Troy Lee Designs |
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Official Site: troyleedesigns.com
Wikipedia: Troy Lee Designs Page Sections History Article Index |
History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Troy Lee Designs page on 26 May 2018, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Troy Lee Designs (TLD) is an American action sports lifestyle apparel and custom paint company founded in 1981. Troy Lee Designs is a privately held company run by the founder Troy Lee and co-owned by investment partners SBJ. TLD’s corporate headquarters is located in Corona, CA and their apparel is distributed worldwide.
Troy Lee was the son of an artist and motorcycle racer named Larry Lee, and grandson of Bonneville Speed Trials co-founder Marvin Lee. Larry passed on his love of art and racing to Troy as a child. Troy was an aspiring professional motocross racer in Southern California in the early 80’s who had started painting the helmets of several of his pro racing friends, eventually giving up the pursuit of racing fame to devote his full time and efforts to painting helmets. Besides custom paint, his early product offerings were limited to custom-made visors for motocross helmets, which he vacu-formed in the oven in his mother’s house in Corona, CA. Due to the constant smell of burnt plastic permeating the house, Troy’s mother Linda forced him to move the business out of her house, which he eventually relocated to a hangar at the Municipal Airport in Corona.
The terms of the airport lease were such that Troy was required to dedicate 40% of his business to aviation related services, so he began painting ID numbers on private aircraft. The business remained at that location and Troy started to develop a line of mountain bike helmets in cooperation with Shoei until 1991, when operations were moved to a newly constructed building in a business park complex less than a mile away. During that time, TLD worked with most of the top American motocross and supercross athletes, like Rick Johnson, Jeff Ward, Johnny O’Mara, Danny “Magoo” Chandler, Doug Henry, Jeremy McGrath, Ricky Carmichael and many more. The product line had grown to mountain bike apparel and helmets, helmet visors, stickers as well as sportswear. By 1998 TLD started to develop a line of motocross apparel, which by 2004 had grown to a full line of motocross and mountain bike apparel, helmets and protective gear.
Besides motocross athletes, over the years TLD has painted helmets for mountain biking legends Julie Furtado, Dave Cullinan, Brian Lopes, John Tomac and current superstars such as Steve Peat, Cam Zink and Brandon Semenuk. Other motorsports luminaries that have worn Troy’s custom painted helmets include 5-time Daytona 200 winner Scott Russell, Kenny Roberts, Eddy Lawson, Jean Alessi, Michael Andretti, Paul Tracy, Robby Gordon, Ken Block, Danica Patrick, Kasey Kahne, Loris Capirossi, and Indy 500 winners Scott Dixon, Will Power, Dario Franchiti, Helio Castroneves, and Juan Pablo Montoya, 4-time World Speedway GP Champion Greg Hancock, and 1996 World Speedway GP champion Billy Hamill.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 11 February 2016 | Karcher Partners with Troy Lee Designs Red Bull KTM | Kärcher North America |
| 4 January 2019 | 4 Wheel Parts Announces Sponsorship of the Troy Lee Designs Red Bull KTM Supercross/Motocross Team | 4 Wheel Parts |