Raleigh, the name synonymous with British bicycles for 125 years despite a gradual half-century slide in market share and the fact it last assembled a bike in Britain almost a decade ago, is in talks over a possible sale to a Dutch competitor.
In a brief statement, Accell, the biggest bike firm in Europe but relatively little-known in the UK, said it had begun discussions “which, if successfully concluded, could lead to the acquisition of Raleigh”. Raleigh confirmed the talks but had nothing to add.
At is peak Raleigh, named after the Nottingham street where founder Frank Bowden bought a small bike shop in 1887, made 1m bikes a year and employed so many staff that the company had its own ballroom and bowling green.
While it continued huge production levels into the 1970s and 80s with famous bikes like the Chopper, Grifter and Burner, poor management and inefficiency brought losses and Raleigh was bought in 1987 by a former sportswear executive, Alan Finden-Crofts, backed with US money. Tough times continued, and after the parent company went bankrupt in 2001 Finden-Crofts led a management buyout.
The company he now hopes to sell employs fewer than 200 staff in the UK and stopped manufacturing frames or bike components in 1999, four years later outsourcing even the assembly of the bikes to companies overseas, principally in Asia. The loss of another British manufacturing icon to overseas buyers is thus largely symbolic.
The UK remains something of a cycling backwater, despite an upsurge in bike use in recent years. Figures suggest that fewer than 2% of non-walking journeys in the UK are made by cycle, as against more than a third of those in the Netherlands.
Accell, which had a 2011 turnover of £525m last year, sells the bulk of its bikes in the Netherlands and Germany under brands including Batavus, Koga, Hercules and Lapierre.
News of the likely sale comes as little surprise, said Carlton Reid, who runs the BikeBiz cycle industry website. Finden-Crofts, 70, and his fellow owners had been “openly and not so openly touting Raleigh for some years”. Reid added: “They’ve got it back on their feet and it’s a reasonably good time in the bike industry.”
The modern cycle industry is very different from the era when steel frames were hand-welded in Raleigh’s workshops before being fitted with components developed and made within the same company, like the famous Sturmey Archer gears, a company absorbed by Raleigh in 1902 and later sold off.
While a few smaller companies still make their own bikes, such as the folding machines produced by west London’s Brompton, the great majority of frames are manufactured by contractors in places such as Taiwan and Malaysia and equipped with Identikit parts from one of a handful of giant firms such as Japan’s Shimano. The main role for companies like Raleigh is design, marketing and adding a brand.
The Nottingham company has improved its performance in recent years, thanks in part to some highly-praised top-end bikes, joined in 2010 by a resurrected Team Raleigh squad of riders.
“There was definitely time when you would have thought, ‘Who on earth would mourn Raleigh? There’s a multiplicity of brands all doing it better than they are’. But things have picked up in the last few years,” said Reid. “That said, Raleigh are never going to be the 60%-70% market domination like it used to be, ever. Those days are well gone.”
Source: Read Full Article