Technical & Reference Section > Tech and Restoration
Some Raleigh BMX history
Trev:
yeah, they could definitely have competed with the top companies. like i said, andy ruffell was the biggest name in bmx over here and they should have milked it by having a top end bike.
over here, skyway had it completely sussed. they got on board craig campbell & neil ruffell. then got carlo on too. they had three out of the top five riders in the country on board. the other two being dave young and pepi winder (pepi also signed for skyway a couple of years later). before that they also had people like bill stupps and paul hudson. they brought out the street beat and got the best riders riding them. a great marketing technique.
did the aero pro and raleigh andy ruffell only sell as well as they did because andy ruffell was riding them? definitely. they should have built on that.
FuNMoNsTeR:
It was more a case of Money.... They poured all their cash into MTB development In 1985.... Blame Yvonne Rix.... the same lady that brought the Burner back from the states.... she also sold Raleigh on the idea of MTBs being the way forward in 85 >:(
Mountain bikes
When Yvonne Rix visited the USA and the Far East in 1981, 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? Yvonne Rix’s response was that neither do you need a 4x4 to drive in London, but you see plenty of Range Rovers in Chelsea. 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 1983 made no mention of it.
Eventually, Yvonne Rix persuaded the Raleigh board that a move into mountain bike production made sense. In spring 1985, Raleigh launched Maverick, its first range of MTBs. offered in 5, 15 and 18-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.
RATTY:
Trev, that was the other thing that annoyed the fook outta me, Skyway factory riders rode production bikes, so kids could ride the same machines as the big guns. Andy never rode a poxy night burner, or a mag burner, no his frames were high end frames imported from ?japan?
Trev:
i suppose in raleigh's defence, they were a bike company rather than a bmx company. maybe on other forums, mountain bikers are thinking they should have ploughed more money into the mtb rather than wasting it on bmx. i don't know how successful raleigh bikes were in other areas during the first bmx boom.
in all honesty, it would appear she got it right with the mtb's. the average kid who wanted a bmx in 83 wanted a mountain bike in 86. you've got to realise that raleigh are a bike company that has to keep up with the latest trends of bikes. it would not have been good business to stick with bmx in the late 80's when most kids had passed that fad. remember, us as bmxers make up a very small percentage of cyclists.
Trev:
--- Quote from: RATTY on July 25, 2007, 01:51 AM ---Trev, that was the other thing that annoyed the fook outta me, Skyway factory riders rode production bikes, so kids could ride the same machines as the big guns. Andy never rode a poxy night burner, or a mag burner, no his frames were high end frames imported from ?japan?
--- End quote ---
i think they flooded the market with too many different burner versions. which like you said were never ridden by their riders.
all skyway riders rode a street beat which was one of the most popular frames out back then. they also rode street stylers as their second bike (normally rode a beat with a coaster for flat and a styler with a freewheel for ramps). the only skyway bike they didn't ride was the cheap street scene version which subseqently hardly anyone bought.
it's true, kids want to ride the same bikes as their heroes. so ratty, when you getting a Proper... ;)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version