At 10:24 PM 26/06/2009 -0400, Marcus Coles wrote:
>Here is another small facet to the Nishiki story.
>In Canada for a period of time, probably late '70's early '80s, Norco
>sold Kawamura made Nishiki bicycles as a supplement to there own
>domestic production. They had a script on the chainstay that said
>something to the effect of "Nishiki designed by Norco" and had a "Made
>in Japan" decal on the seat tube. At the same time another West Coast
>distributor was importing almost identical Kawamura made bikes with
>"Apollo" branding.
I know that Norco was the Nishiki distributer and also had its own line of bicycles ovelapping the mid to low end Nishikis. Before that, Shields was the Canadian Nishiki importer and distributor and I have a 1977 Shields Nishiki Landau. It has "SHIELDS NISHIKI" on the down tube and "Made by Kawamura" on the chainstay. Lorne Shields imported Cinelli, Peugeot and Nishiki. By 1978 he was building bicycles under his own brand, employing 200 people with sales approaching $10 million a year. However, the Canadian government drove him out of business by imposing stiff tariffs on imported components, apparently to protect CCM.
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada