Sunn Bicycles partner up with LOOK

Author: | 12 July 2011 | 27

Share


Many of you have been wondering why the Sunn team have been riding Transition bikes, this may help to explain.

PRESS RELEASE
LOOK and SUNN are happy to announce a business partnership between their two companies.

Starting June 2011,
LOOK will be the exclusive distributor of bikes SUNN both in France and abroad.

Employing nearly 450 people worldwide, with a strong distribution network in 60 countries and with a high level of expertise, the company LOOK will provide all the means and the essential resources to support the commercial development of SUNN. More than just a distribution agreement, the two French brands want to initiate and to develop a true partnership.

Based on the complementary between the products ranges of LOOK and SUNN, in the road biking and mountain biking, and convinced of the performance of SUNN bikes, and of the very strong brand identity followed for 25 years by all the fans, the ambition of the two companies is to strengthen synergies between the two organizations while keeping the identity of each brand.

SUNN, brand founded in 1988, is internationally recognized for the quality of its bikes. Elected several times “ATV of the Year” and “Enduro of the Year”, SUNN bikes come from a proven technology and a sleek design. These bikes deliberately geared towards performance and driving pleasure have conquered many cyclists around the world. The competition is also a key part of the image of SUNN. With no fewer than 81 World Championship titles to his credit, the quality of the products of the Pyrenean brand is well established.

Inventor of the automatic pedal, of the first carbon frame in 1986 and of the first monobloc carbon frame for the track, LOOK is the world leader in clipless pedal for road biking.
With a comprehensive range of bikes ranging from the road biking to the triathlon bikes, LOOK is partner of numerous teams driving the Pro Tour teams, and of the Chinese Federation of Cycling to equip these teams at the upcoming Olympic Games in London.
LOOK is also present in the high-end carbon mountainbike, through an offer for the cross country and the all mountain.

The company with headquarters, design and product development are located in Nevers, is recognized worldwide for its products at the forefront of innovation.

Enjoying a national distribution network and international in scope, LOOK is a key player in the bicycle industry, which was elected in 2009, the most innovative company by the INPI.
We believe that all clients and partners of both brands will benefit fully from this rapprochement.

27 Responses to “Sunn Bicycles partner up with LOOK”

  1. right, well i’m guessing this means Look has bought Sunn, but because of wanting to keep brand identity etc etc they’ve said they’ve made a ‘business partnership’. Which means as far as the Sunn team on Transitions is concerned, Sunn went down, meaning they had no frames for the team, but i’m guessing they’re going to be back on them soon? please correct me if i’m wrong with those presumptions, i’m quite intrigued, but all i’ve got those guesses from is the above!

  2. I thought they were riding Transitions because all the Sunn frames broke.

  3. Not good seeing such a historic brand in our sport going down.
    81 World championships! 8)

  4. Someone told me they were going bust guess they were wrong!

  5. Did you see that Sunn Frame snap at Windham! The linkage just gave way completely after the road gap!

  6. Oran wasnt it a Commencal Supreme ?

  7. Jimbo, It looked like a Sunn to me too. I hope that they work out their production problems and come back to domination. There’s too much history with Voulious and Ann Caroline to let the brand go. With distributiion by Look, perhaps I’ll see a few more in the U.S..

  8. It was not a Sunn that broke at Windham, it was a Labyrinth. (www.labyrinthbikes.com)

    On another note, what is this “automatic pedal” they invented?

  9. It was a labyrinth at Windham that snapped, not a sunn, hopefully this new deal will see the frenchies back on track.

  10. its not the first time sunn have been in difficulty team wise. didn’t the sunn chippy team back in the day with the likes of Cedric Gracia on so bust too?

  11. So they’ve gone bust yet again?
    Nevermind, not like Sunn bikes were all that desirable this time around. Begs the question, who was involved with this Sunn that was involved with Sunn Mk1? Bossard went back to his suspension, Max started Commencal, so who set up this one?

  12. The French call the clipless pedals “automatic” pedals. Makes about as much sense as “clipless” to me!

  13. “Synergy”. I hate management-speak-esque words. Now my day is ruined.

  14. I like the different way of designing French have, look at Citroën or Renault. Not always the best or most beautiful, but certainly different! Sometimes the French outplay the others by this different acting, although I think most of the time these are lucky shots. But I hope that they will manage to keep a great brand like Sunn alive.

  15. Will keep a “LOOK” out on the new models, maybe the Sunn and the glory days are on the ride!

  16. that sunn looks like an old giant DH team me think

  17. but what does transition have to do with this?

  18. clipless comes from the old pedals with straps round the straps in most circles were called clips……..or so i understand
    sunn have gone before, like a pheonix they rise again, wonder if they have a rider called harry on their team.

  19. “Many of you have been wondering why the Sunn team have been riding Transition bikes” am i the only one that still is?

  20. Sunn went bankrupt (again) early this year, after re-signing the deal with Team Sunn/Montgenevre. The team kept going as the main sponsor is actually Montgenevre and looked around for new frames, Transition gave them the best deal.

  21. Oh, and by the way, if you like the bikes, keep an eye on CRC…

  22. Basically Look toke over Sunn and they stopped producing frames/bikes so the Sunn team decided to use transition frames as there were no Sunn ones being produced. Am I right ??

  23. Well… I just bought one Sunn Shamann Finest yesterday, at CRC. Maybe I need to pray for mine Sunn frame not to break?

  24. People should check their sources before they start writing rubbish online. The collapsing frame at Windham was a Labyrinth as the big lettering on the rider’s jersey suggested. Duh! It must be hard using an online search engine, right? On the other hand, I am sure that most frames would’ve collapsed under the circumstances. What if you smash with 100 kmh into a wall and the frame breaks? It’s not good anymore?

    I never liked Look as a brand, but if this merger is what Sunn has to do in order to survive, than I salute it! Look (sic), I wasn’t fond of Iron Horse either, but damn I kinda miss the bikes. Sunn has one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) racing legacy in the mountainbike world. 13-14 years ago they were carrying complicated systems to acquire telemetry data on all World Cup courses (C-dale did too) and racing was at one of it’s peaks. They did everything right, product wise, but I guess the different approach wasn’t as appealing as the colors others painted their frames with. Nevertheless, I can’t help remembering a Xircuit XC bike being tested by MBA circa 1997. They were so blown away by the steel (!) frame, that they gave the bike a better score than anything else they had tested, including Kleins and Litespeeds. And keep in mind that BOS began with Sunn and that today’s Commencal bikes are nothing of re-re-re-refinement of the initial Sunn Radical Plus, used by some guy named Vouilloz to kill his competition on a regular basis.
    The more things change, the more things stay the same!

  25. Ohohoh! just LOOK at the Sunn!

  26. Touche Max. I’m one of the fools calling a Labyrinth a Sunn. I was so busy checking out the frame to bother looking up at the jersey when I saw it live and I never went back to check. On the subject of Sunn breakage, I doubt that it was any fault of Sunn. People have been riding and enjoying Sunns for years. I’d tend to guess that it was a shady far East manufacturer that charged for heat treating but couldn’t be bothered to actually do it. Or are the links breaking and not the frame itself. Can anyone properly inform me?

  27. Look are absolutely not the creator of automatic pedal……dark money story…with Adidas, Bernard Tapie and a poor and incredible ingineer from south west of France…..

Tell us what you think