How old is park tool company

For me, working on bikes is just as, if not more satisfying than riding. I love to restore old bikes and build up new rides from the frame up.

That said, my wife is a huge movie nut, so in the end in the name of family harmony, I can be a good sport occasionally. No blogs. No podcast. No patience. I do still read the paper every day on real paper no less.

Still, like to hold it in my hands and turn the pages. I can eat it any time of day and I usually make it myself. My favorite is eggs poached in milk on toast, then the milk poured over the top. My mom always told me it had Scandinavian origins but even most Swedes I know think it sounds terrible.

I love it. Other than that we eat a lot of chicken. Most of these early tools were built from scratch with whatever materials and leftovers they could find. One of the first time-savers they invented was a stand that held the bike off the ground allowing easy, back-saving access to any part of the bike.

This original stand was put together using legs from a dining-room table, an empty shell casing and a truck axle from a 37 Ford! As other shops, and eventually Schwinn Bicycle Company, saw the stand in action, requests were made for a production model. Park Tool Company was born!

A few weeks ago we donned our winter coats and took some time to visit the Park Tool headquarters and factory in St.

Paul, Minnesota. Suffice it to say, we were rather impressed. Whereas most manufacturing companies these days outsource all of their production overseas, Park still produces most of its tools—percent to be exact—right in its 45,square-foot facility. The distribution warehouse. The line grew quickly to include a wheel truing stand, more repair stands including a double arm shop version, wrenches gauges, fixtures and consumer tools soon joined the company's offerings.

The retail side of the business also grew earning Top Ten Schwinn dealer status fifteen years in a row including number one overall in In the early s all three retail shops were sold to concentrate on the tool business. Our history says a lot about who we are and what we do. We still solve problems ourselves and we still insist on a "hands-on" philosophy of invention, testing, and production.

The sixty employees of Park Tool take great pride in building the best bicycle tools in the world. Since that first stand, we've built hundreds of thousands more, reaching bike shops worldwide. Since the first hand tool, we've built millions more and our line now includes over different items and a recent history of fifteen to twenty new product introduced each year.