When Bugs Bunny and Cinderella Rode to Huffy's Rescue

For a company that’s managed to stick around for over a century, there are many moments to look back on with nostalgia and pride. But for Huffy, which turns 130 this year, the year 1995 wasn't one to remember. Struggling to compete with less expensive Asian imports, Huffy lost $10.5 million that year. It would probably have gotten worse, too, were it not for some true visionaries who saved the day. Their names were Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester the Cat. In a bid to save the brand, Huffy inked a licensing deal with Warner Bros., owner of Looney Tunes. In short order, bikes rolled off the assembly lines adorned with the familiar animated characters. A year later, Huffy secured a deal with Disney and started theming bikes after its characters, too. By 1997, Huffy’s losses from two years earlier had turned into a net profit of $10.4 million. In essence, Huffy has never looked back. Sure, the company sells its share of adult bikes and has a solid reputation in BMX. It sells electric bikes and scooters, too. But kids bikes are its bread-and-butter business. And to succeed there, you need the Little Mermaid, Spider-Man, Cinderella and … well, the list goes on. “Our goal is to get as many kids on bikes as possible,” said Kris Parlett, marketing director at United Wheels, which owns the Huffy brand. “We have to tap into all of their interests. The younger the kids, the more they're into a lot of these characters." “Since Frozen became the phenomenon that it is, it’s been our No. 1-selling bike,” added global licensing director Rhonda Truitt Beckham. In a sense, the creation of its character bikes is only the latest in a long line of adaptive moves that have kept Huffy around—though it’s unlikely that Horace “Huff” Huffman could have imagined the menagerie now adorning his frames. Huff was the son of George Huffman, who ran the Davis Sewing Machine Co., and in 1892, began making bicycles as a sideline. By 1905, the company was making equal numbers of bikes and sewing machines (600 a day for each). Come 1925, Huff sold off the sewing machine business to start Huffman Manufacturing Co., which soon became known for its elegant cruiser bikes like the Huffman Dayton Streamliner. After WWII, Huffy became the official nameplate, turning heads in suburbia with its innovations, such as the Huffy Convertible, which featured training wheels (a first), and a 1955 model, featuring an onboard radio complete with an antenna on the rear rack. The inventing process, according to Truitt Beckham, has never really stopped. At the height of the Little Mermaid craze, Huffy introduced a bike that featured Ariel swimming in a snow globe between the handlebars, which also left a trail of bubbles behind the rider. “We try to incorporate storytelling in our features,” she said. The original badass bike While baby boomers pined for a Huffy Radiobike in the mid-1950s, the bike that Gen X kids would harass their parents for was the Dragster, which was basically a hot rod with pedals. It boasted chopper-style handlebars, 20-inch wheels, a banana seat and a shifter in the middle. (This last feature became colloquially known as the “ballbuster,” though Huffy did not term it thus.) The Dragster and subsequent models like the Slingshot and the All Pro established the category of the muscle bike—a riff on the muscle cars rolling off the assembly lines in Detroit—and became the required wheels if you hoped to be cool in your subdivision. Wheels of fortune In Dayton, Ohio, the Davis Sewing Machine Co. (1) began making bicycles as a sideline in the 1890s, but Horace “Huff” Huffman sold off the sewing business to focus only on bikes. By the 1930s, Huffman streamliners were among the best and most stylish bikes you could buy (2). Huffy was a smash in suburbia with 1955's Radiobike (3), but struggled under less expensive imports by the 1990s. Character bikes (4) saved the day, even though Huffy has since diversified into electric bikes (5).

Perspective

When Bugs Bunny and Cinderella Rode to Huffy's Rescue

How Looney Tunes and Disney pedaled a century-old bicycle maker back into relevancy

Robert Klara

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Robert Klara