Felt Bicycles acquired by winter sports giant the Rossignol Group

Felt Bicycles is to be acquired by the Rossignol Group, a giant in the wintersports world and already the owner of France’s Time Sport International.

Bill Duehring, President of Felt Bicycles, said of the deal: “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.”

The firm has made changes in recent times, moving away from traditional distribution partners prior to recruiting a sales force to take the brand direct to dealer in some territories.

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 expand 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.”

Rossignol, while still primarily a snow sports firm, has outlined bold ambitions to triple revenue in cycling by 2022.

With Felt’s goods sold in over 30 territories around the globe and worth $60 million in sales globally, the transaction is subject to customary antitrust clearances, likely to happen inside the next two months.