From “walk ‘n’ roll” kids bikes to the Le Tour Legacy, Schwinn offer a comprehensive line of bikes that suit the needs of riders across the United States and around the world. Schwinn bikes are built to the Schwinn Quality standard, with over 100 years of cycling heritage, passion and expertise. This standard is the foundation of their commitment to creating the best bikes available today, and they are confident that you will experience our devotion to cycling every time you ride a Schwinn. “Shinola only wants to bring to market
high-quality products so we feel really lucky to be able to make the frames
here,” Yaeger says.
Nor is this a case of territorial or dealer restrictions accompanied by price fixing, for here the issue of unlawful price fixing was tendered, litigated, decided against the appellant, and appellant has not appealed. If it were otherwise if there were here schwinn ebike a finding that the restrictions were part of a scheme involving unlawful price fixing, the result would be a per se violation of the Sherman Act. United States v. Sealy, Inc., ante, p. 350; United States v. Bausch & Lomb Co., U.S. 707, 724
(1944).
Schwinn has developed a plan whereby a distributor may take orders and have the bicycle products shipped from Schwinn directly to the dealer with an invoice which is paid directly to Schwinn, who then sends the commission to the distributor. In a goodly number of cases, retail dealers send in orders direct to Schwinn for bicycles without waiting for a distributor’s salesman or contacting the distributor. Schwinn, however, sends the standard commission to the distributor in whose area the order comes from. The retail dealer pays the same F.O.B. price no matter what distributor is credited with the sale. He does not get a reduced price by making a direct order to Schwinn. There is some evidence of a de minimis nature, about franchised dealers who acted as a funnel for discount houses who were not franchised by Schwinn and lost their franchises.
YP advertisers receive higher placement in the default ordering of search results and may appear in sponsored listings on the top, side, or bottom of the search results page. The Court finds that Schwinn has not been arbitrary in its conduct, though firm and resolute. The Court finds that the territories of distributors have in most instances not been changed from that in which they developed naturally and in which they have remained for the past thirty years. The Court further finds no grounds whatsoever for ordering or directing Schwinn to alter or change its territories for distributors. Neither does the Court find any grounds or reasons for in any way restraining Schwinn from continuing its policy of modifying its territories for prime responsibility in the future when it deems such action necessary. The evidence reveals that there are a number of areas covered by two distributors and many of the larger cities have two or more such distributors.
There was still a very large distribution by direct sales to individual retailers all over the United States. Some of them were local hardware stores, others schwinn beach cruiser small general merchants, or toy stores. There was still another specialty type of merchant that like Topsy “just growed.” That was the bicycle repair shop.
That grand jury investigation covered the period in which plaintiff charges the conspiracy had its inception, and most of the evidence thereof presented on trial. Neither of these two occurrences was conclusive, either as a matter of fact or law. Nor have either influenced this court in its findings and conclusions herein. They are mentioned to preserve for the record that this court does not stand alone in its findings herein.
The United States does not contend that there is in this case any restraint on interbrand competition, nor does it attempt to sustain its charge by reference to the market for bicycles as a whole. Instead, it invites us to confine our attention to the intrabrand effect of the contested restrictions. It urges us to declare that the
[388
U.S. 365, 370]
method of distribution of a single brand of bicycles, amounting to less than one-seventh of the market, constitutes an unreasonable restraint of trade or commerce among the several States. At trial, the United States asserted that not only the price fixing but also Schwinn’s methods of distribution were illegal per se under 1 of the Sherman Act. The evidence, largely offered by appellees, elaborately sets forth information as to the total market interaction and interbrand competition, as well as the distribution program and practices. Territories were not originally assigned to any of the Schwinn distributors.
The challenge for Richard Schwinn and Marc
Mulder will be to balance the work and keep Waterford and Gunnar fresh and
appealing. Delivery times on Gunnar frames have grown to three months, compared
to four to five weeks, due to the private label workload. Filling the Shinola contract will strain
the capacity of the welders, brazers and shippers working in the cluttered
Waterford plant.