Felt Bicycles Acquired by Rossignol Group

Feb 2, 2017
by Pinkbike Staff  
New Felt logo 2016

Today February 3rd 2017, Rossignol Group, one of the world leading winter sports groups globally, has entered into a binding agreement to acquire Felt Bicycles.

Felt Bicycles is known globally for pushing the limits of technology. Felt designs and engineers its own propriety branded premium quality bicycles, framesets, components, and accessories, which are distributed directly or through its many global distributions partners. The company headquarters are located in Irvine, CA, USA. Felt Bicycles is an internationally recognized brand whose bicycles and products are currently sold in over 30 countries, with more than $60m of sales globally. Athletes on Felt products have won numerous national and international events including World Championships, Olympic gold medals, ESPN X-Games and other major world-stage competitions.

Bruno Cercley, CEO of Rossignol, declared: “For 110 years, our success has been continuously built on innovation, racing, and passion. From day one of our contacts with the Felt team, it became obvious we have great things to do together. Cycling is a very natural extension of Rossignol’s business, given its overlap in participating geographies, consumers and distribution channels as well as complementarity in seasonality. I am truly excited to add the Felt brand and know-how to the Rossignol Group. Rossignol and Felt teams share the quest for developing the best products in the world for providing the best experiences to outdoor consumers, and we look forward to expanding our cycling business together. While we will work at continuously strengthening the Felt brand globally, we will leverage our common expertise to launch a new range of Rossignol mountain bikes during 2018.”

Bill Duehring, President of Felt Bicycles, said: “It’s never been a better time to be part of the cycling industry – with more people than ever riding bikes to achieve their personal best in competitive events, improving their health or simply spending time with their friends and family outdoors. Felt shareholders are confident that this move will accelerate the development of the brand in this growing bicycle world. I'm incredibly excited about Felt Bicycles and Rossignol joining together. If you look at both companies we have a long history of supporting athletes, learning from our athletes and putting this knowledge into designing great cutting edge products. With similar consumers and markets, it's very exciting to think of the great things we can do together."

DC Advisory acted as the financial advisor to Rossignol Group and B. Riley & Co, LLC acted as the financial advisor to Felt Bicycles in connection with the transaction. Closing of the transaction is subject to customary antitrust clearance and expected to happen within the next 2 months.

www.feltbicycles.com

Posted In:
Press Releases


Author Info:
pinkbikeaudience avatar

Member since Jul 22, 2013
3,465 articles

76 Comments
  • 139 4
 I felt this was going to happen.
  • 137 2
 It even says Rossignol entered a binding agreement. I bet they're pros at that.
  • 16 12
 you felt a disturbance in the force
  • 35 3
 I felt fabric should have bought them instead.
  • 37 3
 With the avalanche of great bikes these days, I hope Rossignol helps Felt carve out a niche.
  • 19 2
 I wonder if they'll celebrate this deal over some brewskis.
  • 17 1
 Get Felt by Rossignol.
  • 1 3
 @Klainmeister: Ha, I read that and raced down to hit the pun thread.
  • 2 13
flag beanandcheeseburrito (Feb 3, 2017 at 11:55) (Below Threshold)
 haha
  • 5 8
 Look, Rossignol bought Felt. Must be a huge release for Rossignol to step-in here.
  • 3 5
 @markg1150: you jumped on someone else's pun wagon, cardinal sin on pinkbike
  • 9 2
 Do they have a "split board" of directors then?
  • 7 26
flag cunning-linguist (Feb 3, 2017 at 13:08) (Below Threshold)
 This looks horrendous. Just bought my new bike from Tesco direct, £50, has 2 wheels, brakes, suspension, gears.. job done. All bikes are the same, whether you spend £50 or £5000. Clearly anyone who buys these expensive bikes aren't real riders and know bugger all about bikes. Take it from a REAL cyclist. Onto my 3rd Tesco bike now and love it.
  • 1 4
 Go italia!
  • 4 1
 I never felt like I was going to ski.
  • 2 1
 I thought they would be too chicken to do such a bold deal.
  • 3 1
 @Klainmeister: I ski where you went with that.
  • 3 1
 @cunning-linguist: Comedy sarcasm, mate - only works in the civilised world.
  • 7 1
 @KeithReeder: lols! The funniest part of that is the fact that my wife did it for a laugh. Intellect and wit are almost extinct these days for fear of upsetting somebody!
  • 20 1
 Here's my challenge for the day, use the expression "complementarity in seasonality" in a sentence today.
  • 85 0
 I put some pepper on my lunch today; then added a pinch of salt, which it turns out is complementarity in seasonality.
  • 11 0
 @bigtim: I don't often laugh audibly because of pinkbike comments.

But when I do, I do.
  • 1 1
 @bigtim: you have my upvote good sir!
  • 9 1
 Use the word "dandelion" in a sentence.

Da Cheetah runs faster dandelion.
  • 1 0
 @bigtim: You sir are the winner!
  • 26 6
 What will team-robot say?
  • 42 4
 Doesn't matter, no one cares.
  • 4 0
 Chuckles retired.
  • 6 0
 @rideonjon: From life?
  • 3 1
 @employee7: god willing.
  • 28 4
 I can't be the only one who still checks team robot occasionally...hoping that it came back.
  • 5 3
 @bmxsnox: I do too man. He had an important role. Calling out bike industry BS. No one is doing that now and we are a little worse for it.
  • 3 2
 @employee7: it was the best MTB site
  • 15 5
 @employee7: oh yeah guys, calling people out on wearing ankle socks was such an important role.

The only entertainment value of team robot was people trolling the site and calling him out on his own bullshit.
  • 14 5
 @Maverick18T: Anyone who calls out ankle socks is fufilling an extremely important role. When I see a male human riding with them I've been known to vomit uncontrollably.
  • 9 1
 team-robot died for our sins. Maverick18T is just bitter because he's a freeride-flicker
  • 1 0
 @Maverick18T: TeamRobot was a breath of fresh air but I think it got to be too big. Some company proabably paid him to stop.
  • 4 2
 @racerfacer: biker punk rock died when TeamRobot left the internets.
  • 4 0
 @jaydawg69: HB cut the course was the best.

Everyone needed to know about Tony E and Brian Lopes.
  • 19 3
 I thought it Felt familiar.... Remember k2 and the crappy bikes they branded??? (pro-flex)
  • 10 0
 Damnit, my old Brass Monkey downvotes this! One of the first trail hard tails. the 69 degree head angle was radical!
  • 2 0
 @FatTonyNJ: I had a disco monkey! Loved that bike. Can't imagine how it would compare to a modern trail bike though, haha.
  • 7 0
 To be fair, a lot of companies made pretty crappy bikes in that era.
  • 4 0
 @ryan83: Compared to today's bikes, yes, they nearly all did. But at the time, they were good. It's all relative.
  • 5 0
 i remember proflex made pretty decent stuff back in the day. Sure nothing like some of the more recent stuff but certainly not rubbish back then.
  • 2 0
 @ryan83: wow is there really so little love for earlier bikes....there were a lot of good ones. Marin always made some pretty decent stuff for the time as did orange, cannondale, klein (except that suspension bike lol), gt, kona, pace and many others.
  • 2 0
 @FatTonyNJ: K2 did some great hardtails!
  • 2 0
 My brother actually had a ProFlex with a Girvin fork and it was indeed great for the time. I remember it was also light, like 25 lbs. I would have killed for a Cannondale V900 with a Headshock though...
  • 14 2
 Bike comes with a £500 pair of skis because that's the only way they're going to sell any!
  • 1 6
flag hamncheez (Feb 3, 2017 at 8:25) (Below Threshold)
 No joke my edges lasted one season on my first and only pair of Rossies
  • 10 0
 $60M annually isn't bad.
  • 7 0
 Ski sales have fallen off a cliff for the whole industry. My buddy over at Scott says the cycling division blew past the total ski and goggle sales a few years ago.
  • 3 0
 Rossi had said two or three years ago they wanted to get into the bike business because the ski industry is not growing anymore. and no Quicksilver bought them years ago then Rossi bought it back for pennies on the dollar one of the best business deals the guy ever made.
  • 1 0
 @jrastories: ...and the beginning of the end of Quicksilver, unfortunately.
  • 9 0
 ......................Waits for ski bikes that are awesome.
  • 3 0
 Hmm, isn't Mike Hopkins a Rossi guy? I wonder how that works for guys who are sponsored for skis and bikes. Does he automatically have to ride a Felt? I don't know if I'd be stoked on that.
  • 2 0
 I think those dusty Christmas trails in the Alps this ski season is inspiring all sorts of ski industry investment in cycling. Lets hope this means more bike park investments as well. Isn't Rossignol owned by Roxy?
  • 3 0
 nope Quiksilver bought Rossi for over 500 million and sold them for 50 million. Yikes
  • 1 0
 Are they going to do what K2 did to Pro-Flex? That did not work out too well in the long run. I remember when Felt was Tri, and road focused back in the day, they also had a really sweet BMX racing frame too, and now they may disappear into the conglomerate quicksand Frown
  • 2 0
 My Felt Red Barron I bought for X-mas was expensive and special order so I bought it from photos. When they rolled it out I had to hold back a tear the welds and paint were so nice. I wish them luck.
  • 1 0
 Interesting. I wonder how they are going to re-brand, considering Felt hasn't had much of a presence since Zink left.
  • 4 2
 Rossi?, Who the heck is Rossi?!, as far as I know, the only one is VR46
  • 1 0
 Rossignol is the Spanish ski company.
  • 1 0
 @tonestar: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altor_Equity_Partners

rossi has always been French, though currently 80% owned by Altor of Sweden
  • 1 0
 @lifted-d: It's a running ski industry joke. All the skis are made in Spain now, so we refer to them as the "Spanish" ski company.
  • 1 0
 @tonestar: I see, country of origin is always shady lol. the bike industry is terrible for it. so many brands have zero manufacturing capabilities anymore.
  • 1 0
 I used to buy rossignol goggles from c&a in 1997. Literally hadn't heard from them since.
  • 3 1
 Sick.
  • 1 1
 Wow didn't think felt could get anymore expensive watch the prices skyrocket now
  • 2 1
 they were going under, so i guess the had to make a move.
  • 3 1
 "They" being Felt or Rossi? I assume Rossi, as the ROI on a dying brand is not good, but your statement is not clear.
  • 1 0
 Hmm do people still buy Apollo, felt etc.. Is that a bit harsh..
  • 1 0
 Wow what a score
  • 2 2
 This is a terrible idea! Can't win in a loss loss situation!
Below threshold threads are hidden







Copyright © 2000 - 2024. Pinkbike.com. All rights reserved.
dv65 0.043394
Mobile Version of Website