Cannondale
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Bicycles |
| Founded | 1971 |
| Headquarters | Wilton, Connecticut, United States |
| Products | Bicycle and Related Components |
| Parent | Dorel |
| Website | cannondale.com |
The Cannondale Bicycle Corporation, is an American division of Canadian conglomerate Dorel Industries that supplies bicycles. It is headquartered in Wilton, Connecticut with manufacturing and assembly facilities in China and Taichung, Taiwan.
The company was founded in 1970 by Joe Montgomery and Murdock MacGregor to manufacture precast concrete housing. Later Ron Davis came to Cannondale from CBS Laboratories where he was VP in charge of the development of microfilm reproduction. Ron, a polymath and a gifted mechanical designer/inventor, had ideas for an internal combustion engine that would use ammonia as fuel. Such a concept, if proved, could have far-reaching effects in warfare logistics and middle-eastern politics. Davis, with MacGregor as assistant, had some surprising success. They managed to duplicate and exceed results obtained by Allison Engine, then a division of General Motors. Faced with a commitment to invest a large amount of capital to take the project to a workable model installed in an automobile, Joe decided that the company should raise capital by developing and marketing other products that they had conceived. By now MacGregor and Davis had recruited two more CBS Laboratory alumni: John Wistrand, an award-winning Industrial Designer, and Jim Catrambone, a rising management star. A highly-advanced air conditioner with no moving parts was a first effort. Then Joe Montgomery, after a camping bike trip with his son, conceived the Bugger bicycle trailer. Ron Davis devised the under-seat hitch, a torsion spring made of Lexan. Wistrand designed the cloth bags and cargo carrier on the two models of trailers. Joe, in an effort repeated in numerous products, sourced the cloth components, and ensured perfection in their manufacture. A trip to the Bicycle Show in New York was a eye opener. The team was besieged by bike dealers wanting to buy the bags. They bought trailers too, but really wanted the bags. In less than six months Cannondale became the world's largest manufacturer of lightweight bicycle bags. Using a marketing plan devised by Montgomery, Cannondale swept across the US, securing orders from more than 2500 dealers in less than 20 months. They then used the infrastructure developed to produce the bags to enter the camping goods market with backpacks and tents. When Todd Patterson, another exceptional designer/inventor, came aboard and developed the process for jigging and welding aluminum bike frames Cannondale became a serious manufacturer of bicycles. One of the most successful products was the Bugger, a child trailer, although Cannondale's marketing department claimed to be unaware of the connotations of the name in British English (some were, nevertheless, exported to the UK). Today, Cannondale produces many different types of high-end bicycles, which are no longer hand-made in the US. They specialize in aluminum (rather than steel or titanium) and carbon fiber frames, a technology in which they were pioneers. The name of the company was taken from the Cannondale Metro North train station in Wilton, Connecticut.
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