“C” average college students rejoice! You too can grow up to be head of the largest bicycle company in the US and the second largest in the world with $600 million in sales.
Richard Burke, the chairman of Trek Bicycles, tells Inc. Magazine in the July issue that he didn't really excel in his studies at Marquette University, and he quit his first two jobs right out of college before he was fired.
He goes to work for a distributing company in Milwaukee, becomes treasurer, and in 1973 passes up bike distribution, deciding there's no future in the bicycle craze brought on by the oil embargo
Three years later the distributors give him $25,000 to begin making bicycle frames; he's named president of the division. Meanwhile he becomes a Sloan fellow at MIT, salvaging his academic career.
He also makes some changes in the small bicycle division, and it grows to $300 million in sales by 1996. Three years later, he rides in a car behind a bicyclist named Lance Armstrong in a race called the Tour de France.
Armstrong and his team start using Trek bicycles.
And that's how you go from a C-average student to owner of the biggest US-based bicycle manufacturer.
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