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news
CyclocCycloc ceases production, citing impact of Brexit on its business
Wall-mounted bicycle storage firm Cycloc is to cease production, with its founder citing the impact of Brexit as one of the principal reasons for the decision.
The company, which has been in business for 17 years, announced yesterday that it would stop manufacturing its award-winning products, which have proved popular among both individuals and businesses for storing bicycles, and would also close its UK warehouse.
In a statement, company founder Andrew Lang, who is also its principal designer, said: “This was an incredibly difficult decision to make, particularly as we have a development pipeline of new products, but it was personally important to me to wind operations down whilst the company is still solvent and without owing creditors.
“I’m having to press pause for now to take some time away and evaluate what form Cycloc might be able to take in the future.”
Providing further background to the decision in a video posted to YouTube and addressed to the company’s customers, partners, distributors and retailers, he said: “Over the past 15 years, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and speaking directly with many of you about our shared passion of cycling.
“As most of you will be aware the last few years of trading have been extremely challenging for the cycling industry, something we have not been immune to. We have faced rising operation costs alongside negative impacts of COVID and increased barriers to selling in the EU as a result of Brexit, something that has been magnified by our wish to continue to manufacture in the UK.
“What you may not be aware of is that Cycloc is an entirely self-funded venture. Its growth has been organic. There are no external investors and our funding sources are finite. This means we now find ourselves with no choice but to cease manufacture and close our UK warehouse operations.
This was an incredibly difficult decision to make, particularly as we have a development pipeline of new products, but it's personally important to me to do this while we remain solvent and with no creditors.”
He added: “We will continue to sell through our existing website while stocks remain available, and I want to assure our customers that our support lines will remain operational.”
In an article published in the Guardian earlier this year, Cycloc revealed that the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, which prior to Brexit accounted for 50 per cent of its business, had cost it a quarter of its turnover.
> “It is very difficult to be positive”: Brexit lost Cycloc 25% of sales, founder reveals
He said it was “very difficult to be positive” about the situation, citing “Kafkaesque” rules introduced for trading with EU member states.
Underlining that the company remained committed to making its products in the UK, he said: “"It is very disappointing. I am a naturally optimistic person, but in a sense it is very difficult to be positive.
“One of the things that is quite disappointing about this whole process is that from the outset, we made an active decision to manufacture in the UK.
“We’ve remained faithful to that and it feels as though the UK government hasn’t necessarily helped us.”
“We have about half a dozen products in the pipeline that are in a very advanced stage but we've not been able to commit the capital to bring those to the market yet because of the other Brexit costs and problems we’ve been confronted with.”
The company’s head of operations, Clare Lowe, added that there was also an issue with some “EU distributors stopping placing orders, citing cost of shipping and customs clearance as prohibitive.”
The company opened a warehouse in the Netherlands in an attempt to reduce the administrative burden, with paperwork only needing to be completed for each truckload arriving from the UK, rather than for individual orders to EU customers dispatched directly.
Even then, the financial burden proved too onerous, and with Lowe saying that it was clear that sales to the EU were “not going to recover to their pre-Brexit levels,” the facility would have continued operating at a loss.
“To say the Brexit process was gritty is an understatement,” she explained. “Within 12 months of having got it up and running, we just had to take this decision to close it because it wasn't covering its costs,” she added.
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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41 comments
Oh yes those sunny uplands, sovereignty and blue passports were all worth it!
Give over. I'm thankful I work for an international broadcaster that could weather it, but judging by how we have had to adapt and ditch many UK suppliers we used for business across the EU as well as the UK, due to red tape and costs associated with Brexit, I can only imagine how many small businesses have gone down and suffered.
We have won the square root of f*** all from this.
No politician in this country in living memory has lied more frequently or more readily than Boris Johnson. He brought British politics to new lows.
That old trope of 'all politicians lie' is just so lazy and so accepting of the lies of the right wing.
Utter bollocks. Eurozone growth for Q3 2023 was 3.0%, UK was 1.8%. And inflation in the Eurozone was lower than the UK.
Facts really are Kryptonite to you Brexshitters.🤣🤣🤣
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02784/#:~:text....
You need to read my comments fully, then you'll see that I'm not a 'Brexshitter'. I am just sick to the back teeth of all this arguing, backstabbing, liberal left, far right bullshit. The country is broken, in all my life I have never felt it so utterly broken. Blame whoever you want but don't keep blaming Brexit and name calling those who voted for it.
Mate, you got called out for a factually incorrect claim. Took me all of five seconds to get the facts. Why didn't you do the same? Because you Brexshit cultists don't give a shit about the facts.
You voted for this shit show and now you're trying to blame the fact that it's been a total failure on the very people who voted AGAINST it.
Maybe take 10 seconds next time because you missed something important 😉
I expect market saturation is a factor here too, I mean once everyone who needed a £60, easily copied, wall mounted, shaped piece of plastic had one for every bike they possessed, there isn't going to be much repeat business.
perhaps, but it doesn't help much when before you had free access to a market of 500 million. And now you don't.
Not quite so simple as that though. If you're selling in Europe then having the marketing is very expensive too.
This is true, it would / could be very expensive from a marketing perspective to build business in Europe.
However, what you are missing, and what is pertinent to Cycloc's situation, and nearly all UK small businesses, is the cost of losing established EU business to the overall health of a business.
I work for a company living this. Historic EU business counted for a small, but valued amount of overall turnover and profit. The cost of retaining that business is simply not sustainable post brexit - you have the choice of setting up EU based warehousing / manufacturing capabilities, or investing in expensive financial systems - which at least means you can hide some of the additional costs faced by your customer base.
Our existing EU contracts didn't justify either option, the cost would be higher than the return, so you accept that you're losing that part of your business. You either survive that loss or you don't. Cycloc couldn't.
There are a lot of other pressures on a business currently, but that particular loss of revenue, the straw that broke Cycloc's back, was our own doing.
Ah, if you only someone could explain the tangible benefits to me again, maybe I wouldn't feel so bitter.
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