Brompton Bicycles – the unfolding saga of a two-wheeled success story
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Version 0 of 1. Abdul El Saidi peers over the shoulder of a young trainee as he delicately traces the white-hot tip of his welding torch across copper wire that glues the joint of a bicycle frame. The braze training manager at Brompton Bicycle is one of a dying breed of craftsmen in Britain whoturn the copper scars knitting together the steel frame into things of beauty. Such details matter. The west London-based manufacturer has an army of devotees who request that the braze points on their bike are lacquered, instead of being covered by paint, to highlight the workmanship. “When I joined the company I used to get emails from all over the world from people saying, ‘I want to come and see the way you braze,’” the 54-year-old says. “That gives me real pleasure – I feel like I succeeded.” El Saidi has been at the folding bike manufacturer for 18 years. In that time he has trained every one of the company’s 44 brazers. He has had to – these traditional skills have faded away in Britain over the past 40 years due to cheap competition from China and Taiwan, where most bicycles are manufactured. Brompton and Pashley are now the only two volume manufacturers of bicycles in Britain. Raleigh, which at its peak was producing more than 1m frames a year, now manufacturers abroad. The demise of bicycle manufacturing in Britain is all the more sad at a time when cycling’s popularity is soaring, with almost £1bn worth of bikes sold in Britain last year. According to CTC, the national cycling charity, even in 2010 around 23,000 people were employed directly in bicycle sales and distribution, which generated £500m in wages and £100m in taxes. The charity also says that staff who regularly cycle to work take on average one less sick day each year than non-cyclists, saving the UK economy almost £83m. Will Butler-Adams, chief executive of Brompton, says: “We are a solution to a global problem. People forgot about the bike in the 1950s and that was a mistake. We are spending £15bn to build Crossrail, but we have the solution here with this little bike.” Apart from the problems of traffic congestion in large cities such as London, Adams believes the bigger picture is the burden placed on stretched NHS departments by the growing number of people leading much more sedentary lives. “We are in the urban transport industry; the competition for Brompton is the tube or the car. That’s who our customers are – urbanites,” he says. “We cannot go on living in cities the way we are. Governments cannot afford it, they have got to get people more active in cities.” Indeed, city dwellers have become accustomed to the sight of Brompton owners in their office clothes whizzing down cycle lanes on the distinctive small-wheeled bikes, or hopping on a busy commuter train carrying a neatly folded package of wheels and tubes. Brompton has fared well from the growing number of devotees. . Since Adams, 40, joined the business in 2002 turnover has exploded from £1.7m to £28m last year, with profits of £3.4m. It is on course to hit £30m of sales this year. The success of Brompton is down to a curious combination of Adams’ youthful drive and ambition added to the timeless design of the “folder”, first created by Andrew Ritchie, founder of the west London bike maker. Ritchie began designing the bike in 1975 from his flat in South Kensington, London, which overlooked Brompton Oratory, the imposing Roman Catholic church from which he took the name. He established Brompton Bicycle a year later and produced the first prototype. Over the years, Ritchie carved out a niche market of enthusiasts for the folding bike, which was produced under a railway arch in Brentford before moving to its current factory tucked under a flyover near Kew Bridge. By 2008, Ritchie realised he needed somebody to help nurture his baby. Adams, a former Du Pont engineer, had been helping to run the business for six years by then and was keen to push things forward. “I had to do things he’d find difficult,” Adams says. “I wanted to grow faster and become more aggressive with how we communicated. Andrew designed a bike for himself and so he doesn’t see the need to do a lot of these things.” Ritchie stepped back in 2008 and allowed Adams to go for it. There is a strong sense that this was, and still remains, a tough decision for the founder, who continues to work two or three days a week. There is little doubt though Adams has succeeded. Brompton had just 24 staff producing 7,000 bikes a year when he joined; it now has 230 people and is on course to make 50,000 this year. It sells to 44 countries around the world and 80% of its folders are exported. Although there is huge respect between Brompton’s two protagonists, there also appears to be some tension. Adams describes the relationship with Ritchie as “like a marriage”. “What he achieved with the bike is beyond comprehension,” he says. He describes the founder as a “legend” – but also as “a constructive pain in the arse” who never lets Adams, or the business, get too big for its boots. As well as retaining an emotional attachment to Brompton, Ritchie remains its biggest shareholder, holding around 20%; Adams has 10%; the staff share 15% and the remainder is split between friends of the founder and chief executive. “[Andrew Ritchie] gave up his baby in 2008 and he’s allowed us to do things he finds uncomfortable. Sometimes he gets upset about it,” Adams says. “He’s cantankerous and eccentric but you don’t get to make a difference if you are a shrinking violet. Andrew deserves a lot of credit for the way he’s let go. It’s by no means perfect, but I have huge respect for Andrew. And, on good days, I’m sure he has respect for me.” It is the founder’s laser focus on the detail of the design, he says, that has always set Brompton apart. That design has remained fundamentally the same over the years, tweaked only to make it lighter. There are likely to be plenty more decisions made by Adams in the next few years that will make the founder flinch. Plans are advanced to move into a bigger factory, still in London, within the year and Adams wants to open a New York sales office to help take a bigger bite out of the Big Apple. Such moves are risky, but the rewards could be huge. A factory tour highlights the urgent need for more space. oTwo cramped lines of Brompton workers are busily assembling the folding bike; adding handlebars and seat, bolting on wheels and pressing stickers onto the frame. A giant scoreboard at the end of the line tells them how they are performing against the target 18 bikes per hour; they are making 19. Adams says the expansion is a gamble. “The next two or three years we are going to take a bit of a pounding on profits because of the planned investments we are making.” At this point, I wonder whether Adams is fattening up the calf ahead of a sale? He dismisses the suggestion, noting that he and Ritchie agree that keeping the business under their control is key. “We could sell this business today,” he says. “It’s a very sellable business, but for what? Andrew and I have endless differences of opinion but one thing we share vehemently is a passion for retaining control.” He reels off a list of successful privately owned British businesses - Jaguar Land Rover, JCB, Triumph. These are great examples, but they are surely exceptions rather than the norm. Why do so few privately owned businesses in Britain become world beaters in their field? “I think the temptation to [sell] is huge,” he says. The dealmaking financial culture seems to be against it, he reckons. “We have the biggest City and I think that gets under the skin of the founders.” But as a privately owned business Adams says Brompton enjoys more freedom to plan and invest for the long-term. “It means we can have fun and we are not too worried about the quarterly results. If you know what is right for the business, bugger the payback time,” he says. From penny-farthing to goldmine The bicycle originated in Germany, where in 1817 the Baron Karl von Drais invented his Laufmaschine – German for running machine, a pedal-less contraption similar to a modern child’s balance bike. The concept was swooped upon by a number of British cart makers, including Denis Johnson of London. In 1818, Johnson patented his “Velocipede”, which the public dubbed the “hobby horse”. It is thought Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Glasgow blacksmith, built the first mechanically propelled bike in 1839. His nephew later claimed his uncle had developed a rear wheel-drive design using mid-mounted pedals, which were connected by rods to a rear crank. By the 1860s, French designs were using larger front wheels and steel frames, which although lighter were more rigid, leading to its nickname of “boneshaker”. The high-wheel bicycle, called the penny-farthing in Britain, had wire spoke tension wheels and proved hugely popular with the Victorians. A burgeoning bicycle manufacturing industry began to grow in Coventry, Oxford, Birmingham and Manchester, manufacturing centres that already had the skills in engineering and metalworking needed for bike production. By the end of the 19th century, Britain had established a clear lead in the development of bicycle manufacturing. In 1888, John Dunlop reinvented the pneumatic bicycle tyre, producing a smoother ride, and in 1890 Sir Frank Bowden formed the Raleigh Bicycle Company in Nottingham. |