Huffy to move Dayton headquarters: 3 things about the iconic company

If you buy a Huffy brand bike anywhere in the world, it was designed here in the Dayton area.

Huffy Corp., now based in Centerville, is planning a new Miami Twp. headquarters that will give the company 40 percent more space.

As the company prepares to move to its new 50,000-square-foot home by the end of the year at 8877 Gander Creek, here’s what you need to know about the iconic company:

1. Huffy dates back 125 years.

The company produced its first bicycle in Dayton in 1892, originally operating as the Davis Sewing Machine Company. The current Huffy name derives from the last name of George Huffman, of the same Huffman family that helped shape Dayton and continues to mark Dayton like with Huffman neighborhood that bears the name. The company says it introduced the world’s first training wheels for bikes, created 4,000 military bikes during World War II and in 1979 Huffy’s 30 millionth bike made it into the Smithsonian Institution.

2. All Huffy bikes are designed in the Dayton area, and now the company will have more room to do it.

All Huffy bikes get their start right here, where the private company’s design and product development happens. Ray Thomson, Huffy’s executive vice president of global marketing, said the larger headquarters will give the company more space to show bike samples and also make room for more design space and customer meetings.

3. You can find Huffy bikes around the U.S. and around the world.

Representatives from large corporations like Walmart, Target, Toys “R” Us and Disney come to Huffy’s headquarters to work with the bike brand. Huffy bikes are sold at more than 10,000 retail locations shipping 5 million bicycles annually throughout the U.S., as well as more than 50 countries.

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