Here’s the official word:
In order to ensure the continued growth of the UK’s leading independent mountain bike suspension specialist, TF Tuned Shox, Tim and Helen Flooks are selling the business. TF Tuned Shox will be acquired by business partners Martin Palmer and Ian Kennedy through their company Tec Frontiers Ltd, specifically set up for this purpose. The sale will complete at the end of March when the business will transfer to the new company.
Tim Flooks will remain with the business as Technical Director and will continue to lead the servicing team. “It’s great to have found new owners in Ian and Martin as they have the commercial experience to continue the successful growth of TF Tuned.” said Tim. “I’ll be free to keep our technical expertise and customer service as high as ever, whilst the guys focus on taking the business to its next level. I’ll also be able to ride my bike a bit more!”
Commenting on the acquisition Martin Palmer, one of the two new owners, stated “Tim and Helen and their excellent staff have built a great business. Our plans are not for any major changes, rather to continue what they have started. We intend to ensure that TF Tuned becomes widely recognised as the only place to go in the UK and Europe for all matters relating to mountain bike suspension”. Speaking about the future he added “We are committed to all the existing staff, customers, suppliers and sponsored riders. Our job is to grow the great service on offer via www.tftuned.com and to make sure all serious mountain bikers know about TF Tuned so that they can get the most out of their suspension and riding”.
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It’ll be crap now. Just you wait and see.
Hey good luck all.
cynic-al > cynical by name, cynical by nature.
The story suggests now they will be better as Tim Flooks will be able to concentrate on suspension and not running the company.
Excellent news during the current climate to see a company growing and expanding, especially one that provides a key service to the mountain bike industry. Good luck to all involved.
Hopefully Tim will get to spend more time riding the Quantocks.
I’d like to dry-bum cynic-al.
Thats why the prices went up?
The price has gone up to dry bun cynic-al?
“They” are not staying. Tim is, Helen is not, I’m sure we all wish her well 🙂 From what I know not much will change short-medium term. Prices went up ‘cos they had not in 2 or 3 years and rents/wages/parts had, simple as that – new owners were not responsible.
Er, the transaction hasn’t completed yet – therefore the acquisition hasn’t taken effect.
How on earth did they raise the finance to do a buy-out in this market?
mob money
I’ll continue to use them on the basis that:
1. they are excellent, and
2. there is no alternative
If the servicing team remains the same can we really whinge?
I once sent them a broken pair of psylos and for about 100 quid got back what felt like a new pair of forks.
does anyone know the optimum psi for dry bumming cynic-al?
I believe it’s 69psi
I’d suggest cynic-al uses a nice, splintery stick. I’ll certainly be sending my Nixons to Tim in a few months for a full service, I think it’s much better for Tim to have all the day-to-day admin stuff taken away to allow him to provide the best service for bikers.
let’s hope they have time to focus on new development and building designing more of their own kits and relying less on Push as a component supplier.
hmm, cynic-al might not be wrong you know.
If Tim/Helen could have improved the business by taking on another member of staff to handle the admin side of things then I’m sure they would have. There’s plenty of un-employed people willing to man a phone out there.
What we have here instead though is business with two new owners who will be wanting their share of the profits.
So just by keeping the maths simple you can see that a TF owned and run by the Flooks plus a new (min wage or just above) member of admin staff will have a lesser drain on the finances of the business than two new owners.
So unless the new owners have a business plan that will dramatically increase turnover/profitability then I’m afraid they will start looking to minimise fixed/variable overheads, this invariably always seems to affect service levels.
Careful jim, someone will dry-bum you
I’d still like to dry bum cynic-al though.
I think TF have been running with a number of extra staff for a while now. They seem clued up enough that they wouldn’t let their business advantage (expertise and great customer service IME) go down the pan.
Good luck to all involved, just don’t try and go global too quickly!
In order to mimimise the risk of being arsed raped I’m happy to sit on the fence on this one 🙂
Good luck to all of you, I’ll still be sending you my stuff to fix, as your spanner people know how to do the fixing real good !
OK I don’t have a Harvard MBA but with the pound very low against the Euro its not rocket science to see where TFT might find new business, not sure well check CRC, they have finally woken up to the export market and there doing rather well out of it.
my bum hurts