UK bike-makers hope quality will steer them round market potholes

The men hunched over benches in a former stable block in the small town of Bradford-on-Avon, near Bath, belong to an exclusive group: people still making bikes from scratch in the UK.

They work for Moulton Bicycles, a maker of small-wheeled bikes with distinctive steel-lattice frames that is one of several specialist UK manufacturers betting on quality, design and customer service to help withstand brutal conditions in the global market.

The small manufacturers need to offer products distinctive enough to justify their high prices at a time when over-ordering during the coronavirus pandemic and a subsequent downturn in demand have sent wider prices plummeting. A series of retailers, distributors and manufacturers have been forced into insolvency.

Carlton Reid, an author on cycling issues and close observer of the sector, said the “cottage industry” of niche operators was less focused on meeting sales and revenue targets than the dominant bike brands Trek and Specialized of the US and Taiwan’s Giant.

Manufacturers such as Moulton differentiate themselves by offering unique designs. Others offer products made with unusual materials such as titanium or that are personalised to individual customers’ requirements.

“There’s still that element of some kind of craft going on,” Reid said.

Dan Farrell, Moulton’s technical director, said it was relying on selling its bikes in small volumes but at high prices. It sells about 700 units a year, ranging from a £2,100 entry-level machine to a £21,950 “double-pylon” model made of stainless steel.

Many manufacturers hope demand and prices will rebound to rescue them next year, according to Farrell. The small-scale nature of the industry and wariness about disclosing sales to competitors mean there are no public figures about the niche sector’s revenues or sales numbers.

“A lot of the industry is working to a ‘Survive until 25’ mantra — if we can get to the end of this year, we’ll be OK,” Farrell said. “We have lots of things that we don’t do in the same way the rest of the industry does.”

The specialist suppliers’ distinctiveness is plain visiting the store that sells bikes designed and assembled by Pearson Cycles in Sheen, south-west London. Pearson first produced bicycles in 1860, making it the world’s oldest surviving bicycle business, but now only makes carbon-fibre-framed performance bikes for road-racing and off-road — or “gravel” — riding.

“We’ve become more specialised and most of our bikes are built exactly for customers and delivered directly to the customers if they’re not coming directly to the shop,” said Will Pearson, who co-owns the business with his brother Guy.

The ultralight, aerodynamic bikes range from about £3,700 to well over twice that price. The frames are designed in London and manufactured in Taiwan and China.

Pearson acknowledged that larger brands were selling performance bikes for 30-40 per cent below Pearson Cycles’ prices. But he said the company, which had invested in its online offering, was betting enough customers were willing to pay for its superior customer service and different designs.

“We realise that there’s a definite demand for our bikes across the UK and abroad,” Pearson said. “If we can deliver that same value and customer care to those people who are outside our typical local catchment, it’s very well received.”

The approach of Atherton Bikes, based in Machynlleth, west Wales, is still more personalised, with each of the company’s premium mountain bikes built to order. For its top-end “A” range, it uses 3D printers to produce titanium and carbon-fibre frame parts tailored to users’ needs.

Dan Brown, chief executive, said the flooding of the market with discounted products had slowed Atherton’s growth. It was also contending with the growing popularity of e-assist mountain bikes, which Atherton does not offer.

However, the company is hoping this year to sell 600 bikes, double the 2023 total. The numbers are similar for other highly specialised brands, whose annual sales are typically in the hundreds or low thousands, generating revenues in the hundreds of thousands or low millions of pounds.

The growth follows Atherton’s launch of a new range of aluminium-framed bikes, starting from £4,800. The carbon and titanium models cost between £6,850 and £9,000.

“We’re hoping for growth into the low to mid-thousands within two to three years,” Brown said. “We’re on quite an aggressive growth trajectory.”

At Moulton’s site in Bradford-on-Avon, Farrell is convinced such a high-value strategy can succeed. His company’s founder, the late engineer Alex Moulton, had a decades-long interest in performance bikes with sophisticated suspension and small wheels.

Moulton, who died in 2012, devised the company’s current range to be manufactured in low volumes in the UK for sale at high prices. Their latticework frames combine strength and lightness.

“Moulton decided in the early 1980s that this was the way UK manufacturing was going,” Farrell said. “He deliberately designed something that had a lot of work in it — you could see where your money was going.”

Reid said such an approach had proved successful for many high-value UK bike brands.

“They all have a certain price point where they’re immune from the bottom-feeding,” he said. “They have good margins and some of them have been going for a while.”

Farrell agreed. There was enough demand for highly specialised bikes to keep operations like Moulton’s going, he said.

“Providing you’re not thinking that you’re going to sell millions of these things, you can charge a premium for it,” Farrell said. “So you can manufacture in what is a relatively expensive area.”