No Hands is a book on the rise and fall of an American institution the Schwinn company. Ignaz Schwinn came from along line of German bike tinkers and he found his company in Chicago. At the turn of the century the market for bicycles went down so Ignaz and his son started focusing on the more profitable motorcycles. Ignaz had bought an ailing motorcycle company Excelsior Motor Manufacturing & Supply Company. He ended up building the largest motorcycle factory in the world in 1914. After he died his son Frank W. Schwinn took over the company and refocused on making bikes. F.W. Schwinn was the CEO and he started making bicycles for the Schwinn company. The company was successful in the early 1900 because of their ten-speed bicycle. Then they started ordering balloon tires for bikes what a silly idea everyone said but these tires grew throughout the world. This made the company rise and Schwinn was successful and more well known in Europe and in America. They had parts shipped from France and Germany. F.W. Schwinn was making his mark in 1910 when the Schwinn company was making almost a million dollars. F.W. Schwinn was in his prime during the 1900- 1960 and business was booming. The working conditions were bad, it was hot in the summer because they had no air conditioning and during winter you wore a jacket inside since there was no heat. Schwinn wanted to build elsewhere in the 1950 but they couldn’t it was too expensive. They had celebrities ride their bikes such as Captain Kangaroo. These celebrities helped advertise on the radio and on television. That also helped with Schwinn’s financial problem when the company was kind of failing. An employee Al Fritz introduced the stingray, a ten-speed bike with a gear shift like a motorcycle this helped boost the company back up. When F.W. Schwinn died, his son Ed took over as CEO. Ed fired a lot of people some old timers like al Fritz and Garner. Fritz was one of the most important people in the industry he made the stingray which was one of the last big leaps for Schwinn and he made the air dyne. In 1980 Schwinn filed for bankruptcy and it had made a factory in Greenville they had made trade partners with Giant and China bicycles but this family owned company was failing all because of Ed and his poor management. Many of the banks said that they would loan them money if management was changed. This family owned company was done and bought out. Ed said that he had no regrets and he wanted to find somewhere else to manage. He did it was a cheese making store.
In my opinon this book is more of a mature nonfiction book but it seemed intriguing. This book had lots of detail about employees, mangers, and about the CEO which is pretty impressive. This book was one of the harder books I have read because of the wide vocabulary and that made it challenging. The life stories about how this tiny family owned company started and then became known worldwide but then was bankrupt and then the 97-year legacy of this family owned company was gone like that. It has a fascinating back ground and story especially during its prime. This story gave me a better understanding of how hard it is to run a business and how people are successful and some aren’t.