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Looks like Raleigh’s parent company are having to jiggle their business model to stay alive with the result that parts and accessories are being shut down. Does that mean all the RSP stuff goes bye bye? Don’t they distribute a load of other brands in the uk?
Yeah saw that on my local Facebook feed yesterday.
Warehouse and Head Office at Eastwood to close, and also bike centre in Nottingham too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-67370203
Have to confess I sort of assumed they’d gone bust decades ago….
They are a big P&A distributor to the bike trade
At the peak of the brand's success in the 1970’s it employed somewhere in the region of 13,000 staff.
Wow.
No idea what their bikes are like at the mo, but some of the RSP stuff was good quality and value. My favourite chainguide was one of theirs.
Hope not too many jobs affected anyway.
It's really shit news - big distro of schwalbe, SRAM, and loads of misc stuff that's essential
Growing up in Nottingham, Raleigh were a big part of my childhood, going past their factory with its display window was always a treat and I loved my Moonrun when I was lucky enough to get one.
Huge presence back in the day.
So, if I'm understanding it correctly, private equity bought a conglomerate of bike brands hoping to build an ebike empire. Bet didn't pay off.
Still got RSP carbon bars on two bikes.
Shame.
An awful lot of history there.
Got a couple of mates work there. Another mate was behind Forme bikes at Moore & Large.
Shit year for East Mids cycle distributors
conti, schwalbe, RockShox, Sram, KMC, WeldTite.... That's a lot of products that are going to need re-homing.
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At the peak of the brand’s success in the 1970’s it employed somewhere in the region of 13,000 staff.
Was it Raleigh in the black and white film that was posted up here with of a massive factory making almost every part of the bike from raw materials - hubs, BBs, rims? Can't have been efficient.
Was it Raleigh in the black and white film that was posted up here with of a massive factory making almost every part of the bike from raw materials – hubs, BBs, rims? Can’t have been efficient.
Ah but it was [b]British[/b]!
Kind of the bike equivalent of Leyland Motors... 😉
The hardware shop I work at historically sold and serviced bikes - under new management they approached Raleigh P&A for a trade account. Raleigh turned them down - the nearest bike shop is in Oban, a ferry journey away and there’s nothing else on the island. Opened a trade account with a different distributor - Raleigh don’t have an exclusive with many of these brands.
Was it Raleigh in the black and white film that was posted up here with of a massive factory making almost every part of the bike from raw materials – hubs, BBs, rims? Can’t have been efficient
And therein lies the nub of the problem. The quest for efficiency/cost saving. Efficiency is what shareholders want. Employees want jobs. If the economy and industry is not for the benefit of the population, then what is it for?
The quest for efficiency/cost saving.
If the economy and industry is not for the benefit of the population
The two are not mutually exclusive, in fact the former is necessary for the latter.
Efficiency doesn't mean fewer jobs. It means more different jobs. How satisfied would you be with your job if you knew it was pointless?
Raleigh don’t have an exclusive with many of these brands.
Yeah, Zyro Fisher have Sram and Rockshox + plenty of others. Still a huge shame to see such a well known name go (as well as Diamond Back for us retro fans). Hopefully someone will pick up the name and do something good with it.
They're the only UK distributor for MET helmets I believe.
I read in Raleigh's history, that they decided bitd that this whole mountain bike thing was just a fad, a flash in the pan, that wasn't going to last. So they decided not to invest in it.
How satisfied would you be with your job if you knew it was pointless?
When you get right down to it a large percentage of jobs are pretty pointless. A lot of people aren’t satisfied in their work but unfortunately they need to carry on in order to pay the bills. Could be a whole other thread there.
Hope the people affected can find new jobs soon.
the economy and industry is not for the benefit of the population, then what is it for? <br /><br />
Despite announcements heralding change, many public companies have been focusing on one thing for a while: ‘shareholder value’. <br /><br />
this nonsense, and its business cult followers, has been a major influence in giving us limited vertical integration in companies and much of the business world of today. <br /><br />
Raleigh did some really cool mountain bikes back in the 90s before they were all imported. Yes the Raleigh bikes thing is unbelievable how you can be one of the most prestigious in the world to just die how they did back in the late 90s. Unbelievable for such a well built established Brand that had kudos overseas. Worth a watch of the history of Raleigh cycling documentary to see how great they once were which I'm sure a lot of us know already of course.
My first bike as a child was a Raleigh. My first mountain bike was a Raleigh.
Efficiency doesn’t mean fewer jobs
If "efficiency" means cheap, then you're right. It doesn't have to mean fewer jobs... but it does invariably mean shifting jobs outside the UK.
Are we sure they are closing the import / distribution side?
When i read the article I thought it was just there would be no more RSP / ownbrand parts.