Bike Nashbar founder, 83, dies in Florida
Bike Nashbar founder, Arnold “Arni” Nashbar, died on April 12 at his home in Bradenton. He was 83 years old.
According to nashbar.com, In 1974, Nashbar, a New Middletown Ohio advertising man, started a bicycle parts mail order company out of his home with $1,000. Within 10 years the company found success in the United States bicycle market. In the late 90’s, Nashbar sponsored the famed U.S. Postal Cycling team. In 2000 Nashbar was sold to Performance Bicycle. The company is now owned and operated by AMain Sports and Hobbies.
Nashbar, started is career his career in advertising and design, according to BicycleRetailer.com, and applied his skills to the Bike Nashbar catalog (originally called Bike Warehouse), which eventually was mailed to 14 million cyclists per year in the U.S. and Canada. At its peak the company employed more than 350 and shipped more than 6,000 packages a day.
Nashbar was a founding member and a past president of Youngstown Ohio’s 50-year-old Out-Spoken Wheelmen Bicycle Club. Some of Nashbar’s other notable acts include: donating 15 acres of land to Boardman (Ohio) Park for environmental study, supporting The American Lung Association with a bicycling group traveling across the U.S. to gather donations, creating and managing the Mill Creek Tour for nine years, and regularly donating helmets and bicycles to the Boardman Alumni Association and other charities.
“He truly treated employees as family,” the Nashbar family told BicycleRetailer.com. “From insisting on offering one of the best medical benefits plans, including homeopathic medicine, in the city to paying for free in-office massages to any employee that wanted one.”