The Bicycle Academy Closes Its Doors

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After ten years of teaching framebuilding, designing and selling frame jigs and generally being a force for good for British framebuilding, the West Country’s Bicycle Academy has closed its doors.

Doesn’t sound like they’ll be back soon, actually.
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The Bicycle Academy, Frome Photo by Adam Gasson / The Bicycle Academy

In its goodbye announcement, below, founder Andrew Denham and the other workers there, cited a perfect storm of Covid, Brexit, supply chain issues and rising power (and gas) costs behind the difficult decision to call it a day.

Full announcement is here.

The Bicycle Academy was one of the main drivers behind the recent explosion of beautiful, handbuilt frames coming out of the UK, seen at shows like Bespoked as many of today’s lauded builders got their start on a ‘Beginning framebuilding’ course, or turned to the Bicycle Academy for advice on tools, jigs and technique. Andrew even helped newbies like me (Chipps) braze a Grinduro keyring at the original Scottish launch of the event.

The best way to see how they’ll be missed is going to be for us to run the Hack Bike Challenge video. Now this is why you build bikes in your shed!

So long Bicycle Academy, we’ll miss you.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

More posts from Chipps

  • This topic has 28 replies, 17 voices, and was last updated 1 year ago by paton.
Viewing 28 posts - 1 through 28 (of 28 total)
  • The Bicycle Academy Closes Its Doors
  • bruneep
    Full Member

    start a thread later than the one  forum and close the thread posted before you.  👏

    chipps
    Full Member

    I think it’s an automatic thing, @bruneep. Plus, there wasn’t a thread when I started writing the story. 🙂

    There’s not currently a way of writing a forum post, then folding it into the story that we then write, though that would be a handy feature for breaking news to avoid double posts.

    tomhoward
    Full Member

    It’s because it’s an article, that I imagine took longer to produce than my dozen or so words. I’m cool with it (And expected it).

    chipps
    Full Member

    There’s now a link from the closed thread to here.

    I still use my Grinduro bottle opener regularly. Andrew even got Scot Nicol from Ibis brazing one – the first time Scot had picked up a torch in decades, he reckoned.

    With Downland Cycles also not teaching building any more, this won’t be good for anyone wanting to get into the money-burning occupation of building custom frames.

    monkeyboyjc
    Full Member

    Ah man….

    It’s always been on my bucket list to do one of their courses – never had the spare time & money to dedicate to it.

    Hopefully they, or similar will be running again when I retire….

    kelvin
    Full Member

    Good people.

    sillyoldman
    Full Member

    Sorry to hear – I’d always hoped to do a frame with them at some point.

    mick_r
    Full Member

    I went looking for brazing rod on their site a couple of days ago – guess this explains why there wasn’t much stock.

    I met Andrew on a framebuilder meet-up back when they were starting up, and then a few times at Bespoked when they seemed very established and successful – he was a very enthusiastic and interesting guy. I never got round to doing a brazing day with them (just bodged at home / made it up as I went along) but still very sad to see them go.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Would be interesting to see just how many brands have started off the back of them. Fingers crossed they all move on to something good.

    With Downland Cycles also not teaching building any more, this won’t be good for anyone wanting to get into the money-burning occupation of building custom frames.

    I suppose the market for ~£2.5k steel frames to the top 1% is fairly recession proof whereas the market for ~£1k courses( *indulgent holiday for most?) to the ~top 50% isn’t.

    steviebates
    Full Member

    Ahh I had my eye on their frame building course once I’d saved a few quid and had holiday days from work. Hope I can find a well regarded one closer to Yorkshire for next year.

    ajantom
    Full Member

    I was one of the original Kickstarter backers 😁 still have my bag, some badges (too hot, more rod) and even my ‘we built this’ t-shirt.

    Had a great week with them and learning brazing from the master Brian Curtis.

    Sad theyre closing, but they had a wide ranging positive impact.

    cookeaa
    Full Member

    Shame but also this:

    I suppose the market for ~£2.5k steel frames to the top 1% is fairly recession proof whereas the market for ~£1k courses( *indulgent holiday for most?) to the ~top 50% isn’t.

    It’s not all that surprising really that doing a reasonably costly frame building course is on lots of people’s ‘one day’ (but probably never) lists, and as we hit a recession, following 2 years of social distancing and lockdowns the outfit offering that very course closes down…

    Doesn’t bode well for the old “skills based economy” eh?

    Cheers yet again again Brexit/COVID/Tories…

    rootes1
    Full Member

    wonder how many creditors, (companies and customers) out of pocket…

    application-pdf

    knock on impact to quite a few.

    rootes1
    Full Member

    I backed the original crowd fund and did a brazing course which was a good day out.

    Never got the chance to do a whole frame, does anyone know what happened to all the early Africa frames that TBA student built and then were destined for Africa?

    paton
    Free Member
    paton
    Free Member
    rootes1
    Full Member

    @paton,

    assume the TBA frames went into the wider bicycle relief / buffalo bike / Qhubeka builds given they share frame design.

    Buffalo Bicycle | Engineering For Change

    AlexSimon
    Full Member

    Andrew is a friend of a friend so had a tour of the workshop and saw the attention-to-detail on the jigs.
    Came away very impressed by the whole operation and vibe of the place.

    He was pretty handy in a go-kart too!

    Sounds like he’s got something planned for the new year and I’m sure he’ll do well and look forward to following along!

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    I suppose the market for ~£2.5k steel frames to the top 1% is fairly recession proof whereas the market for ~£1k courses( *indulgent holiday for most?) to the ~top 50% isn’t.

    I’d say you couldn’t be further from the truth. Burf (of BTR) makes no secret about how shitty things have got over the past few years.

    hite-rite
    Free Member

    They seem to have gone from £0 to £174k in “intangible assets” (goodwill / brand value / IP) in 1 x financial years (2019 accounts were restated after the appointment of a new Director in June 2021.

    On face value that seems a bit odd and a challenge to the materiality of the Intangible Assets would likely tip the company into insolvency.

    rootes1
    Full Member

    I’m not sure I like the smiling goodbye photo given that appears quite a few people/companies appear to be taking a hit financially (if I have read the liquidation statement correctly).

    paton
    Free Member

    Possibly a photo from happier times.

    paton
    Free Member

    Part of what The Bicycle Academy business was to supply tools and equipment for frame builders.
    This included frame fixtures, but others have tried to supply affordable fixtures.
    https://www.facebook.com/bicyclemanufacturinglimited/

    Don Ferris at Anvil

    https://cobraframebuilding.com/

    HYDRA

    FRAMES MANUCTURING – Assembly

    Frame Fixture

    https://www.simplebicycleco.com/tools

    https://benchmarkjig.weebly.com/#/

    woody74
    Full Member

    That’s a real shame to hear as I had a great week with them learning how to build a frame. I felt like I had learnt a real skill and it has allowed me to build a few other frames. Good luck to them all

    paton
    Free Member

    https://m.facebook.com/100063634475174/

    Geoff Roberts cycles still do frame building courses.

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