The Attraction Of The Mountain Biking Sport

The tiny town of Fairfax, nestled at the edge of redwood country, was one of the last hippie holdouts in northern California. Saturated with mellow vibes, this Marin County bedroom community attracted people like Gary Fisher, 35, a fourth-generation Californian who had designed psychedelic light shows in nearby San Francisco's renowned Fillmore Auditorium during the late '60s. Fisher, a longstanding bikey (Mountain Bike Parts enthusiast), noticed how local teenagers were modifying their cheap bikes for races over rugged mountain terrain. Inspired, Fisher and his roommate, Charles Kelly, pooled $800 and, working in a shed behind a Fairfax bar, designed and built a special fat-tire bike for off-road riding.

A year later, another bikey named John Finley Scott, a sociology professor at the University of California at Davis, lent Fisher and Kelly $13,000 so they could produce their Mountain Bike Parts commercially. Fisher bought out Kelly's interest in 1983 and two years later paid Scott back.

Although many could claim to be the inventor of what is now known as the mountain bike, Fisher was surely one of the pioneers. He says he was the first, for instance, to use high-strength motorcycle brake parts and a thumb lever on the handlebars for shifting gears. Today Fisher MountainBikes in San Rafael, Calif. is a successful producer of state-of-the-art, off-road bicycles that sell for $700 to $1,600. Although most of his competitors charge $250 to $400, his company grossed more than $1 million by selling nearly 3,000 bikes and posted net profits of about $100,000.

Approximately 1 million of the 10 million bicycles sold in the U.S. last year were off-road machines with Mountain Bike Parts. Total bike sales are expected to increase to only 10.5 million this year, but sales of off-road models are expected to double 2 million, and Fisher predicts his sales will climb 50%.

Fisher's love of bikes started early in his Burlingame, Calif. childhood. Says he: "When I was 12, I was really into it. I could go places and get away from it all." Later, after graduating from high school and doing his stint as a lighting designer, Fisher worked for eight years as a road tester for Bicycling magazine. At the same time, he was also a mechanic in bike shops. "I was a bicycle bum," he says.

When the magazine was bought by Rodale Press and moved east to Pennsylvania, Fisher followed. After four months, however, homesickness drove him back to California -- this time without steady employment. That was when he began putting together his company.

Mountain Biking