Anyone can own a Lance-like bike

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jul 15, 2004 by Michael Hiestand USA Today

Marketers of golf clubs and tennis rackets know the drill: Put your gear in the hands of big-time athletes and let them sell it simply by using it in big events.

But that doesn't happen in cycling. Despite the worldwide interest in the Tour de France -- and 340 hours of U.S. TV on Outdoor Life Network -- consumers can't buy the bikes being used. The machines generally are custom-made.

Except, that is, for the bikes Lance Armstrong is riding while pursuing his sixth consecutive Tour win. They're from Trek Bicycle Corp. of Waterloo, Wis., which was launched by five staffers in a rented barn in 1976.

"And the remarkable thing about Trek," says Mike Jacoubowsky, a bike retailer in northern California, "is that they give me the same frames for the sales floor that Lance rides in the Tour."

Trek hooked up with Armstrong to create a custom-made bike for the 1999 Tour, says Trek President John Burke. When Trek told Armstrong it wanted to create a "stock bike" for him that consumers later would be able to buy off-the-rack, Burke says Armstrong's response was concise: "You're crazy."

But each fall since then, the company has sold Armstrong's latest Tour bike. The Madone bikes, named for a hill on which Armstrong trains in France, last year cost about $5,000 -- and Trek sold about 3,800. This fall, those $5,000 models return along with a $6,500 Tour bike Armstrong uses on hills.

Who needs that much bike? Says retailer Jacoubowsky, noting specially made bikes can cost up to $9,000: "Why does somebody spend, say, $140,000 for a car?"

Trek's annual sales, which have doubled in the past decade to about $500 million, are built on novel approaches going beyond Armstrong. It sells 3,000 bikes annually to customers who use Trek's Web site to create their own custom models. That outlet, says Trek's Burke, was created three years ago partly "to learn about making bikes one at a time."

And, surprisingly, Trek keeps making them in the USA. While about 10 million bikes were built in the USA five years ago, says Burke, now it's about 500,000 -- and Trek "hand makes" about 240,000 in Waterloo. Apparently, it pays off. Trek sells about 1 million bikes annually, including ones it imports, but the higher-priced U.S.-made bikes account for more than half of Trek's dollar sales.