BRADENTON, Fla. (BRAIN) — Arnold "Arni" Nashbar, the founder of Bike Nashbar, died on April 12 at his home in Florida at age 83.
Nashbar, a Ohio native, had a background in advertising and design and paid his way through college airbrushing custom cars on sweatshirts and t-shirts at county fairs and car shows. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Youngstown State University before leaving college in 1963 to take his dream job as a designer at The Edward J. Bartolo Corporation, a retail development company.
Four years later he founded Nashbar/Osborne Associates to design and illustrate buildings all over the world. He started a division to do advertising and one of the first mail-order businesses by doing off-site renderings.
He and his wife Cheryl, inspired by their family's love of cycling, founded Bike Nashbar (originally called Bike Warehouse). He applied his design skills to the catalog, which eventually was mailed to 14 million cyclists per year in the U.S. and Canada. At its peak the company employed over 350 and shipped over 6,000 packages a day. In the 1990s Bike Nashbar was a sponsor of the US Postal cycling team and operated several brick-and-mortar stores in addition to its mail order business.
In 2000, Bike Nashbar was sold to rival mail order company Performance, which was later acquired by ASE. ASE went bankrupt in 2019 and Bike Nashbar and Performance were acquired by AMain Sports and Hobbies, which continues to operate the businesses.
"He truly treated employees as family," according to a draft obituary provided by the Nashbar family. "From insisting on offering one of the best medical benefits plans, including homeopathic medicine, in the city to paying for free in-office massages to any employee that wanted one. ...
Nashbar was one of the five founding members and a past president of the Out-Spoken Wheelmen Bicycle Club, which has remained in existence for almost 50 years to date. He donated 15 acres of land to Boardman (Ohio) Park for environmental study, supported The American Lung Association with a bicycling group traveling across the U.S. to gather donations, created and managed the Mill Creek Tour for nine years, regularly donated helmets and bicycles to the Boardman Alumni Association and local charities.
There will be a private viewing at Baldwin Funeral Home in Bradenton on Saturday, April 19. In lieu of flowers the family asked that donation be made to favorite charity in Nashbar's memory.
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Arni Nashbar in a 1990 Bicycling magazine ad.
