The FOX empire grows, Marzocchi not dead yet

Fox Factory Holding Corp. (FOX, as we know them) announced October 19 that it will acquire some assets of Marzocchi’s mountain bike product line. This follows FOX’s acquisition of Race Face and Easton less than one year ago, a move that led some to speculate FOX would either ramp up its purchasing of other bicycle component companies or be bought itself.

From the press release: “We are excited to announce the agreement to acquire certain assets of the Marzocchi mountain bike product lines, which we believe is a significant opportunity for FOX to further expand the penetration of our bike suspension products across more price points,” stated Larry L. Enterline, FOX Chief Executive Officer.

“The Marzocchi team has a long history of performance suspension experience and we believe that this highly complementary transaction will allow for the increased growth of the Marzocchi brand worldwide. We expect this transaction will bring together and strengthen two highly complementary product lines and allow for FOX to leverage its marketing, engineering, distribution, and supply chain resources to drive increased top-line growth and profitability.”

Marzocchi’s parent company, Tenneco, had announced in July that it was shutting down the Marzocchi business, but still exhibited Marzocchi forks at this year’s Interbike. FOX offers hundreds of suspension fork models covering every end of the spectrum except for truly entry-level product, so many are predicting that the company will utilize the Marzocchi brand at the less-expensive end of the market.

For a touch of history, remember that around 2001 Gary Fisher introduced 29ers to the mountain bike market with specially manufactured Marzocchi forks. We have come a long way…

FOX will release further details next month. Until then, check out the feature story we ran in Issue #180 about a tour of the FOX factory.