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COMPANY HISTORY:
Horace Huffman had worked in the
business since 1900 and by 1922 he was in charge of liquidating the
assets of The Davis Sewing Machine Company. He used the profits from
the liquidation to form the Huffman Manufacturing Company. The Davis
Sewing Machine Company had survived 30 years in the bike industry,
but were finished by 1922. Horace Huffman was put in charged of
liquidating the companies machinery. He used the funds to create the
Huffman Manufacturing Company in 1924. The remaining Davis bike
inventory was sold through 1925. The Huffman company concentrated on
non-bike products until 1928 when the Huffman Company incorporated
for the purpose of building bikes. Work began on modernizing the
Davis factory. It wasn't until October 1934 that the Huffman
Company announced their new line of bikes. They used many of the
Davis names including Snell, National, LaFrance, Dixie Flyer and
Dayton (for the top bikes only). New names that appeared included
Zephyr, Airflyte, Davis Flyer as well as many private label brands.
The Yale named had been transferred to the D.P. Harris Company. All
Huffman bikes used balloon tires and "Aircrafted" frames. All joints
were fillet brazed, then ground down and polished. The models were
identified by D (Dayton) and H (all others) and a number (1, 2, 3 or
4), a higher number meaning more equipment.
Later in 1957 Huffman acquired the bicycle division of Monark as
well. Some of the Monark tooling was shipped to Celina and the
Monark name lived on into the 1980's. Some Monark parts began to
show up on Huffy branded bikes such as the "Custom Royale". Huffy's
four millionth bike was produced in 1961. In the 1950's and
1960's, Huffy produced Coast King tricycles for sale in the Coast
to Coast department stores.
By 1975 Huffy had a 28.7% market share. In 1977 the named was
officially changed to the Huffy Corporation. In the 1980's Huffy
acquired the rights to the Raleigh name in the United States. The
Huffy Tech Center in Miamisburg, Ohio, under the direction of Mike
Melton, produced the 1984 Olympic bikes. Greg LeMond would ride
Huffy branded bikes in the Tour De France. More recently,
Huffy has made tricycles like the Green Machine and many different
colorful tricycles with license character themes, such as: Rugrats,
Thomas the Train, and Dora the Explorer.
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