Further advancement was difficult in the design department because of the high levels of technical expertise required. Marketing, she reasoned, depended more on common sense, the ability to perform analyses, flair and being aware of what people wanted. Rix had always liked bicycles and had strong views on marketing, particularly to women. Via evening classes, Yvonne Rix obtained a diploma in marketing and was promoted to assistant product manager. She continued studying by day release, was awarded a diploma in management studies and became product manager in This involved developing products, analysing the market, working out pricing, costing and profitability, and programming the factory.
In this role, she reported to the marketing director, a member of the Raleigh board. Below are the significant models for which Yvonne Rix was responsible, starting with some inherited from the recent past. The Raleigh Twenty, launched in , and its derivatives were still selling well in A folding version, the Stowaway, had been introduced in , although the vast majority of Twenties were rigid framed.
From the mids, production of Twenties gradually declined but continued well into the s. During the time that the Twenty Stowaway was in production, the model was under pressure from an increasing flood of cheap foreign imports. U-frame small-wheeled folding bikes, particularly from Eastern Europe, were available from cycle shops, through mail order and even from petrol stations.
In , Raleigh replaced the Stowaway with a U-frame folder of its own, again giving it an ex-Moulton name, Safari. In , it was renamed, this time reusing the name of the RSW16 folder, the Compact. The Chopper had been the first Raleigh cycle designed specifically for children: hitherto, all juvenile machines had been scaled-down versions of adult machines.
Launched in , the Chopper remained a significant seller, although sales were now falling. The next follow-up to the Chopper was the Grifter, launched three years later, in June It resembled a BMX bike but with mudguards and a three-speed hub. Therefore, it could never compete with the welded frames being introduced in the US.
However, as Chopper sales continued to slide, the Grifter was presented as the natural successor. It sold well. The models discussed thus far already existed when Yvonne Rix became product manager. Following her appointment, she noticed older teenagers in England riding conventional cycles fitted with dirt track racing handlebars and sorbo protective padding.
This observation led her to instigate the Bomber. To get the desired image and line while minimising the need for retooling, the front end came from a bicycle already in the range, a Nigerian roadster providing the sloping cantilevered back end. Equipped with chunky tyres and specially-made handlebars, the Bomber somewhat resembled an early mountain bike but was well ahead of the MTB craze and was developed independently of it.
Launched in , it was promoted in an advertising campaign featuring pop star Toyah Wilcox. Raleigh was very late into BMX. The board was reluctant to introduce single-speed stripped down junior machines, as there was less profit in each compared with the Grifter, especially for Sturmey-Archer.
They hoped BMX would be a passing fad. It was not and the company initially missed a big opportunity. There were consequently some high level sackings. The high street auto accessories and cycle chain store Halfords was meanwhile heavily and successfully promoting BMX.
This followed a major initiative by their cycle marketing manager David Duffield who had launched the Moulton and had later worked for Raleigh. She came back with the Burner range, which was launched in and rapidly sold over a million units. When Yvonne Rix visited the USA and the Far East in , she formed the view that mountain bikes would eventually come down from the hills and onto the streets.
The reaction from the Raleigh board was, who needs mountain bikes in England where there are few mountains? Not a woman to be easily dissuaded, she kept up the pressure for several years. Yet there was still very little interest in mountain biking in the UK: a review of the UK cycling scene in the International Cycling Guide made no mention of it. Eventually, Yvonne Rix persuaded the Raleigh board that a move into mountain bike production made sense.
Offered in 5, 15 and speed versions, it was built using traditional Raleigh roadster-style brazing. However, initial sales were disappointing. The MTB market in the UK remained relatively small, with few domestic players and no meaningful presence yet from American or Taiwanese companies.
Evidence of this approach is particularly strong in her marketing towards women. The Wisp not to be confused with the earlier RSW-based moped was a Rix concept bike, with a mixte frame finished in pale blue with dark blue flashes and matching handlebar tape and saddle, both finished in blue suede.
Launched in , it sold 50, in the first year. Rix shared the view that advertising aimed at women was very important. With the Raleigh Collection, comprising the Wisp, Cameo and Misty models, a PR company was used to present bicycles in the manner of a fashion clothing collection.
These bikes were developed using ideas that had been piloted in the none too successful Vektar, in collaboration with a small specialist electronics company in Spondon, Derbyshire. Street Wolf, a 16" wheel machine aimed at year-olds was the most popular model, the others being Wild Cat, a 20" wheel bike for year-olds, and Wolf Cub, a junior version with stabilisers. In , Sturmey-Archer made workers redundant. S-A ceased single-speed coaster brake production in and two years later Dynohubs were dropped, 46 years after their introduction.
Derailleurs were getting better, cheaper and more fashionable. But Sturmey-Archer was not encouraged to develop them and, although S-A had prototyped a seven-speed hub in , TI was not prepared to invest in it. Not until the mid s, after Sachs and Shimano had introduced 7-speed hubs, did S-A market one.
By , Raleigh itself was suffering badly, as BMX rapidly died. Being essentially a bicycle designed for a seven-year-old but ridden by year-olds, there was no moving up to bigger machines as riders grew.
Everybody who wanted a Raleigh BMX bike bought it in the first two years. Moreover, initial sales of the Maverick range were disappointing. This dip in sales was matched by the industry as a whole, but Tube Investments now lost patience with Raleigh. TI decided to sell the company and, on 1st April , it was bought by Derby International. Under TI, Raleigh was smothered: a relatively small division, unable to make important decisions without reference to higher authority.
There was a feeling within Raleigh that its bosses were not really in charge. TI seemed more interested in filling in five-year plans, rather than making decisions. It was a huge conglomerate including not only industrial tubing but consumer products such as Creda cookers, Russell Hobbs kettles and Tower saucepans. TI did not see bicycles as being interesting or particularly profitable.
They retained ownership of Reynolds tubing for a further decade, however. It is somewhat ironic that, a century after a lawyer founded Raleigh, another lawyer should head the company purchasing it. Gottesman, like Frank Bowden, was both entrepreneurial and interested in bicycles. He had heard that TI was keen to dispose of Raleigh and appreciated the value of the Raleigh brand, especially in America.
Therefore, he got together with some associates, put in his own money and some from his colleagues, obtained the support of financial institutions and formed Derby. Being a tax lawyer, he registered the company in Luxembourg.
The banks required a chief executive officer with a proven record of accomplishment. Hence, Alan Finden-Crofts, formerly with Dunlop, was recruited.
It is reported that, at his first meeting with Raleigh dealers, he said that he had sunk everything he personally owned into Raleigh. He wanted to make it clear that Raleigh was now a small company whose CEO had financial commitment. When Derby took over, a whole layer of Raleigh management was removed at a stroke. For the doers who remained, it was a liberating experience.
Finden-Crofts told them that all he wanted to do was apply a slight touch on the rudder. He was a strategist and did not wish to be involved in the day-to-day activities. He said he believed in choosing the right people, then letting them get on with it. Many staff found this empowerment liberating. What followed was an exciting but difficult time.
A lot of foundation work was therefore necessary, but most staff responded positively. Subsequently they bought other companies, including the German Kalkhoff company, now the main Raleigh outlet in Germany. Yvonne Rix was made product planning and marketing manager and in was appointed marketing director, with a seat on the Raleigh board. Roberts retired in and his successors were first Howard Knight, then for a brief period, Mark Todd. In January , Phillip Darnton assumed the role.
Alan Finden-Crofts believed that timing was everything and no sooner had Derby acquired Raleigh than mountain biking in the UK finally took off. Eventually, more than 3m Raleigh MTBs were sold. The move to profitability surprised many and confounded the widely held view that Derby was only interested in asset stripping.
Eventually MTBs became the replacement conventional bicycle, the equivalent in the UK of the now virtually extinct sports light roadster. Nonetheless, the mountain bikes offered by Raleigh still had a product life cycle. After four very good years, most people who wanted a first generation Raleigh mountain bike, had bought one. The idea of a folding bicycle appealed to Yvonne Rix but the volume market was shrinking and tended to be dominated by cheap 20" wheel imported machines.
As noted above, Raleigh produced a similar machine, but this was dropped about Yvonne Rix liked the Bi-frame which, as big-wheeled folders go is a good machine. Furthermore, dealers found it difficult to promote the important fact that it folded. Rather too late, Montague evolved a display stand to emphasise this feature.
Despite strong efforts to promote the Bi-frame, sales were poor and it was dropped early in the s. Thereafter Raleigh steered clear of folding cycles until the late s. Little was done to promote this machine and at the time of writing it can be bought as a clearance item at a considerable discount. Yvonne Rix had anticipated that a replacement for the basic mountain bike would be needed. She reasoned that customers would want to progress from the relatively heavy but comfortable MTB to something slimmer and lighter.
But they would not go back to racing bikes, with their relatively uncomfortable riding position, an uncomfortable narrow saddle and narrow fragile wheels that got caught in potholes. The MTB gave everything a racing bike did not: an upright riding position, comfortable saddle, and wide tyres with a high degree of puncture resistance.
However, after riding it on the road for a while, the downsides that became apparent were weight and rolling resistance. Therefore, Rix proposed a machine that kept the good braking, wide-ratio gears and other MTB advantages but with thinner frame tubes and tyres that were a compromise between the knobbly wide-section mountain bike tyre and the lightly treaded narrow-section racing bike tyre.
In effect, she devised an improved sports light roadster with a more modern image. Raleigh thus effectively invented the hybrid and therefore had difficulty obtaining suitable tyres. Whereas today every Taiwanese tyre manufacturer makes hybrid tyres, the only supplier in was Vredestein in the Netherlands. Launched in , just as MTB sales dropped away, the Pioneer range was promoted heavily and initially sold well.
At the time of writing, Pioneers are still made but the biggest marketing problem was the lack of an easily remembered and well-understood generic name for this type of machine. Competitors, reasonably enough, did not wish to use the Raleigh name, Pioneer. The Germans called them trekking bikes, which suggests to UK customers something rather arduous. Although the Pioneer range was intended as an MTB replacement, it was recognised that it was not a perfect substitute, its market being somewhat different.
There was therefore a need to extend the product life of the MTB, especially for younger customers. In the USA, interest had been growing in suspension for mountain bikes. Although far from the mainstream of mountain bike design, it stimulated interest in the subject and Rockshox telescopic front forks reached the UK in Adding suspension to a Raleigh MTB seemed a good way of boosting interest and sales, hence the very successful Activator was created.
This was a budget MTB with a simple Raleigh-designed telescopic front fork. Launched in , it was advertised effectively on TV. The following year saw the introduction of Activator II, a dual suspension version, with a Raleigh-designed rear suspension system somewhat reminiscent of that used on the Raleigh-manufactured Moulton MkIII.
Whereas the Activators were essentially budget MTBs with inexpensive suspension designed in-house, Raleigh recognised that the other end of the mountain bike market needing nurturing. Both in marketing and product development, M-Trax benefited from the successes of the Raleigh Mountain Bike team, which Rix instigated in Got a Univega Alpina sitting in my possession which I need to do some work for.
The frame is straight and true on it and a really comfortable ride, but the crankset and rear cassette need replaced. Hopefully going to strip it down this summer, repowder coat it in a blue and white scheme and rebuild it with new components.
I still own and occasionally ride a Bridgestone MB Frame built with lugged CroMo. I still have mine and the tires I put on it are just a hair too big for the frame Maxxis 2. Not a thing has been changed out. A few paint blemishes and clipless pedals, but still in great working order.
I see you put Santa Cruz heckler surely the super light would be more interesting I have a frame made USA and anodised heckler almost identical 2 years later frame made Far East?
Great conversation here! I had been looking for the perfect vintage steel frame to retro mod with new top-shelf parts so I could casually hit the trails and do the occasional XC race on, group ride, etc. It had to be vintage, steel and after the build, sub 20 lbs. It honestly rode better than any new hardtail I had tried at the LBS at the time and she hit the weight goal coming in at a scant It was a super dope ride. Wish I still had her.
Gonna do the same as before. I am thinking about maybe selling it if is as collectable as I think it might be. Any thoughts on this? They were the ones that always came home in one piece. Usually more common in Canada, they made some fine road machines. I agree. I own a 91 Explosif with futureshock forks. Conveniently, they also usually have the month and the last two digits of the year of manufacture stamped onto the shell. This is the easiest way to date a 3-speed bicycle, if it has its original rear wheel.
Note: Some of the mid's straight gauge frames had serial numbers starting with a single letter which was towards the end of the alphabet. In , an entirely different numbering system was introduced for the higher end and subsequently Raleighs.
Serial numbers should begin with a "W", which stands for Worksop, the facility that produced these frames. This is followed by another alphabet. This alphabet indicates the fortnight in which the frame was built i.
The third character is always a numeral. It indicates the year of manufacture, the decade being assumed i.
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