SRAM (bicycles)

SRAM, Corp.

Type	Private
Industry	cycling components
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Key people	Stanley R. Day Jr. (CEO)
Products	Bicycle and related components
Revenue	$615 million (2015)
Number of employees	3000
Website	www.sram.com

SRAM Corporation is a privately owned bicycle component manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, founded in 1987. SRAM is an acronym comprising the names of its founders, Scott, Ray, and Sam, (where Ray is the middle name of company head Stan Day). The company is known for producing cycling components, including some internally developed, such as Grip Shift, DoubleTap, dedicated 1x11 mountain and road drivetrains, and the only available wireless electronic groupset, SRAM Red eTap.

The company grew organically and through acquisitions to become one of the largest high-end cycling component brands in the world, selling under the brands SRAM, Avid, RockShox, Truvativ, Quarq, and Zipp. Their components are manufactured primarily in-house, in factories located in Portugal, Taiwan, China, and the U.S., and distributed and sold as Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) equipment and aftermarket components in high-end markets globally.

As a start-up company, SRAM introduced the Grip Shift (or twist shift) gear-change method and technology to the road bike market in 1988. That technology was then adapted for mountain bikes in 1991.

In 1990, the company sued Shimano for unfair business practices, noting that Shimano offered, in effect, a 10-percent discount to bicycle manufacturers specifying an all-Shimano drivetrain and that few companies in the highly competitive industry would be willing to forgo such a discount to specify Grip Shift components. SRAM received an unspecified out-of-court settlement from Shimano in 1991. More importantly, all Shimano competitors won the right to compete in the lucrative OEM bicycle components arena.

The years after the Shimano settlement were marked by dramatic growth for the company, as it increased sales greatly and added other companies to its portfolio. SRAM is an example of a recent trend within the high-end cycle-component segment of the bicycle industry, where companies seek a position as a "one-stop shopping center" for bicycle frame manufacturers/bicycle brand owners, supplying all or most of the parts needed to build a complete bike. SRAM now incorporates the former bicycle divisions of Fichtel and Sachs, Sachs-Huret, and acquired component makers RockShox, Avid, Truvativ, Zipp, and QUARQ.