Felt Bicycles has been acquired the Rossignol Group, who previously purchased the iconic French bike brand, Time Sport International, about a year ago.
Bill Duehring, President of Felt Bicycles, commented, “It’s never been a better time to be part of the cycling industry – with more people than ever riding bikes to achieve their personal best in competitive events, improving their health or simply spending time with their friends and family outdoors. Felt shareholders are confident that this move will accelerate the development of the brand in this growing bicycle world. I’m incredibly excited about Felt Bicycles and Rossignol joining together. If you look at both companies we have a long history of supporting athletes, learning from our athletes and putting this knowledge into designing great cutting edge products. With similar consumers and markets it’s very exciting to think of the great things we can do together.”
In recent years, Felts Bicycles has moved away from using distribution partners, instead choosing to organize its own sales force to manage its products directly with dealers in most territories.
Bruno Cercley, CEO of Rossignol, says of the deal, “For 110 years, our success has been continuously built on innovation, racing and passion. From day one of our contacts with the Felt team, it became obvious we have great things to do together. Cycling is a very natural extension of Rossignol’s business, given its overlap in participating geographies, consumers and distribution channels as well as complementarity in seasonality. I am truly excited to add the Felt brand and know-how to the Rossignol Group. Rossignol and Felt teams share the quest for developing the best products in the world for providing the best experiences to outdoor consumers, and we look forward to expand our cycling business together. While we will work at continuously strengthening the Felt brand globally, we will leverage our common expertise to launch a new range of Rossignol mountain bikes during 2018.”
While Rossignol remains primarily a ski and winter sports brand, the French company has expressed bold ambitions to triple its revenue by 2022 by entering the cycling segment.
Since Felt Bicycles generates $60 million in annual global sales in over 30 territories around the world, the acquisition is subject to customary antitrust clearances, which is likely to occur within the next two months.
* Information for this article was gathered from Cycling Industry News
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