...Best of British...

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avecReynolds531

Veteran
Location
Small Island
An interesting article featuring British bike companies: https://road.cc/content/feature/buy-british-11-top-bike-brands-still-made-uk-217200

Some great design and manufacturing from here; refreshing in a world of increasingly generic & mass production.

As always, these kinds of lists will tend to leave out others but give a chance to highlight local & brilliant engineering.

Let's hope 2022 is an easier year for the bike industry.
 

Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
I wonder how many of those actually use all British components.

Has 2021 been such a bad year for the bicycle industry? Apart from supply problems I thought sales were hugely up on previous years?
 

LeetleGreyCells

Un rouleur infatigable
An interesting article featuring British bike companies: https://road.cc/content/feature/buy-british-11-top-bike-brands-still-made-uk-217200

Some great design and manufacturing from here; refreshing in a world of increasingly generic & mass production.

As always, these kinds of lists will tend to leave out others but give a chance to highlight local & brilliant engineering.

Let's hope 2022 is an easier year for the bike industry.
Lots missing from the list. I was expecting to see Dolan high up, but they weren't featured at all, as they produced frames for Chris Boardman when he was riding competitively.
 
Lots missing from the list. I was expecting to see Dolan high up, but they weren't featured at all, as they produced frames for Chris Boardman when he was riding competitively.
Dolan would surely be a bicycle importer and assembler with frames and forks made in the far east like Halfords, Go Outdoors, Planet X, Ribble etc. They may do some design alterations themselves and then hand them over to the manufacturer to engineer, test and certify but they are just like most US and European brands in that they are really just glorified importers. Nothing wrong with that and so much better for the UK economy to buy from a UK importer rather than an importer based in a different country but still not really a manufacturer. Just because I go into a bakery and ask for a custom cake with maltessers on top with extra sprinkles doesn't make me the baker. Admittedly some brands do have their own IP and engineers but still most of the work is done by the actual manufacturer. Many factories will tweak geometry of frames and of course custom paintwork and transfers is par for the course. The rest is just the choice of third party components fitted. Brands like Pashly and Brompton large parts of the product are actually manufactured in the UK and products like bags and saddles a huge percentage of parts are probably UK sourced.

Obviously the UK needs to manufacture a lot more. We have a terrible trade deficit and huge government debt and we are still borrowing significantly but both the general population and politicians don't seem to have faced up to the real problems of our economy and neither political side has any proper industrial policy to return us to a trade surplus and start paying off our debts we are sadly heading towards a huge drop in our living standards. Something like £3,000 to £4,000 of every working persons taxation per year is used to pay the interest on our debts. This is unsustainable. A country famed for its financial competence in the past has become utterly reckless financially. The whole point of leaving the EU was to take charge of our own economy and turn around our economy and this needs to be done sooner rather than later.
 
Location
London
I don't know exactly where Brooks makes all of its saddles these days (it says Birmingham) but unless something has changed I thought Brooks was no longer actually a British British-owned company.

Hope do score heavily on being British I think - ownership, design and manufacturing.

Carradice very definitely.

No distance at all from Hope - an area with a great cycling Heritage, including Karrimor - no longer the latter but the comment on Karrimor and Mike Ashley in the comments is unfair/misses the point - Karrimor was no longer Karrimor in any real sense by the time Ashley bought the brand. I still miss the Pertex top I lost on a ride which I bought from their factory shop.
 
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Location
London
Weldtite?

Nice down to earth stuff though I have a feeling that they hanker after going up market.

Have seen a fair number of their products in Italian bike shops - and Italians know a thing or two about good engineering.
 
I think the days of “family owned”, “British built”, “locally sourced“ or any other parochial labels have seen better days. The World has become interconnected and the younger generation don’t see borders but opportunities.

It should not however stop centres of excellence, areas of innovation and great design and engineering emerging within our locale. People are prepared to pay for quality from wherever they emerge.

Brompton, Hope and artisan and young bespoke steel frame builders with their unique designs are our future. And they are not cheap but worth every penny.
 
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