User:Bigstanley/sandbox

By the mid 1990's, Huffy was in deep financial trouble. The U.S. Bicycle industry had consolidated, sharply reducing the number of channels for selling bikes. High-volume retailers had claimed three fourths of the U.S. market, gaining tremendous leverage over bicycle makers. Wal Mart in particular was pressuring Huffy: it ordered 900,000 bikes at one time, but insisted that Huffy lower its prices significantly. To remain a major player in the bicycle marker, the Ohio company had little choice but to agree. Even with Huffy's other non-unionized manufacturing plants, it could not make a profit selling bicycles at the prices Wal Mart, it's biggest customer, was willing to pay. After requesting and getting a pay cut for its unionized workforce in Ohio, Huffy returned to profitability for two years only to again crumple under the pricing pressure applied by Wal Mart. This forced Huffy to close it's Celina, Ohio plant and lay off all 935 employees. Their other two factories in Moussori and Mississippi soon fell to the same fate for the same reason. Even after subcontracting production to China,where plant workers earned only 25 to 41 cents per hour, it remained unable to operate at a profit.

In federal banctruptcy court in Dayton, Ohio, in 2004, Huffy's assets were turned over to its Chinese creditors. After years of struggling against the cut-rate Chinese bicycles that set the price target guiding Wal Mart, Huffy essentially had become a Chinese-owned company.