Is This Raleigh The End?

 Two years ago, I wrote about Mercian’s near-death experience. It ceased trading in April 2024.  A few weeks later, a group of four businessmen who are cycling enthusiasts purchased the company with the intention to “honour its legacy.” (Gotta use British spelling, ya know!) it seems they have:  They kept the blazers, painters and other craftspeople who were doing all of that beautiful work. In the meantime, they overhauled management and customer service, which seemed to be the sources of the company’s problems.

The BBC and other media described Mercian, rightly, as “iconic.” They are, in the sense that they are emblematic of traditional bespoke frame-building. They are not, however, a name most casual or very young cyclists, let alone the general public, know. 

If you ask most people to name an English bike-maker, they would probably say, “Raleigh.” The (perhaps sad) irony is that it hasn’t made bicycles in England since 2002 and hasn’t even been British-owned since 2012. Those developments ended 115 years of manufacturing in Nottinghamshire and 125 years of English proprietorship.

Photo by Christopher Thomson for The Guardian

Raleigh was, perhaps, the most-recognized bicycle brand in the world (and probably second only to Schwinn in the US) because it was the largest manufacturer in the world.  At its peak, over 8000 workers turned out more than a  million bicycles in Nottinghamshire.  To put that in perspective, if we assume that Raleigh operated an eight-hour day five days a week, it produced more bikes in an hour than Mercian made frames in a year.   

By now, you might have guessed why I am writing about Raleigh:  it might be consigned to the parts bin of history. Back to 2012:  That’s when Dutch group Accell, which owns other bike and e-bike brands, bought Raleigh. Ten years later, KKR, a US-based private equity firm bought Accell.

Little did the folks at KKR realize they were buying just as the COVID pandemic bike boom was about to go bust. The industry couldn’t respond quickly enough to increased demand. Bike shops ran out of inventory; by the time manufacturers ramped up production, it was too late. Shops and manufacturers, including Raleigh, were stuck with excess inventory.

KKR couldn’t right its ship by cutting costs and sharing operations between brands.  But it was too little, too late:  They had to hand the business over to creditors, who tried arranging a takeover, which failed.