Road Bike Racing - A word about the sponsors

I’ve been watching bike races like the TDF for several years now, but, as an American, I have never been quite sure what the various team sponsors do. In another post, RegularGuy (see thread called TdF Question from BikerDawg) included some information about one or two of the companies. I was interested to learn, for example, that ONCE runs a kind of lottery that contributes to charities for the blind (which solves for me the mystery of their logo).
For my own interest, I checked out a few of the companies and have compiled a little list of the team sponsors and a word or two on what they do…(I’ve omitted some of the more obvious ones like Deutche Team Telekom and the makers of bicycle stuff). Disclaimer: I didn’t want to spend THAT much time on this, so there may be some gaps and gaffs, but this is a general guide…And it may help the next time you are shopping for a team jersey (?):beer:

Saeco Macchine per Caffe: HQ Bologna, Italy. They make more than coffee machines, vacuums, air conditioners, too.
Quick Step-Davitamon: HQ Wielsbeke Belgium. They make flooring (cf. “Berry Floor. below); Davitamon makes vitamins, etc.
Fassa Bortolo: HQ Treviso, Italy. A construction,architectural company.
Cofidis, A French Company that will loan you money over the phone, on line, etc.
Gerolsteiner German mineral water.
Team CSC Computer Sciences Corporation. From Denmark.
FDJeux The full name is La Française des Jeux, and they run various lottery-type games; it seems to be partly (largely?) state-owned.
Vini Caldriola-So.Di. Missaglia, Italy, they make wine.
Brioches La Boulangere (I didn’t check, but I assume their make a lot of dough)
Jean Delatour French watch and jewelry maker.
U.S. Postal presented by Berry Floor. Berry Floor apparently makes “laminate flooring”; still trying to figure out what U.S. Postal does…

Actually CSC is an American company headquartered
in Van Nuys California (I know I work for them)
the Danish office is just one of the European offices.
The team is Danish tho, not sure who they were before.

Team Fakta is sposored by EDS and Fakta supermarkets
and also is a danish team.

CSC and EDS are competitors in business world as well
as cycling.

Marty

hey, thanks for puting that together, it's nice to know what some of these sponsers do :)

Nice research, castaway. Thanks.

There are the ones you see elsewhere, like Aquarel (bottled water, duh). Wurth is a hardware store chain. Feldschlosshen who sponsor the tour of Switzerland are a brewery. Correos, who are one of the Vuelta sponsors, are the Spanish mail service.

anyone know what aqua & sapone are? thanks

Aqua&Sapone- Cantina Tollo. Of course, they aren't in this year's TDF. In Italian, aqua is water and sapone is soap...They make what I guess you'd call designer soaps. Cantina Tollo is a wine maker.

Here's a good one:

What's PMU?

PMU = Pari Mutuel Urbain, a French horse racing/betting company (like OTB in the States?)