Jan: I think Cinellis were pretty hot stuff in the cycling world... In the UK, Ron Kitching was the importer/distruibutor and he was arguably one of the most energetic and advertising savvy promoters in that market. The Cinelli bikes and components were given elite status in his catalogs... Dale Brown Greensboro, North Carolina USA -----Original Message----- From: heine94@earthlink.net To: oroboyz@aol.com; cinelliguy@earthlink.net; classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Sent: Wed, 9 May 2007 11:38 PM Subject: Re: [CR]Re: Cinelli Production
At 9:04 PM -0400 5/9/07, oroboyz@aol.com wrote: > << > Anyway I was thinking 10 percent?>> > > >Wow, that would be amazing for a little bike shop 1/2 way round the >world, in a broader cultural climate that could care less about >bicycles, and Cinelli being so amazingly world-famous...
Cupertino was small, but they moved a lot of bikes. Ernest Csuka estimates that they and a few other North American shops sold almost 350 Singers in the 1970s, which is more than 10% of the total production from 1939-2007!* All that in a few bike boom years. (Of course, those were frames only, which took much less time to make than the bikes Singer sold in France.)
Another question is how famous Cinelli really was around the world... I know in Germany, where I grew up, they were considered the Holy Grail by many, and the same applies here in the U.S., of course. But in France, everybody knows Colnago, but Cinelli is relatively unknown. What about Italy, Britain, etc.?
Note: I am not saying that Cinelli is not world-famous, but simply asking the question.
Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly 140 Lakeside Ave #C Seattle WA 98122 http://www.bikequarterly.com
* The current total of Singer production is 3382. There were some "off-the-books" bikes during the war, so the actual number probably is about 100-150 higher.