Tue, Nov 10, 2009 page10

• FEATURE : One of UK’s oldest folding bike firms wins new success

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  The Brompton bicycle company is having a fashion moment — well, at least it was until last month when UK Business Secretary Peter Mandelson was snapped whooshing around London on his sleek black “folder.”

  The British manufacturer has been quietly raising the style stakes in the cycle lanes, as multi-colored options such as shocking-pink handlebars and “purple haze” frames win younger — and female — converts to a brand that was once the preserve of eccentric middle-aged men.

  Brompton Bicycle’s managing director, Will Butler-Adams, accepts that Mandelson may have snuffed out any flames of fashion credibility, but he is nonetheless chuffed at government endorsement.

  “He’s had the bike for a bit, too, because it’s not the latest, latest one,” Butler-Adams said.

  Mandelson is not the only person taken with his Brompton. Sales are up more than 25 percent this year as tweaks to the famous folding design, which starts at £600 (US$1,006), coupled with rising bus and train fares, get people on the move.

  “We made a conscious effort to introduce choice and make the bike lighter,” said Butler-Adams, whose company now offers 144 color combinations and up to 4 million permutations if other parts of the bicycle are included. “The principle design is the Brompton but, in terms of what you can have, the sky’s the limit.”

  For a brand that is a byword in chic, thanks to its pared-down technology, Brompton Bicycle’s headquarters, squashed under a motorway flyover at Kew Bridge, west London, are hardly inspiring. Any factory noise — the company makes 100 bikes a day — are muffled by the thunder of articulated trucks overhead. But once inside, the grim anonymity of the industrial park disappears. Colored frames in flamingo pink, apple green and cornflower blue are lined up like bonbons in a sweet shop, while racks of disembodied saddles look like they should be displayed in Tate Modern.

  As Butler-Adams walks the factory floor it becomes clear he is on first-name terms with all 115 staff. Each finished bike has 16 stamps identifying the craftsmen who shaped it.

  “Our patent ran out nine years ago, and if we were making this bike in Taiwan, staff turnover would mean that knowledge would be lost. Years of love have gone into our staff,” Butler-Adams said.

  The bike is named after the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, which the company’s founder, Andrew Ritchie, could see from the window of his flat as he worked on the prototype in the early 1980s. And while the company spins on one intrinsic design, Brompton means different things to different nationalities. In Barcelona young urbanites whizz down the Ramblas to the sea, while in Germany it remains the preserve of the 50-something Herr.

  Simon Threadkell, creative director at Fitch, a branding expert and Brompton owner, said riders of the bike make up a club: “It’s like VW Beetle drivers flashing their headlights at each other — there is a sense of belonging. It’s a disparate organic community.”

  In the UK, that club’s membership is changing, with 35 percent to 40 percent of Brompton customers now women. The age of the average rider has dropped below 40.

  Ben Cooper, who runs the Kinetics bike shop in Glasgow, reports a trend for “his and hers” purchasing.

  “Couples often buy together,” he said. “At the moment I’m doing a pink and purple one for ‘her’, while ‘his’ is a more manly sand color.”

  Brompton’s cult appeal means the brand punches well above its weight in terms of awareness. Although sales have grown by at least 20 percent for the past four years, it is a small player with a turnover of £10 million in a UK bike market worth about £450 million a year. The factory is working at full pelt, but buyers must still wait 10 weeks for delivery.

  Butler-Adams concedes the company may have lost market share in the fast-growing folding market, but said it was not chasing volume sales. Like some other premium brands, it refuses to supply the market-leading retailer, Halfords, which sells £200 million in bikes and accessories a year, preferring to deal with bike “specialists.”

  “I’d love to sell their product,” Halfords’ chief executive David Wild said. “Folding bikes are a real area of opportunity and we are not doing as good a job as I’d like on ranging at the moment.”

  Competition is increasing. Halfords has developed its own folding bikes, using its house brand, Apollo. The world’s biggest folding bike manufacturer is the company Dahon, which is incorporated in Los Angeles but has its ­headquarters in Taiwan and China.

  So why not sell out to private equity and double the size of the factory in a heartbeat — or how about moving production to Taiwan? Butler-Adams looked appalled. The company, he said, was constrained not by a lack of funds — it is debt free — but by the time it takes to train master bike builders.

  “Bring five new people in and it takes five to train them. There is a limit to what you can do and if you fill a factory with new people you dilute the knowledge in the business,” he said.

  Brompton has already invested close to £1 million at Kew Bridge and plans to spend another £500,000 at the site, with less specialist jobs outsourced to factories in Europe and Asia.

  When Butler-Adams joined in 2002, Brompton made 7,000 bikes a year; this year it will be 25,000, with a target of 50,000 on the near horizon.

  “In two years we will be kicking arse,” he said.
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