ZeroNine was started in 1978 by Owen Scheppman. At the start, the main focus was the Bicycle Motocross (BMX) industry selling numbers 0 through 9 for people to put on their bicycles before racing. Owen started the company by running it out of his parents house in Hoffman Estates, IL. He created a market demand by screen printing vinyl to make 2 colored numbers. He ended up occupying any usable space around the house for drying the printed vinyl. After printing, his whole family would sit around the TV at night and cut the numbers out by hand one at a time. Owen would go to all the races on weekends and sell the numbers to the kids racing for $0.50 a piece.
It wasn't until his first international show in Las Vegas, NV that ZeroNine was noticed around the world. The ZeroNine stickers were an instant icon. Cutting the stickers out by hand with scissors just wouldn't work at the pace the company was growing. Owen invested in Thompson die cutter and was on his way to mass production. ZeroNine grew exponentially in the following years with the growth of the sport and the growth of the product lines. ZeroNine became iconic in also selling number plates, pads, visors, jerseys, stickers, and even bicycles.
With the birth of Nintendo in the late 1980s, BMX took a tumble. Kids focused on their TVs instead of the jumps. ZeroNine began focusing on screenprinting t-shirts and stickers while still staying in the BMX market. ZeroNine began looking for new markets to sell to. Custom and small run decals was of interest, and Owen purchased his first Gerber Edge® Truinon printer in 1996 to cater to the short run masses. Owen found the machine amazing, especially when you compared it to screenprinting. ZeroNine for the next few years began focusing on becoming an alternative thermal transfer ribbon source for the Gerber Edge® market.
ZeroNine started in the Gerber EDGE® market in 1997 selling refill rolls to go inside modified OEM cartridges selling direct to customers and advertising in all the trade magazines. As the Gerber EDGE® became more popular and the "it" machine to have, ZeroNine also grew. It strived on constantly coming out with new features and products. The company focused on providing a wide range of unique colors, and also matching the OEM of the popular ones.
ZeroNine continues to find ways to provide products for niche markets, and since the companies inception it has loved it's customers and their support.
From recent post: I spoke with Owen a couple of weeks back, the owner of Zeronine and had a pleasant conversation with him regarding his frames. Really nice guy that was happy to talk about the early days. He informed me that all early Zeronines were built by Cycle Craft and came in white. That is why the drops are the same as Cycle Craft. Owen also informed me that he had used MCS to build some of his frame sets before he moved his production to Taiwan, and this move overseas for production came with a change in drop design. He moved his frame production overseas since the US bike manufacturing companys could not produce enough frame sets to meet Owens requested quantity. Production needed to be ramped up and this is how he accomplished the short fall. Early Zeronines only came in white and Owen informed me that this was because they did not have a quality chrome plater at the time. Early Zeronines come with Drops stamped CC,C9,C09 . This one has a frame and fork stamped on the inside C9