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.
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
No it,s not modern art its part of the snap room wall. Over the years this wall is slowly being filled with fruit labels apples , oranges etc. This wall must be 12 foot long and its all like this.
This was sent into me by one of our American friends. I have told him it,s not quite this here now! Please take a look at the videos on there they are great http://www.countrybicycle.com/
If your in London it might be a idea to have a look in the Victoria & Albert museum. They have a exhibition on at the moment called Fashion Vs Sport. As part of exhibition you will see one of our bikes we built for Paul Smith's design team. These bikes have not been seen by the public as they where
Well the day we have all been dreading has dawned John has left us. He has worked for us in excess of 20 years and in that time made a lot of customers frame dreams come true. I and all of us at Mercian wish you all the best. Surf's up John .
First of all sorry for the the lack of posts just recently I have been so busy. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible as they say. I promise to get my act together as soon as I can. Interviews for the shop job starts tomorrow so I'll be posting a picture of the new worker soon.
Not a lot to say today really only that I have started a Facebook page. Try and find it. I will when possible try and post a link to it so it should be easier to find. Take a look anyway on Mercian Cycles ltd . Hope you find it and post a picture and a few words.
The other day we had a visit from these lads ( Brent, Lyndon, Adri and Ant) . Well I hear you say whats so good about that. Well they came from Australia thats whats good about that. They had a tour of the workshop and spray shop and all found it very interesting and where amazed how much work goes
Meet Mr Fox he has made his home at the back of the shop and sleeps on the flat roof of the workshop. We see him most days and he is quite cheeky. The other day he just wandered into the workshop to have a look around ! When we have a bite to eat and have left overs we always through them on the roo
Just thought you would like to see a picture of this customer (Tony) who came from the Orkney Island today to collect his bike. He will be stopping down here with family for the evening before traveling home tomorrow. He flew down a few months ago to go through the order with John . We do get people
These forks are in our opinion one of the best on the market. If we have a customer who wishes for a carbon fork we would recommend these. One problem there is no mudguard clearance. There are carbon forks which we can supply with mudguard clearance but only then with short reach brakes.
