Anyone love their Raleigh so much that they want to buy the company

[tyred]

Apparently it's up for sale and Accell may buy it.

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/accell-in-talks-to-acquire-raleigh/012839

So much history and heritage. I assume that Accell or any other would be buyer would also have the rights to all the other names like Triumph, Rudge, BSA, etc.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Now, if someone was to win the lottery......

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

But I'm not sure I'd buy Raleigh.....perhaps:
Thorn
Woodrup
Bob Jackson
Roberts
Rourke

to name a few.....any other suggestions?

Ah yes, but you would have a ready made company on which you could build your ideas of what good bikes should be.

Of course, you could keep the existing products, perhaps improving them too, but, just think, you could design your own Asda special bike and call it the 'BSO'

The average person buying them would never be any the wiser, but we could all have a good snigger instead!

 

[Smokin Joe]

What is the name actually worth?

Raleigh haven't made quality bikes since the last century, to the modern cyclist it's just a name old geezers romance about. Indeed, when I first joined a club in the late sixties it was very rare to find anyone riding or racing on one, their day had passed as a desireable brand. True, they had a revival of sorts with the successful pro team in the seventies and eighties but they let that drop and their name became more and more synonymous with budget priced tat.

Like Rover, Norton and Woolworths some brands are better off dead.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Ah yes, but, if you owned it, with the input of Cyclechat members, we could revive it and start getting quality products out there! Downsize and start building up from basics again!
Naturally of course, we would have to buy bikes from the other manufacturers so that we could compare the quality and improve our own offerings through some rather rigorous road tests, but that would be a sacrifice we would have to make!!

Or something like that.

Re - invent it! How hard can it be??

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

If everyone chipped in, we could buy it and make bikes we want!

 

[Bluenite]

This was there last good bike

 

[Haitch]

I lived for a time on Raleigh Street in Nottingham. The story went that the first Raleigh factory had been located on the street and the company took its name from it. Any truth in that?

 

[Ian H]

This was there last good bike

...arguably

My other half has two Raleighs, both eighties vintage. One's a girly open frame, the other's a rather nice road bike bought not long after, when she realised the limitations of the first. Nowadays she mostly rides a Brompton.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Raleigh used to be the brand everyone wanted when I was a boy. Now what are they? Their old owners, Tubing Industries, were a lot to blame through their boneheaded, stick-in-the-mud, short-term-profit-oriented, let's-sell-what's-easy-and-profitable-for-us-not-what-the-customers-want, we're-not-really-interested-in-bicycles mentality according to this (with the exception of Yvonne Rix).

 

[ASC1951]

Raleigh used to be the brand everyone wanted when I was a boy. Now what are they? Their old owners, Tubing Industries, were a lot to blame through their boneheaded, stick-in-the-mud, short-term-profit-oriented, let's-sell-what's-easy-and-profitable-for-us-not-what-the-customers-want, we're-not-really-interested-in-bicycles mentality ....

That attitude was not limited to TI. It's pretty much the history of British engineering since the 1930s, along with "we've been selling this product for 50 years, so why should we waste money on research and development?"

I was born and brought up in the industrial West Midlands, and by the time I started work in the 1970s two centuries of craftsmanship had just about vanished.

 

[MarkF]

What is the name actually worth?

With sales of £192 million, probably an awful lot. 850,000 people bought a Raleigh bike in 2011, most will have because they had "Raleigh" on them.

Like Rover, Norton and Woolworths some brands are better off dead.

I was just reading about Norton at the weekend, they are selling from the top and doing well. It's all in the name. http://www.nortonmotorcycles.com/

 

[Smokin Joe]

With sales of £192 million, probably an awful lot. 850,000 people bought a Raleigh bike in 2011, most will have because they had "Raleigh" on them.



I was just reading about Norton at the weekend, they are selling from the top and doing well. It's all in the name. http://www.nortonmotorcycles.com/

Norton Commando, twelve and a half grand for a bike producing only 78 BHP? That's Harley Davidson territory.

They're limiting themselves to a very small niche market.

 

[ASC1951]

Norton Commando, twelve and a half grand for a bike producing only 78 BHP? That's Harley Davidson territory.

They're limiting themselves to a very small niche market.

I used to have one (twenty years ago!) It's a different sort on motorbiking : if you just want acceleration and top speed, get a Japanese bike.
Unlike a Harley, though, the Norton doesn't come with its own armchair and will go round corners.

 

[biggs682]

would you ever get raleigh back to the good old days i doubt it