applied by Walmart. This forced Huffy to close its Celina, Ohio plant and lay off all 935 employees. Their other two factories in Missouri and Mississippi soon fell to the same fate for the same reason. Even after subcontracting production to China, where plant workers earned only 25 to 41 cents per hour, it remained unable to operate at a profit. In 1996, the bicycle division received a major blow when U.S. courts ruled that surging imports of low-cost, mass-market bicycles from China did not pose a 'material threat' to the last three major U.S. bicycle manufacturers - Murray Inc., Roadmaster, and Huffy. Huffy closed its Celina, Ohio plant in 1998, and quickly thereafter closed two smaller bicycle manufacturing plants (in Farmington, MO. and Southaven, MS.) which had been opened as a last-ditch effort to avoid the higher union manufacturing costs in Ohio. After it became apparent that continued U.S. production of low-cost, mass-market bicycles was no longer viable, Huffy had bicycles built by plants in Mexico and China, starting in 1999. The relationship with the Mexican plant was severed shortly thereafter. In federal bankruptcy court in Dayton, Ohio, in 2004, Huffy's assets were turned over to its Chinese creditors. In 2004, Huffy sold its Huffy Sports division to Russell Corporation. Huffy Sports manufactured sporting goods, including the Hydra-Rib basketball systems used by the NBA. By 2006, Huffy had sold more than 100 million bicycles. After years of struggling against the cut-rate Chinese bicycles that set the price target guiding Walmart, Huffy essentially had become a Chinese-owned company. Today, the design, product development and marketing (majority of all business functions) for Huffy is based in Dayton, Ohio. Manufacturing is based outside of the U.S. Crown Equipment Corporation now uses the former Huffy U.S. bicycle factory in Celina, Ohio, to produce forklifts. In 1999, Ames acquired True Temper yard tools and golf shafts from Huffy. Financial problems On August 13, 2004, Huffy announced that its financial statements had accounting irregularities. The price of Huffy stock (Stock symbol: HUF) declined by 40 percent on the next NYSE trading day. On August 16, 2004, the NYSE suspended Huffy stock and removed it as a listed stock. Finally, on October 20, 2004, Huffy announced that the Huffy Corporation and all its United States and Canadian subsidiaries would file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The accounting irregularities included