Tom Pedale

Here's more. Even though Ben Lawee never rode a bike (he did however, have a terrific car collection), he was very sharp when it came to reading the bike market.
At a certain point in the 70's, he realized that the Japanese parts makers were coming on strong. At this time, if you imported an Italian bike, it came with Italian parts, French bikes came with french parts. Ben was the importer for Motobecane. After a long and sometimes acrimonious discussion with Motobecane, he convinced them that it would be best to put Suntour derailleurs on their popular priced bikes. This proved to be very successful and was a harbinger to the creation of the Univega brand. At the time, Ben imported a brand named Italvega (Italian Star). While this brand was somewhat successful, sales were mostly concentrated among a few upper end models that were spec'd with Campagnolo. Lower priced models came with baseline Italian parts which did not perform as well as the Japanese components. Also, bicycle delivery from the Italian factories were unreliable with too many missed deadlines which was not well received by Italvega dealers who needed product to sell during the bike season. Delayed shipments showing up late in the season did no one any good. Hence Univega (Universal star) was created by Ben to signify that bikes could be sourced from any number of countries. The partnership with Miyata was very successful. The Miyata product was a consistently higher quality bike. Deliveries were on time and volume soared. Ben had more control over the brand than he did with Motobecane and eventually stopped distributing Motobecane to concentrate on Univega. Motobecane never regained its strong presence in the U.S. Years later, it was re-born as a mail order brand, although the bikes are made in Asia, not France. One big reason Ben was successful with both Motobecane & Univega was his ability to choose attractive color combinations that gave both brands great eye-appeal. I spent a lot of time with Ben in a special showroom where we would both discuss the pros and cons of various paint & decal combinations. I was always applying different colored alcohol transfer decals on the bikes so we could see how they looked. The idea was to make our bikes look more modern, expensive and attractive then the competitors. This worked in the popular price ranges but Ben was never very successful with the more expensive Univegas since they were competing with brands that had a presence in the pro peloton. As well, bikes made in Europe still ruled at the upper end. Eventually, Ben created a short-lived brand called Bertoni which was like Italvega made in Italy. It was not very successful due partially to the fact that Ben didn't believe in sponsoring racers or teams. You need pros and their race victories to create a successful high-end brand.