Corporate Cyclists Say Biking is Back in Style

If you listen very closely and stand still, you might catch a glimpse of them as they whiz by — a flock of corporate cyclists clad in bright jerseys bearing the logo of Tyson Foods Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. or another company.

Teams of road cyclists are becoming a more common site along country roads and secondary streets in Northwest Arkansas. The sport is becoming more popular, several participants said, partly because it’s healthy, and partly because Lance Armstrong has championed the activity so well overseas. Everybody loves a winner.

Tyson Foods sponsors a club called the Fayetteville Wheelmen, which is also known as Tyson Racing, depending on who’s asked.

Bruce Dunn is the president of the Wheelmen, and he said the Tyson Racing team is really a sub-set of the overall club, which has about 100 members.

Dunn, a man who has managed to marry his career path with his passion, is also the sole employee of All Sports Productions Inc., a sporting event promotion company.

The Wheelmen have an annual budget of about $15,000 a year, Dunn said, which is mostly spent on the logo emblazoned clothing its members wear.

In a bid to attract more sponsorship money, the Wheelmen put together an analysis of their exposure: Members of the club attended 500 USA Cycling-sanction events and more than 30 organized tours, with 20,000 competitive tour miles and more than 200,000 training miles. The club estimated that the Wheelmen’s uniform was displayed for 12,650 hours last year, which calculated out to a cost of 7 cents per hour per $1,000 invested annually.

In other words, sponsors got a lot of exposure for relatively little money.

Bob Corscadden, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Tyson Foods, has been an avid cyclist, though he’s more attracted to the martial arts these days. He used to compete frequently for the Tyson Team but has passed that role on to Jeff Webster, senior vice president of corporate strategy and development for Tyson.

Corscadden wouldn’t say how much the company spends on cycling sponsorship, but that it is a good investment because it fits in with the corporate message of health, power and protein.

Webster said club-sponsored rides can be an opportunity to network with people outside Tyson.

Jack See, division vice president with the Nestlé Wal-Mart team in Bentonville, is a member of the Boston Mountain Cyclist Club, which is sponsored by Wal-Mart.

He said cycling either alone or with several others is a great outlet and stress reliever. Specific organized rides will pit like athletes with one another so they can train for competition, or relax as they want, he said.

See is fairly competitive on the amateur circuit, but he wiped out on the last turn of the last lap of the Har-Ber Meadows Criterium in 2004 and broke his collarbone. He’s only raced twice this year, he said.