dorel Industries, a Canada based diversified consumer products company, announced the purchase of Cannondale from Pegasus for approximately $200 million. Dorel also owns Pacific Cycle which is a distributor of bicycles made in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China for sale under many historic U.S. cycle brands, including Schwinn, Mongoose, Roadmaster, and GT.

Products

Bicycle frames

Cannondale began manufacturing aluminum racing and touring frames in 1983, with mountain bike frames added later. The earlier models sported oversized aluminum tubes for increased stiffness, resulting in frames that were super-stiff and super-efficient. Later, carbon fiber composite frames were developed.

Cannondale's bicycle frame components were made in its factory in Bedford, Pennsylvania, but are now made in factories in Taiwan and Vietnam depending on the model of bike.

In 2009, Dorel Industries said that it was moving all of Cannondale's bicycle manufacturing to a new plant in Taichung, Taiwan by the end of 2010. Some non-bicycle manufacturing jobs remaind in Bedford til 2015 when the facility was finally shut down.

On January 23, 2014, Dorel Industries announced that it’s restructuring operations at its recreational/leisure segment. Dorel will close its assembly and testing facility in Bedford, Penn. The Bedford plant, which at one point produced Cannondale’s midrange to high-end aluminum and aluminum-carbon fiber bikes until manufacturing moved to Asia in 2010, still handled some assembly, testing, quality control and customer and technical services. Around 100 people will be laid off.[11]

CAAD design and manufacturing

Cannondale CAAD10 (2011) with SRAM Force group

The first road frame from Cannondale was produced in 1983. It sold for $350 and included the frame and fork. The fork was steel with helical reinforcement ribs inside the steel steering tube. The frame was instantly recognized for the oversized down tube and enlarged head tube. The seatstays and chainstays were ovalized to reduce flex. Unlike steel frames, there were no lugs: the aluminum tubes were mitered, hand welded, and then heat treated.

The first frames were available in two colors: red and white, and painted with DuPont Imron paint. Cannondale achieved the distinction and goal of becoming the first high-volume producer of aluminum frames, at a time when only steel frames were mass-produced and aluminum was handmade in low volumes.

In 1992 Cannondale introduced the 2.8 series frame based on CAD (computer aided design) and finite element analysis to make a frame weighing only 2.8 lbs. The 2.8series featured a tapered large diameter down tube, double-offset bottom-bracket cluster, ovalized top-tube, and double-butted seat tube to achieve the weight reduction. The same year the 1.25" Sub One all aluminum fork was introduced. [12] [13]

Cannondale marketed subsequent frames with the CAAD designation (for "Cannondale Advanced Aluminum Design") which first appeared in their mountain bike frame series. In 1997 the CAAD3 road frame was introduced featuring most of the design from the 2.8series.[14] The CAAD4 model introduced S-bend aluminum seat stays for improved comfort.

The Six13 model, which was introduced in 2004, uses carbon tube sections in the main triangle but still employs aluminum rear triangles. This arrangement is contrary to the usual industry practice of using carbon stay inserts and aluminum front triangle tubes. It should also be noted that the Union Cycliste Internationale has established a 6.8 kg (14.97 lb) minimum weight limit. Cannondale advertised this light weight frameset with the slogan "Legalize my Cannondale". In reality, only the smallest size (50 cm) of bike actually approached the 6.8 kg limit. Some in the bicycle industry considered this to be a creative marketing effort because Six13 frames in fact weighed the same as, or more than, competing frames from other manufacturers.[15]

The current generation of Cannondale aluminum frame is known as CAAD12, which is the continued evolution of Cannondale's welded aluminum frame design.

Cannondale has won numerous design awards including the "Publisher's Award for Innovation" from Bicycling Magazine, "Technological Development of the Year Award" from VeloNews magazine, ""Best Of What's New" award from Popular Science, "Best New Products of the Year Award" from Business Week, "Design Recognition Award" from ID magazine, "Computer-Aided Design Award" from Design News magazine, and a "Design and Engineering Award" from Popular Mechanics.

Cannondale mountain bikes have captured 11 World Championships, 17 World Cup Series overall titles, 16 National Championships, and two Olympic medals as well as overall victory in the Cape Epic stage race. The company's road racing bikes have won 11 stages at the Tour de France, 27 stages at the Giro d'Italia, two Giro d'Italia overall victories, a Professional World Championship title, and two Italian National Championships. Cannondale currently sponsors the Cannondale Factory mountain bike team and Liquigas Cannondale road racing teams, and selected regional amateur teams.

Carbon frames

2004 witnessed the launch of Cannondale's Six13, a composite carbon/alloy frame that featured an alloy head tube, staysets, and bottom bracket junction mechanically and chemically bonded to carbon seat, down, and top tubes. This was the company's first use of structural carbon composite material, and subsequent variants of the Six13 have used one to three carbon tubes depending on the price point of the model and the model year. Later, the Six13 line was expanded to include the Slice triathlon/time trial bike which employed similar alloy/carbon joinery with aerodynamically tapered tubes.

In 2005, Cannondale announced its first all-carbon frame: the "Synapse." At the time, Cannondale lacked the stateside facilities needed to produce such a frame.

Cannondale's SystemSix, which debuted in 2007, represented a more committed embrace of structural carbon than the company's previous flagship roadbike, the Six13. The new bike's entire front triangle, including the oversized asymmetrical head tube, was fabricated from carbon fiber. Furthermore, Cannondale's Pennsylvania factory was upgraded with carbon storage, cutting, and layup equipment in order to prepare the company's workers and physical plant for the SystemSix's more complex carbon assemblies.

The new equipment also provided the infrastructure needed to produce full carbon frames, which debuted on the SuperSix race bike.

As of 2008, Cannondale's carbon/alloy road frames include the Six13 and the SystemSix. The company's full carbon road offerings include several variants of the Synapse and the SuperSix, Cannondale's first U.S. manufactured carbon road model. The use of the numbers 6 and 13 in the model names is in reference to the atomic numbers of carbon and aluminum, the materials used to make the frames.

In a 2012 test performed by Giant Bicycles of North America, the published results show that the Cannondale Supersix placed number one among a limited range of mainly North American bicycles for having greatest bottom bracket stiffness and second-best for torsional-stiffness.[16]

Cannondale also offers several carbon variants of its hardtail and full suspension mountain bikes.

Suspension forks

Head Shok suspension fork
Lefty suspension fork
Cannondale with 'Lefty' fork racing at Fort William, Scotland

Cannondale has also developed a suspension fork called the Lefty. It started with the "Headshok" (aka "Fatty") forks. It uses 88 needle bearings to reduce friction for smooth travel with the bearings telescoping inside the steerer tube of the fork. This minimizes flexing of the fork legs and also reduces static friction, which must be overcome before the fork begins to travel.

The "Lefty" is an unusual looking fork because it only has a left side or blade. It uses the same technology as the Headshok, but desire for greater amounts of travel led to the movement of the telescoping unit off to the side to allow room for the travel. It also allowed for more mud clearance as opposed to traditional forks designs. The Lefty is now seen on many of Cannondale's high-end models, such as all the Scalpels, Rizes, and the expensive models in F series, both cross-country lines. Continual efforts at weight reduction have provided models with a carbon fiber upper tube and a titanium spindle. The titanium spindle was later replaced with a lighter and stiffer forged aluminum version. The carbon fiber upper continues to be used on the highest-end Lefties.

The availability of repair and rebuild components and experienced service technicians for Cannondale forks is much less widespread than Fox, Manitou and Marzocchi designs. However some companies have recently begun to specialize in servicing Cannondale suspension and offer mail in service. This continues to limit the Lefty to mid and high end bikes. Numerous companies now produce adapters that allow the use of Leftys on virtually any mountain bike, with few limitations on choice of headset or stem. With these adapters, riders are free to choose their components and are not restricted to Cannondale house brands or Cannondale-specific parts. Lefty forks are also only compatible with disc brakes. Some of the benefits of the Lefty fork are that it is lighter and laterally more stiff (due to dual crown assembly). The Cannondale Lefty uses needle bearings instead of traditional fork bushings, which allow for more responsive feel, and do not bind under torsional pressures. Another unique trait is unlike a traditional front fork, the lefty allows user to change the inner tube or tire with the wheel still mounted on the bike.

Electric bicycles

Main article: Electric bicycle

An electric bicycle manufactured by Cannondale Sports Group LLC includes a battery module based on Toshiba's quick-charging lithium ion titanite rechargeable battery "SCiB".[17]

Other components

Cannondale developed a proprietary bottom bracket and crankset technology called Hollowgram which has been featured in its high-end bikes since 2001. The crank and bottom bracket set weigh 80 grams less and are 10% stiffer than Dura-Ace.[18] The hollowgram bottom bracket shell can accept standard 68 mm English-threaded bottom bracket cartridges and external bearing cranksets through the use of an adapter. The aluminum Hollowgram crank is a two piece hollow shell that is bonded with aluminum glue. The Hollowgram bottom bracket axle is also hollow aluminum and oversized.

Cannondale has since made this a free international standard known as BB30.[19] In BB30, the diameter of the bottom bracket spindle is increased from the standard 24mm to 30mm. As a result the inside diameter of the bottom bracket shell is increased to 42mm. This allows a reduction in weight by permitting aluminum to be used as a spindle material instead of the more traditional steel. The larger spindle in addition to the larger bottom bracket shell make for increased stiffness of both the frame and crankset. Perhaps the biggest difference between the BB30 standard and more traditional bottom brackets is the use of pressed-in bearings rather than cartridge or cup bearings. The lack of threads or extra "packaging" creates additional weight savings.[20] Because of the "press fit" needed to hold the bearings, tighter and more precise machining tolerances are needed. One disadvantage of BB30 is the harder-to-service nature presented by pressed-in bearings. Another is that there are only a few BB30 cranksets available to consumers, and these are typically high-end.

Cannondale has brought a few concepts to market that have since become accepted industry standards. Cannondale was the first to produce a crankset that uses externally mounted bottom bracket bearings, though they later discontinued this design. External bearings are now the most common type of bottom bracket for mid-level and higher bicycles. In 1992, Cannondale introduced the Headshok and the accompanying over-sized headtube.[21] In 2001, the OnePointFive standard emerged using similar headtube dimensions as the Headshok headtube.

Less successfully, Cannondale mountain bikes (and briefly, the 2.8 road bike with a SubOne fork) produced in the mid-1990s used the Gary Fisher "Evolution", or 11⁄4" headset standard, in common with Fisher's own bikes and Santana tandems. Although a larger headset seemed technically sound, the industry standardized instead upon the Tioga "Avenger", or 11⁄8" size, and headsets or stems for these bikes are now hard to find. A solution for cherished machines is to fit reducing rings and convert to a 11⁄8" headset, fork and stem.

Pro sponsorship

Cannondale's sponsorship of Division 1 road racing teams began with the Saeco team in the late 1990s, highlighted by Mario Cipollini's four consecutive stage wins in the 1999 Tour de France. The team notably won the Giro d'Italia five times, in 1997 with Ivan Gotti, in 2003 with Gilberto Simoni in 2004 with Damiano Cunego. Saeco became Lampre-Caffita in 2005, and the relationship with Cannondale was severed.

In 2007, Cannondale became the bicycle sponsor to Liquigas, and counted fourth and fifth Giro wins as Danilo Di Luca in 2007 and Ivan Basso in 2010 rode to victory. In 2011, they became a title sponsor under the name Liquigas-Cannondale. They also sponsored UCI Professional Continental team Barloworld in 2007 on the Tour de France and UCI Continental team Bahati Foundation in 2010.

On the mountain biking circuit, Cannondale is a sponsor for the Cannondale-Vredestein (formerly Volvo/Cannondale) racing team, the Bear Naked/Cannondale racing team (formerly SoBe/Cannondale) and various individual 24-hour racers such as Bicycling Hall of Famer and US National 24 hour Champion Tinker Juarez. A large number of notable riders have been sponsored by Cannondale at some point in their career, including world champions Anne-Caroline Chausson and Missy Giove, Olympic Silver medalist (and World Champion) Alison Sydor, Bronze medalist Christoph Sauser, "Flyin" Brian Lopes, Cadel Evans, Kashi Leuchs, Libor "The Bouncing Czech" Karas, Martyn Ashton, Lance Trappe, Aaron Chase, Myles Rockwell, Cédric Gracia, Roel Paulissen, Manuel Fumic, Fredrik Kessiakoff, and Chris Van Dine, who rides for the Cannondale Cut team and demos watch team.

In triathlon racing, Cannondale has sponsored 2005 Ironman world champion Faris Al-Sultan, Dejan Patrčević, Croatian triathlon champion, as well as three time Ironman world champion Chrissie Wellington, Sarah Reinertsen, the first amputee woman to finish the Ironman Triathlon, 2004 Paralympics 200 IM gold medalist Rudy Garcia-Tolson.

See also

References

  1. ↑ ""Cannondale Skids", "The Motley Fool" March 17, 1998". Retrieved February 29, 2011. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  2. ↑ ""Backpacking and Bicycling Cannondale," 1973" (PDF). Retrieved February 16, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Cannondale Trivia". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  4. ↑ "BIKEMAG.COM News no. 15: Interview with Cannondale Communications Director, Tom Armstrong". Retrieved 2006-05-20.
  5. ↑ "Cannondale's U.S. Manufacturing Ending".
  6. ↑ "Cannondale Corp.". Retrieved 2006-11-27.
  7. ↑ "Cannondale Corp · 8-K · For 1/29/03". Retrieved 2006-11-27.
  8. ↑ "Coming Soon page". pegasusinvestors.com.
  9. ↑ "Cannondale Sold Off". Retrieved 2006-11-27.
  10. ↑ "Canondale Community". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
  11. ↑ "Dorel restructures bike business". Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
  12. ↑ "Cannondale 1992 catalog" (PDF).
  13. ↑ "allcdale.com Cannondale 2.8".
  14. ↑ "Cannondale 1997 catalog" (PDF).
  15. ↑ "Bikemag, July 2003 article on Six13 frame introduction". Retrieved 2006-05-20.
  16. ↑ "Giant Bicycles Frame Test". Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  17. ↑ "[ITS] Toshiba Exhibits Quick-charging Electric Bicycle". Nikkei Technology Online.
  18. ↑ "SI Crankset". Cannondale System Integration. Archived from the original on 2006-04-21. Retrieved 2006-04-07.
  19. ↑ Cannondale | BB30
  20. ↑ "BB30 Standard". bb30standard.com.
  21. ↑ "Mountain Biking Non Stop! presents Cycling History". Retrieved 2006-05-20.

External links

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