1983 Freewheel catalogue - Ridgeback & Ritchey Pages

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Yes. In 1981 Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly displayed one of their first Ritchey framed production prototypes at the Long Beach cycle show attracting a great deal of interest from Japanese bicycle manufacturers. "The Japanese liked what they saw, measured up, and went home and cloned mountain bikes".

Unlike Repack, this happening is not part of the mythology of mountain bikes. However, it kickstarted mountain-bike production and the commercialisation of the mountain-bike.

The first advert/article for the MountainBikes company was in BMX Plus magazine in 1980. This magazine was also read in the UK. So reading this and similar articles, Knowledge of the existence of the US Mountain bikes quickly spread to the UK.

Interestingly the earliest record of a US style mountain-bike being displayed at UK bicycle show was also in 1981 at York. The bike was made by an nuclear physicist and amateur frame-builder called Tony Oliver.

If the Japanese bike industry had attended York, instead of Long Beach that year, they might have thought that the design originated here. Tony Oliver describes the reaction of the UK cycle trade to this lone mountain as "incredulous". Unfortunately, UK manufacturers, though world leaders in bicycle manufacture at that time, did not receive the mountain-bike concept with the same enthusiasm as the Japanese.

So in 1981, there began a rush to develop mountain-bikes and bring them to market. Raleigh management, decided that mountain-bikes would be a short term fad, and so decided not to produce them. This left the UK market wide open for smaller manufacturers like Dawes & Saracen, and importers like Ridgeback and Muddy Fox.

 

[Synthiaks]

'Raleigh management, decided that mountain-bikes would be a short term fad, and so decided not to produce them'


Which was very odd as they already had a nice line-up of decent bikes via Raleigh USA so presumably units they could have sold in the UK....but also assume they are totally different companies.

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Information compiled from the Raleigh Bicycle Company Wikipedia page:
In 1982, Raleigh sold the rights to their name in the US to the Huffy corporation. Under the terms of the agreement, Raleigh of England licensed Huffy to design and distribute Raleigh bicycles in the US. The renamed Raleigh Cycle Company of America sold bikes in the US while the rest of the world, including Canada, received Raleigh of England bikes. At that time, production of some U.S. Raleigh models were shifted to Japan, with Bridgestone manufacturing most of these bikes. By 1984, most Raleigh bicycles for the American market were made in the far-east.

Both the longstanding Roughstuff Fellowship and 'Tracker' bike traditions in Britain were based on the use of, more-or-less standard, road bikes, where, if the terrain was difficult, you either got off and walked, or risked crashing and possibly breaking the bike. If you did break the bike you reconstructed it from scrap parts. This make-do-and-mend approach made it very difficult for companies like Raleigh to break into these niche markets and when they tried, it was always with low-cost, low-quality designs. Bikes like the Halfords' Trackstar. or the 1981 Raleigh Bomber.

Given these low-budget traditions, the Idea that someone would pay £300 to £600 for a bicycle to ride in the mud, must have seemed crazy. In the US, the MountainBikes company had already proved that there was an adult market for expensive, high-quality, custom-built off-road bikes. Also the drier climate in California, made off-road riding appear much more appealing.

Who would have thought that people would be prepared to spend thousands of pounds on a bicycle, only to get it covered in mud.