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news
Brooks b17_s_standard_honey (1).jpgBrooks England stops online sales of ‘Made in Britain’ saddles to UK shoppers – because of Brexit
Brooks England, which has been making bicycle saddles at its factory in Smethwick, West Midlands for almost 140 years, has stopped sales to customers in the UK because of Brexit. The suspension of sales applies to order's made through the brand's website, with the company's UK distributor confirming on Monday that it does not affect products sold through premium dealers here.
In a shipping notice on its website, shared on Twitter yesterday by user @MCRCycleSam, the company, which dates back to 1866, said: “At Brooks England, we continue to produce each leather saddle in our West Midlands factory in more or less the same manner as we have for over 150 years.
“However, upon their completion, since some time these saddles are shipped first to our logistics centre in Italy and from there to Cyclists around the world.
“Due to this, the ongoing changes in the Brexit situation have made it necessary to temporarily suspend all new orders to the UK at this time.”
Brooks England said that orders received before 12.00 CET on 29 December would be processed as usual, adding: “Additionally, we will be extending our return window for purchases made prior to this announcement so as to allow for easy returns despite procedural delays. For information about returns or any other questions, please contact our Customer Service department who will be happy to assist you.
“We appreciate your patience while we analyse this situation and plan the proper administrative steps moving forward.”
Owned since 2002 by Italian bicycle saddles firm Selle Royale, Brooks England’s suspension of orders from UK customers highlights one of the impacts of Brexit on trade between the UK and the EU.
Until the end of the transition period at 11pm on New Year’s Eve, companies with operations in the UK and EU member states would have been able to freely move goods between their various locations – for example, sending products made at one site to another to be boxed up then mailed to customers.
Now, however, such goods would require clearance through customs, entailing additional time and paperwork as well additional costs such as VAT charges.
One would expect that Brooks England will change its procedures so that dispatch of products to UK customers is done directly from the West Midlands, thereby circumventing those barriers.
But the fact that the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which runs to 1,200 pages, was only signed on Christmas Eve has given businesses little time to assess the new rules and adapt their practices and systems to them.
The company’s announcement is the latest sign of the disruption that the end of the transition period is causing for UK shoppers within the bicycle market.
As we reported yesterday, Netherlands-based online bicycle parts retailer Dutch Bike Bits has announced that the UK has become the only country in the world to which it will not ship goods.
The company said that it had taken the decision due to the UK government telling overseas firms that they must apply and collect British taxes when selling to customers here, with the point at which VAT is collected, for example, moved from the point of importation to the point of sale.
As a result, online retailers – wherever they are located – are required to register for UK VAT and to account for the tax to HM Revenues & Customs, and to pay an annual fee.
Dutch Bike Bits said that the new regime, which it described as “ludicrous,” made it impossible to sell to consumers in the UK.
Last month, German bike manufacturer Canyon suspended shipments to customers in Great Britain and said it would stop accepting orders entirely from people in Northern Ireland due to uncertainty caused by Brexit.
> Canyon pauses shipments to UK customers, blaming Brexit uncertainty
It said it would resume deliveries after 11 January, once the situation becomes clearer.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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62 comments
How many UK orders do they actually have to process? If it is genuinely a shipping issue, surely it would not be difficult to employ someone on a temporary basis to pack them up and arrange a courier?
Bit of a PR own-goal from flag-waving traditional artisanally crafted in Smethwick oh-so-British "Brooks €ngland"
Not really, German and Swiss hipsters won't even notice.
I cannot believe that companies have waited until the UK has left the EU, surely they have had long enough to put measures in place for a seamless transition?
Based on what deal? Or are you seriously suggesting that small companies had the resources to invest time, effort and money on a range of eventualities and incidentaly deal with the business issues caused by a global pandemic?
Wouldn't have been much of a head-scratcher for made in Smethwick Brooks "England" though, surely?
CEO: Guys 'n Gals, we have a problem - they're pulling up the drawbridge from the EU! How will we ever get our artisanal English leather saddles from our Smethwick factory into the UK? We'll have to burn the midnight oil on this one, only got four years to figure it out and execute.
LOGISTICS: Sheesh, that's a conundrum.
INTERN: I have an idea...
Well we all knew that the UK would be leaving at 11pm on the 31st. It wasn't a last minute thing. Companies should have put in place measures for all eventualities.
Are you joking? Johnson finally agreed the deal on 24th December - no doubt deliberately last-minute so there would be no time for Parliamentary scrutiny. There is no limit to that liar's cynicism.
And you're blaming companies because they didn't make arrangements to comply with a trade deal they didn't know about until the last minute? That is ridiculous.
I certainly don't hold a candle for Boris. But in a high stakes negotiation in which both sides are necessarily going to come up short, logic dictates that neither party can sell the deal with six months left in play. That's not cynicism.
It's not ridiculous if the company in question manufactures its products IN the UK.
Having a contingency plan for a no deal Brexit would have been pretty sensible, if they had had such a plan in place they would not have run into difficulty now.
To be fair to Phil the VAT changes have been being flagged by HMRC since at least October, they applied regardless of the deal being negotiated.
There were US companies complaining about this then. William Shatners webstore for one.
The EU is putting a similar scheme in place in July, but for the EU 27 as a whole so there is more incentive for companies to comply.
No one had a clue what was going on becuase there was no plan, to clue, no strategy other than unicorns, 350 million and blue passports it was and is all bollox.
The clues were there, from July. Now, that's got to be enough time to get Brooks "England" branded product out of Smethwick into the UK.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-border-operating-model#hi...
We have had four years for companies to come up with plans. If the remainer supporting companies had put as much effort into getting ready for the transition as they did bleating about the thick racist Brexiters and demanding another referendum, the transition would be fairly seamless.
Bollocks. You can't plan if you don't know what the rules are going to be. We did some contingency/what-if planning but the devil is always in the detail. Suddenly Wiggle's acquisition of CRC & BikeDiscount makes a whole lot of sense, which isn't great news for the rest of the UK sports retailers.
That is 100%, definitively, absolute bollocks!
My employer and other businesses in a similar position has spent many hundreds, possibly thousands of hours trying to get answers out of Defra for the entire time since the referendum. Even now it's almost impossible to get conclusive answers; often any response or statement leads to further questions because there is so little clarity on what is supposed to happen.
That's nothing to do with whether individuals are voted Leave or Remain. My colleagues and I - and the people we deal with day in, day out - are just trying to do our fucking jobs.
Regardless of what anybody thinks of Brexit it is still a frigging disgrace that saddles to UK customers are shipped to Italy and back again. The EU has been expert at organising or at least not stopping that sort of shite. Prawns trucked from Holland to North Africa to be peeled and then trucked back; potatoes trucked over to eastern Europe to be peeled then trucked somewhere else to be cut and fried.
I'd bet most of the EU lovers on Roadcc don't remember the beef mountain, the butter mountain, the milk and wine likes or the French setting fire to Irish beef lorries and tipping motor oil into Spanish and Italian wine tankers. Then there was the fraud over non existent tomato plantations (I think olives might have been in there as well. Then there was the little matter of unloading the beef mountain by giving it away in poor African countries which dropped the beef prices in those locations so that local farmers had to bury their cattle because they couldn't afford to feed them. Lets not talk about the banana regulation that was put in place to bully non EU banana growers (since rescinded). Na, great institution the EU - if you ignore the corruption, expenses scandals and Brussels to Strasburg nonsense....
There, I feel better now. I'll feel even better when I've had a G&T knowing I can get duty free replacements next time I cross the channel.
As the article makes very clear, Brooks is owned by an Italian company. It should therefore not exactly be a shock that their central distribution centre is in Italy, where presumably plain old economies of scale mean that it is more cost-effective to have one larger centre for all their goods rather than having smaller ones dotted in various companies.
I work for a company that designs its products in the UK but most of the manufacturing is done overseas, outside the EU. It is then shipped back to the UK to our central distribution centre, because that is the best place for us to keep our stock. This practice has absolutely nothing to do with the EU, it is simply how business works. Clearly when circumstances change such that having separate distribution centres becomes more cost-effective, that is what companies will do, whether they're in the EU or not. You can hardly blame Brooks or their parent company for the short notice they have been given to implement a solution, so a short delay while they put that in place is hardly the end of the world.
Basically, stop being a prat.
I suspect it has more to do with exporting the profits to Italy. The UK operation can run at cost generating no profit, whilst the retail mark-up accrues in Italy.
You suspect. I suspect you're completely wrong.
I looked at Brooks England Ltd's accounts (filed at Companies House) for FYE 2019 earlier; in terms of net profit vs turnover, they punched well above their weight at group level.
Listen twathooks, don't be insulting. Anybody can cook up numbers in an office to justify such shipping arrangements. If those shipping activities EVER had to pay for their impact on the environment, not to mention damage to the road infastructure caused by trucks, they would never get out of the starting blocks.
^This. Until the carbon footprint of goods is taxed this sort of thing will continue. All goods, including food, need to be taxed on their true environmental cost.
If the shipping is that much of an issue to you, then would you be happier if Selle Italia cut out the UK part of the process? The leather is sourced from Belgium, the metal presumably from the Far East - why is it coming to the U.K. at all when they have a factory in Italy already?
No, I'd be happier if they just used a local agent. Oh, wait, they do:
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/brooks-england-distributo...
Storm/teacup.
The EU is a free market - so obvioulsy goods / services / people can move around freely. That's the whole point. The EU does not 'organise', it enables. National Governments and business organise the moving of goods / services.
The food mountains are a thing of the past. They were wasteful but they are no longer. Unions of democratic nations are able to solve problems by working together.
The 'corruption'. What corruption do you refer to?
The bananas - oh, yes. The bananas.
Corruption? Well...I suppose it's not all bad.
https://fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/
So its not a British firm anymore. Hardly made in Britain. A bit like the Mini, only the name remains.
I do remember with very fond memories my '60s mini
Brooks leather saddles are designed and manufactured here. The hide is from the UK, - apparently it has to be 5-6mm thick - and only cattle from a cold climate has hide this thick. It is then tanned in Belgium and brought back to the UK to complete the manufacturing process. The Cambium is a Selle-Royal saddle sold under the Brooks label.
The issue here may be that the companies mentioned are just used to trading within the EU...and let's face it, despite the 4 years we've had to negotiate this, it was always going to be a last minute deal and neither the UK Govt or the EC has helped in this regard.
I doubt the hides are sourced from the U.K., most tanneries in Europe source their raw materials from alpine reared cows which is a location typically a fair bit colder. Tannerie Masure in Belgium are ok, they produce fairly cheap veg tan compared to big players like Rendenbach which is probably why they buy from them. French/Belgian tanneries also use chestnut tannin which doesn't have the same properties as British oak bark tanned leather, it's a shame Brookes don't source from the last remaining U.K. tannery, Bakers in Devon which I consider the best in my experience
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