1946 was a special year: Paul Smith was born in Nottingham, Mercian Cycles was founded in Derby. Paul was a very good cyclist in his youth and rode Mercian bikes - his fondness for Mercian has remained, and the feeling is mutual. To help celebrate our 80th anniversaries, Paul has designed two special limited edition bikes, which were launched at Selfridges in early September.
After many months of effort, and a tremendous grant to help us on our way from Erewash Council, we launched three new eBike models at the end of August.
A great crowd attended our Festival of Steel ride out in August, to help celebrate the 80th anniversary of Mercian. Many thanks to Belper Cycling Club, and Andre Toczek in particular, for helping organise the event and doing a great job on the 4 rides. And a big thankyou to all those who attended the event - we estimate approx 300 people turned up to help us mark the day, but give it a few months and the estimate will have grown to 3000!
Congratulations to Jill Scott for completing her epic 388 mile "Coming Home" challenge, raising almost £500k for Sport Relief! Mercian were proud to help.
We doff a very large cycling cap to Greg James, who finished his 8-day pan-UK challenge in Edinburgh on Friday raising over £4.5mln. What an incredible amount!
After six decades Mercian Cycles workshop has moved.
Through the years there were a number of locations in Derby for the shop, the frame building workshop and sprayshop. But since about 1965 the frame building and painting was taking place at the Pontefract Street workshop.
Framebuilder Tim took the chance to head out on the Ventura All-road bike to go and pick up some dropouts from Bear Frame Supplies. An ideal opportunity to capture some video of the custom steel Ventura out on the gravel trails of the Derbyshire Peak District.
Please find attached photos of my Mercian 'stable'. There is another one but it resides at my mates house in North Wales. The white one you refurbished for me in April has received many admiring comments. Let's hope it may generate some business for guys.
I thought you might like to see how I built up my recently refurbished 531c frame. I’ve not been out on it yet though as it’s snowing here 🤨 Can’t wait until it melts
I was looking at the Mercian website today, and thought you'd like a look at my trusty Vincitore Special, serial number 82984. I bought it secondhand from your shop as a refurbished frame sometime in the 1990s. You built it up for me, including the wheels, and it was immediately put to good use. It'
I trust you and the team are all well, here is a picture of the 1979 Strada Speciale in my ride down to Bobbin Head Reserve, NSW Australia, which is about 12 miles from home. The 1st picture was taken at the entrance to the Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park, the route down to Bobbin Head is about 4km
