A bit of history: Just over 30 years ago, Alan Scholz started a business called Burley Bike Bags named for his wife “Burley Bev,” a very strong local bike racer. Alan and Bev sold their bike bags at the Saturday Market in the city of Eugene, which was a thirty-mile bike ride from their home in Cottage Grove. The first bicycle trailer Alan designed was from old swing set pieces and parts. He hitched up his bike for a test run and the trailer couldn’t make it to the end of the driveway without falling into pieces. After many adjustments and revisions, Alan made a trailer strong and durable enough to transport his young daughter and get the Burley bags to the Market. Soon, people were requesting to buy the trailers instead of the bags, and bike shops in Eugene started to carry the Burley trailers. Burley promoted the trailers and grew the market by advocating the car-free lifestyle and family recreation. As a result, the market for Burley trailers grew rapidly and the name “Burley” has become synonymous with “bicycle trailers”.
Alan Scholz sold his business to the employees in 1978 and Burley became a worker-owned cooperative. Since that time, Burley has developed a world-wide distribution network and has sold hundreds of thousands of trailers, kits and accessories, rain gear and bicycles. Burley’s rain gear line was widely revered as the best bicycle commuting wet weather clothing on the market. Tandems were the first bikes made by Burley, followed by the recumbent bicycles, road bikes, commuter bikes, touring, and cyclocross bikes. All were made in Eugene Oregon, USA and all were well respected in the industry for their top manufacturing quality.
On the bicycle trailer side of the business, popularity grew, as did competitors who made products outside of the United States. Many of these mimicked the “Burley” blue and yellow (or yango) colors, trailer design and style. The ability to focus on innovating the bicycle trailer line became more and more difficult as the bike and rain gear line took up time and attention, while lower quality competition continued to come in from offshore.
In 2006, after much debate and discussion, the co-op members decided it was time to look for a buyer. Michael Coughlin, a Eugene businessman, community leader, and Oregon native purchased the company to make a run at turning it around. Along with the purchase came many decisions, and one of the first was to cut back the product line and bring the focus solely on Burley’s core product and the heart of the company: the Burley trailer.
2008 marked Burley’s 30th anniversary of designing and manufacturing quality cycling products. Michael Coughlin’s ambitions are to build Burley to be a company that continues to make top of the line products, with strong community leadership and an energetic work environment. The Burley future is bright and the 2009 model year trailer line shows strides in the right direction with innovations, improvements, and new products that strongly represent Burley brand quality from 1978 to today.
