My friend Arnold Kamler, Chairman and CEO of Kent International,Inc., a high-volume, mass-market bike supplier to Walmart, Toy’s R Us, Target and other retailers, sees what lies ahead. Kamler is a third-generation bike man (his son Scott is generation four) whose grandfather Avram emigrated from Poland 100 years ago, landing on New York City’s the Lower East Side not far from the Manhattan Bridge. The Kent Bicycle Advisory Board presents “The Ride of the Month,” a monthly recommended bike course here in Kent.
I’ll explain, not because I owe you an explanation, but because I want you to think twice before you go out to steal another bike. You came very close to making a fatal mistake and I want you to know just how close you came. I’m a believer in second chances, I hope you’ll make the most of this one.
In the late nineties, all major bicycle manufacturers had moved their production processes overseas and most continue to do so. Purchased a 200,000 sq ft facility in Clarendon County after being inspired by Walmart’s commitment to bring Made in America goods back to their shelves. Kent began a bike assembly program under the kent bicycles name Bicycle Corporation of America, which eventually morphed into a full-blown bicycle manufacturing facility. In the end, Kent paid less than $2 million for the building, then sunk more than $3 million in renovations (to-date). “But it’s still the right building,” Kamler declares. “We love the workers in South Carolina.
Finding the right building was Kent’s next big challenge. Although Kamler’s team saw many buildings around the state, none of them had everything they wanted. “We couldn’t kent bicycles find the right building and the right workforce,” Kamler explains. “Remember, we were trying to compete with China, especially in light of Chinese wages rising.”
The same doctor who’d told me I’d be fine still said I was fine. I’d told the doc about the fever and running off into the woods, but I left out the part about the blood and the deer. You are probably wondering how I tracked you down, where all this blood came from, and why there’s a severed deer head here instead of the bike you stole.
Now things were really starting to come together. At the Goodwill store I found a perfect little blue bag for two dollars and I knew what to do with it, I made it into a handlebar bag. I did have the proper freewheel puller in my tool kit to remove the freewheel, but I didnt have a bench vise for leverage. I did, however, have a big wrench and the seatmast from my Bike Friday Pakit that worked great as a cheater bar.
The dealer sticker told me that the bike had originally been sold by Stewart’s Wheel Goods, just over the bridge in Duluth. Christine and I get around town by biking and walking and in walking and biking around I’d seen this old Schwinn World Sport locked to a lightpost a half a block from our house. The bike had been locked to the post for at least a month. Now I should note that this is something that make Superior, Wisconsin different from Seattle or Portland or Eugene.
“When I go into a Walmart store, I’ll see many many bicycles; they’ll have 100 different models. I’ll see maybe 25 at Target. Walmart loves bicycles—to them it’s apple pie and the Fourth of July.” What Kamler is doing in bicycle manufacturing exactly parallels what transplant automotive producers engineered in the 70s and 80s. If you’ve ever had a job then you know that it can really cut into your day.