Louis Garneau

Louis Garneau (born in Quebec on August 9, 1958) is a Canadian (Quebec) cyclist, artist and businessman. In 1983, he founded a company specializing in cycling clothing and accessories, Louis Garneau Sports, whose head office is located in St-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Quebec.

Louis Garneau is the son of Paul Garneau and Jeannine Lehoux. He was born in Quebec on August 9, 1958. He obtained his bachelor's degree in visual arts from Laval University and won an excellence scholarship there in 1983.

From 1970 to 1983, he was an international cyclist and won the title of Canadian champion in individual pursuit in 1978. He was selected to participate in the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980, but could not participate due to the boycott of these Games by the Canada. In 1984, after taking part in the Los Angeles Olympic Games, he left active competition as a cyclist and turned to the business world, devoting himself full time to his company created in 1983.

In 1983, Louis Garneau began making clothing for cyclists in his father's garage, supported in this project by his wife, Monique Arsenault. The company then took the name of Louis Garneau Clothing. As orders flow in, the garage becomes clearly insufficient as production space. In 1984, the company moved its barns to larger premises (140 square meters or 1,500 square feet), then was forced to expand again in 1985, to premises of 464 square meters (5,000 square feet).

In 1988, when the company reached the number of 118 employees, we moved again, in a brand new building of 2972 ​​square meters (32,000 square feet) in St-Augustin-de-Desmaures. This building will have to be enlarged for the first time in 1993, then again in 1999, with the creation of a distribution center.

Louis Garneau decided to launch an assault on the American market in 1989, with the opening of the Louis Garneau USA plant in Newport, Vermont in 1989. This new division initially employed 12 people. The area of ​​the American building will be doubled in 1999.

The Newport, Vermont building no longer sufficient for the company's needs, a major investment will materialize on August 15, 2014 with the inauguration of a new state-of-the-art building in Derby, Vermont, which includes a distribution center for the American market.

In 2015, the Louis Garneau Sports inc. employs around 450 people and exports to more than 50 countries. Louis Garneau Sports, which celebrated its 30th anniversary of founding in 2013, holds numerous patents, mainly with the OPIC (Office of Intellectual Property of Canada) and the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), in order to protect its many innovations.

Since 2018, the Garneau Group includes the Canadian trilogy of 3 brands: Garneau, Sugoi and Sombrio. Their products, intended for cyclists, triathletes, as well as several disciplines of winter sports such as snowshoeing, are sold in more than 40 countries, starting with Canada and the United States.

Louis Garneau operated a cycling development team for several years, in order to help young talented cyclists from Quebec and elsewhere to reach their full potential and allow them to pass into the ranks of professional cyclists. Several big names of the Quebec cyclist went through this team before ending up in the professional ranks: David Veilleux, the first Quebec cyclist to participate in the Tour de France within the professional continental team Europcar, Antoine Duchesne who joined Europcar in 2014 and is now part of Groupama FDJ, Hugo Houle, member of the UCI World Tour AG2R La Mondiale team from 2013 and now with Astana Premier Tech as well as the Canadian Michael Woods, who will start his 2021 season within the UCI World Tour Israel Start-Up Nation cycling team.

Through conferences and cycling events, Louis Garneau is socially involved with, among others, the organization Les Petits Frères, whose mission is to welcome and support single people of old age, in order to counter their isolation by creating a family around them.

In 2018, he also launched the international Don't Text and Drive day on December 22, in memory of his cycling friend Jason Lowndes, who died on his bike on December 22, 2017, during a training session in Australia by a distracted driver at the wheel.