Company: Exercycle Corporation
Location: Woonsocket
Type of business: stationary bikes
Owner: David St. Germain
Number of employees: 10
Founded: 1932
Annual Sales: WND
Screen icon John Wayne had one. So did Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Actress and exercise-video guru Jane Fonda has three. And Ketchup heir Clifford Heinz has four on two continents. The Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers each have a fleet, and the list goes on and on.
ISO 9001:2026: A Practical Opportunity to Build for What’s Next
For Rhode Island manufacturers, ISO 9001 has been much more than a certificate on the…
Learn More
Surprisingly, those are not the names the maker of a 67-year-old stationery bicycle, called the Exercycle, wants to associate with his product these days. He prefers those of ordinary folks in extraordinary circumstances who are turning to the little-known Woonsocket company for a better quality of life.
Take the Lakewood, Colorado, woman with Parkinson’s disease who in April 1997 wrote owner David St. Germain to say her motorized bike “gives me a sense of freedom and renewed hope.”
Or the West Dennis, Mass., resident who wrote that the machine “will probably save my life.” The man, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, said the bike “is the only piece of athletic equipment that I have found that will help me.”
Testimonials like these are the basis of a strategic plan for a company that’s survived more than six decades and as many owners without one. It targets the medical rehabilitation market, where health often comes at celebrity prices. The Exercycle sells for between $1,700 and $3,000.
St. Germain has spent two years and about $100,000 refining what he hopes to start selling this spring. About 75 prototypes of the InMotion 1000 are in homes, hospitals and rehabilitation centers across the country. Like four existing Exercycles, the medical model is driven by a quiet motor with variable speeds, allowing for both active and passive exercise. However, special consideration was given to people whose motions are limited by disease or injury.
The company redesigned the conventional Exercycle for easy mounting and dismounting, added back support, repositioned the speed controls, included a “kill” switch, and made the pedals adjustable, among other modifications.
A Connecticut native, St. Germain was working for a Houston fitness equipment distributor in 1986 when he “fell in love” with the Exercycle. He liked how it worked the entire body with any degree of effort.
“We’re the Rolls-Royce of this business,” St. Germain said.
That the bike moves on its own is a deceiving feature, said Greg Hellinghausen, the company’s sales director. “People look at it and they say it’s got a motor on it. It’s a toy.” The fact is, “it works every major muscle group, period.”
Those skeptical of a salesman’s endorsement can consider Florida cardiologist Dr. David R. Ancona. “No other piece of equipment can allow more calories to burn at any given heart rate than the Exercycle,” Ancona wrote the company in August 1994. “That is, if I am exercising with a heart rate of 125, I am burning more calories on the Exercycle than if I am running, skiing, jogging, or using any other piece of exercise equipment. This all happens without boredom, muscle strain or injury.”
Moreover, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation in its May 1997 newsletter included a blurb about “a new passive and active exercise machine” that “some MS patients state has dramatically changed their lives.”
New? Under-promoted is more like it. Given its sophistication and price tag the Exercycle (which in the early 1950s sold for about $400) was “sixty to seventy years ahead of its time,” Hellinghausen said.
Gordon Bergfors, a New York City mechanical engineer invented the Exercycle in 1932 for his wife who is said to have had a neuromuscular disorder. Little Products Inc. of Hartford, an aeronautical machine shop, manufactured and assembled the bike’s steel frame (each bike weighs about 150 pounds) proprietary motor and precision gears until 1979. That’s when the company’s sixth owner, Lawrence Specht of Barrington, moved the entire operation to a 21,000 square-foot facility in Woonsocket.
Of his initial encounter with the Exercycle, St. Germain recalled thinking, “I liked it so much, I was determined to either copy it or buy it.”
In 1993, he got that chance. Specht retired, selling the company to St. Germain for an undisclosed price.
St. Germain claims to have increased company sales by 50 percent within a year of buying it.
Recently, St. Germain secured financing to implement his new marketing plan. Citizens Bank, the City of Woonsocket, the Small Business Administration, various state economic development agencies and private investors provided the capital, he said.
Hellinghausen summed up the plan: “We have a diamond that has not been discovered by the planet.”
