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When first writing Stronglight for information about the company, I received a charming and curious response. My requests had included, naturally, a timeline, a list of events the company sees as particularly important in its history, the position the company sees itself occupying in the present and future of cycling, a bit about its marketing practices, and an explanation of why a French company has an English name.

The answer to the last question was amusing: my contact, M. Perard, explained (I had written in French) that the English word “strong” means “solide,” while “light” means “leger” (which I think I knew), and that they had obtained the name from another company with which they had become allied. Which really didn’t answer my question, but did lighten my day a bit. Equally amusing was the timeline he sent.

The first entry noted that the original parent company was founded in 1903. The second entry casually jumped to the reorganization of the company in 1993.

It seemed, somehow, there was something missing, so I knocked a little more rust off my French and wrote back. M. Perard’s second letter was considerably more detailed than his first, and finished with the following wry observation:

“if we tear our eyes from the rearview mirror we will note that the company as it now exists began in 1993…”

Nevertheless, what went before remains significant, and so we will keep our eyes in the mirror for a little longer…

The company presently known as Stronglight began in 1903, when it was known as Haubtmann. Huabtmann manufactured a high-end line of cranksets–originally cottered cranks, of course.

In the 1970s, about the same time that aluminum was becoming the material of choice for cranksets, Haubtmann merged with a company called Verrot Perrin, which had devised the name “Stronglight” around 1933 for the square-taper crank which became the universal standard for all but the crappiest bikes for decades, and still predominates today. Their goal was primarily to offer a prestige line of products for aftermarket sale, as well as more ordinary fare as OEM parts for manufacturers of the era, which included such respected brands as Peugeot, Hirondelle, and Mercier.

The late ’70s and early ’80s marked a giddy time for the French bicycle industry, feeding tens of thousands of Peugeots, Gitanes, Motobecanes, and other less-unforgettable names into the maw of the Great US Bike Boom. It was a time when almost any bicycle would sell, as US denizens responded to new paradigms of environmental awareness and populist athleticism in part by flocking to bicycle shops and snapping up hordes of the freshly-discovered (in North America) lightweight derailleur bicycles. Sadly, these are often the same bikes vintage buffs now pick up for ten or twenty dollars in thrift shops after having spending many a forlorn and dusty year leaning against the ivy behind the garage.

1985, however, saw the burgeoning of the Asian bicycle industry (the mid-80s were the golden years of the Japanese road bike, and saw the first stirrings of the Taiwanese manufacturing giants); the sudden craze for mountain bikes also caught the French bicycle world unawares, and the intense price wars that followed as increasing numbers of manufacturers tried to sell more bikes to a saturated market, along with numerous regrettable decisions by French bicycle makers resulting in substandard or poorly reasoned products flooding the US market, effectively doomed an entire nation’s bicycle industry.

Artisanal builders remain in France, and are much respected – Alex Singer foremost among them. But the great factories are gone and what “French” bikes one sees now are generally made in China. 1990 was, in M. Perard’s words, a “black year” for Stronglight, with capitalization diminishing as the business struggled. In 1993, the company declared bankruptcy only to be purchased shortly thereafter by an investment group and pool of former employees who revived the brand under the same name.

The new focus at Stronglight was the same as before: an emphasis on high-end aftermarket components, now primarily manufactured through CNC processes, but no neglect of volume production of “city bike” level parts through cold-forging. However, the emphasis would always be on technologically advanced competition-level componentry. No grass would grow under this company’s wheels.

Nevertheless history remains. HubJub, a British shop emphasising fixed-gear bikes, remarks of Stronglight that its “classic 49D still has staunch adherents among cycletourists – an amazing record for a crankset introduced in 1949.” They also opine that some current Stronglight cranks are actually manufactured by Sugino! I contacted Stronglight regarding this, and they answered that, indeed, for one model they make the crankarms out of blanks they buy from Sugino, but which they finish “properly”, and with which they use Stronglight chainrings.

More recently, Stronglight pioneered the use of needle bearings in headsets, including the “X-type” headsets, in which bearings are aligned back-to-back (symmetrically), providing a little more spacing between individual bearings and in doing so improving the stability of the steerer tube.

So what is Stronglight up to today, in the first years of the new millenium?

Despite their all-too-recent difficulties, the company is going strong,with 55 employees, a valuation of some 6 million euro, and roughly 80% of its production going for export. In 2000, the company joined with another great French firm, Zefal, retaining its distinct identity and organization but carefully exploiting its new “uncle’s” financial resources to upgrade its machinery and extend its reach into markets where Zefal already has a powerful presence.

Indeed, the new machinery – laser-cutting devices, CNC mills, high-tech lathes, and more – underscores Stronglight’s insistence on remaining a forward-looking company, ready not only to respond but to initiate change in the bicycle componentry universe. With their capacity to work metal from start to finish and more recent experience in applying computer-modeled design paradigms (after a heavy investment in software) to componentry manufacturing, Stronglight remains a fully integrated studio/factory – an “atelier” in the oldest and newest senses of the word.

So what do they offer today? I will venture the list, knowing that they might revise the lineup tomorrow, and skipping over their more mundane (but still visually elegant) lines designed for “city bikes” in favor of the whiz-bang stuff well all dote on:

• Both square-taper and splined bottom brackets, some in titanium
• Full-carbon cranksets (except for the spindle, of course) – one weighs less than a pound, with chainrings
• Aerodynamic cranks for time-trialers (which look rather like giant carbon-fiber commas with chainrings peeking shyly out from behind)
• Ceramic and teflon-coated chainrings for those with a morbid fear of friction!
• Special time-trial chainrings (up to 55 teeth)
• Numerous variations of threaded and threadless headsets, with those famous needle bearings
• A “triplizer” to let you add a granny to your double
• Cool science-fiction product names such as Pulsion, Vulcan, Isis
• Drive Twister Inox, Magma, Oxale, and Oxity (though, to be fair, there are some more awkward monikers such as Mygal, Strongy, and Raz!)

And despite their love of racing (and committment to it: they sponsor a team), their obvious infatuation with and mastery of high-tech, and their aggressive promotion of their products to Tour de France racers, Stronglight remains grounded enough to include a link to the little village of St.-Etienne on their website, the birthplace they have never left.

Eyes on the future, feet on the ground: Stronglight endures as a good and necessary citizen of the bicycle nation.