Following Mercian’s 80th Anniversary Festival of Steel, we were delighted to welcome Eddie White and Cherie Pridham to our new factory.
Eddie White was a valued founding member of the Mercian-Bantel Team, riding with the team between 1968 and 1979. It was a particular pleasure to welcome Cherie, who took time out of her busy WorldTour schedule as Sports Director of UAE Team L’Imad to join Eddie for the visit.
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.
The Mercian Mug will be landing at the shop very soon they will be with us in a couple of weeks or so and cost £6.99 plus postage. If you would like one please call the shop to pre-order. Printed with the same design front and rear.
Tim has got all the gear in chainstays , fork blades etc etc to turn my old atb frame into a 29er . Im quite looking forward to getting this put together. Its going on the back boiler for now as we are a bit on the busy side.
A early 1950s trike frame made by Mercian. We have not made a trike frame now for some years so this bit of kit is a very rare item indeed. I must admit Ive only seen two in the past. This one belongs to Mr Holland of the V-CC Cambridge section. Thank you Christopher for the photo.
Just though you would like to see this complete bike with a rather snazzy paint job built with Reynolds 631 tubing and Campagnolo equipment with our own hand built wheels.
Above is the design board which we work to when we are spraying and building the Paul Smith touring bikes. We also have one for the track bikes. As you will see the designers have supplied a Pantone colour which Rob mixes by eye. We do not work in Pantone so the swatches come in handy. A couple of
An overdue word of thanks from California. I took delivery on a King of Mercia in May. The bicycle is magnificent. I asked a lot of you and your staff. I'm tall and the bike fits my 6-foot-4 frame perfectly. It does everything I've asked of it, from fast rides in the country to short tours to commut
Thank you Tarquin for the picture of you track bike. Another London enthusiast. We had to spray this frame to match his favourite car the Ford GT40. Brooks saddle and tape and the aggressive track stem all add up to a nice piece of kit.
Meet the Beast. Kept in the garage most of the time but its unleashed mainly on Wednesdays when it transports the frames from the workshop to the shop for customers to collect. Its a old Suzuki which most of the work force seem take the mickey out of for some reason !!!!!
Tony had today off so I took the opportunity to take a picture of his tidy bench. It amazes me how he knows where all his tools are but I suppose hes been working here for a few years now.
This tool kit gets some hammer at the shop. Its used every day without fail. All frame tapping and facing can be carried out with this set. The tools themselves are the best in my opinion we could not do without them. The shop can order you one if you want one but get your credit card ready ( there
A spray shop shot here. The track frame in the foreground ( I think this frame will be in Japan soon ) is built with Reynolds oversize tubing although hard to see in the picture is quite a noticeable increase in tubing diameter and is built with cast lugs.This tubing is becoming very popular indeed
