If you’ve been a cyclist for a long time, you remember the days of getting the Bike Nashbar catalog in the mail, often because you signed up for a bike racing license. I fondly remember thumbing through the pages in the 1980s and early 1990s, looking at all the great cycling gear that I wish I could afford but couldn’t, since I was a broke college student.
In the years before ecommerce existed and became commonplace, Nashbar was one of only a few mail order bike companies — and also one of the biggest. But by 2000, the other big catalog company, Performance Bicycle, purchased Nashbar. Nashbar was founded by Arnie Nashbar in 1974 in Ohio. Performance was founded in 1982
The two brands were run separately at that point, with Nashbar positioned as the discount brand, and Performance as the high end cycling products brand. Performance also opened up a series of brick and mortar bike shops around the country in the 2000s, with as many as 106 locations at their peak.
In 2016 Advanced Sports International (ASI) purchased Performance, along with all its brands including the Scattante bike brand and Nashbar. ASI also owned the bike brands Fuji, SE, Kestrel, Breezer, Phat Cycles and component brand Oval Concepts.
The parent company of ASI was the similarly named Advanced Sports Enterprises, or ASE. Unfortunately, ASE ran out of money and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November of 2018. The bankruptcy was said to be due to the high costs of the leases of the brick and mortar stores and their low sales and profits.
During those bankruptcy proceedings, an ecommerce company called Amain.com Inc. purchased the Performance and Nashbar trademarks and web domains, as well as trademarks for Performance house brands, for $1.245 million. Amain did not acquire any store leases, warehouses or inventory.
Amain.com currently runs both the web sites https://www.nashbar.com/ and https://www.performancebike.com/, where they are again fully operational and in business as ecommerce sites.
Leave a Reply