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.
Hi all and thank you Gary from London for this picture of your Vincitore special Reynolds 631 track frame ( pearl white with a pearl orange barbers pole and head tube). As you can see its a a great looking bike with some lovely equipment on it. Campag chainset , Mich hubs and Brooks saddle. Lets
First of all sorry for the delay with this update we have been extremely busy over the last week or so. Any way to get the ball rolling again we have have a few Mercian bottles at the shop which sell for £3.75 each if you fancy one please give us a call.
Today was John's first day with us in the shop. A new member who has plenty of experience in the triathlete scene and a keen bike rider of course. It was a bit of a quiet day for us in the shop but helped to ease John into the shop roll. I,m sure he will be a valued member to the Mercian team.
Just had this picture sent in by Kelley one of our customers abroad. We had a nice email and a few pictures and I though you would like to see his bike. It look's nice and sunny there so no excuses for not getting out on it unlike here where the weather is getting slowly worse as winter takes grip.
This is a customers bike ready for the off. As you can see the bike has a Rohloff hub with the disc brake incorporated ( I think it is a Avid brake operated by cable ) this is his only rear brake . The gears are operated by a grip made by a German company especially for dropped bar. Also a dynamo fr
I have had a request for a picture of our red 953 so here it is. Sorry about the picture quality but its the only one I have. We have a couple going through our workshop right now so when there ready I will post a better picture. Most once built have Reynolds carbon forks.
Well it's getting cool now in the mornings and time to dig out the winter gear ready for the bad weather. We do a large range of the Campagnolo autumn /winter clothing which we feel is very good value indeed. We do stock all sorts of clothing which will keep you warm and dry in the coming months. No
Well today was great we had Chris Floyd the fabulous world renowned photographer at the workshop who was doing a photo shoot for a magazine Management Today which will be on the shelves in November. Chris was very patient with us all and put us all at ease. You can see his work here www.chrisfloyd.c
Firstly we have a picture send in by John of South Africa displaying the Table mountain in the background and his new Mercian in the foreground. As you can see the frame is decked out with Shimano equipment. The frame colour was inspired by the Italian Gios Torino manufacturer. I for one think it lo
This lovely frame belongs to Ben "skully" from London. Because we are having a new web site built ( dont hold your breath) we are unable to down load customers pictures so here is one to be going on with . I have another to post from South Africa tomorrow. As you can see its got lots of period equip
In the Sunday Times yesterday the 5th October was an article in the style supplement regarding the cycling increase throughout England and there main picture was of a group of guys and gal's from the tweed cc and one of our bikes. Emerald green with white bands on the seat tube and gold transfers.
Its time to stock take here at the shop and workshop (it,s not a nice job but someone has to do it) . Anyway while I was in the garage I came across one of the old advert sign. It,s been hand painted of course and may just have been done by one of the workers . I think it would have dated back to th
