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.
Today was the day to clean one of the spray booth,s Replace bearings in the fans and give the place a general sprucing. To say it was a mucky job would be a understatement .
Well I am back from a few days off and back in at the deep end. I have been answering emails for most of the day with a quick run over to the workshop to pick some frames for customers to pick up this weekend. Carl has been fitting out a Colnago at the moment with Campag Chorus equipment and it lo
I have been at the office all day today getting ready for a few days off so this could be my last post for a day or two. I have posted a shot of a almost finished 60th Anniversary frame being built by Derek. This one is destined for a hard life going to a good friend of mine Paul who does a LOT of m
In the near future if all goes well I will be posting a email address which you will be able to send your own personal question's direct to me . I have been looking into it and may give it a try. What do you think would you like this please let me know in the comments.
Not a lot happened today besides being very busy in the shop. I have posted a shot of the frames we have in stock just for you to look at . A few custom built bikes went out including a nice very nice Rohloff ( red hub) equipped machine
. I did not manage to get a shot of that before it went out. T
Today was quite hard for me the workshop lads went out for a after work ride/drink to celebrate Phil,s birthday and i think we all over did it a tad. Phil lost his sunglasses and i fell of my bike ! the bike,s fine but my elbows and hands have some gravel rash .Thats the reason why I did not blog l
Hi
Well I had a day at the workshop today sorry to say i drove there in the works van but needs must as there was a lot of renovation work and new frames to pick up for the customers to collect from the shop. Meet Phil , Phil works in the spray shop and a new member to our team. He rides to work mo
Hi Guys
Back to wheels again ! Just a look at our spoke mountain as you can see most are from DT . We build all our own mainly going into our complete bike orders. We also do a lot of wheel repairs for customers who has come a cropper in one way or another. We have a stock off ready built wheels fr
Besides being very busy indeed today there has only been 3 of us in the shop there,s normally 5 of us we had a Campag spares delivery we get a lot of these from seat post bits to rear gear parts. Not a good picture I know sorry . The equipment spares are fine but wheel spoke kit,s are a nightmare.
We have just been told Campagnolo will be going 11 speed next year ( do we really need 11 sprockets ? ). Also they are going to add a new Groupset called Super Record a new version not the early 80s group. If we get any pictures ill post em .
These are nice fixed sprockets not the cheapest but in our opinion one of the best on the market. If you want a smooth fixed bike you could not do better. We try and keep most of the standard sizes in stock.
