Tech Report: A visit to Ridley
- By VeloNews.com
- Published Oct. 30, 2007
- Updated Dec. 31, 2007 at 10:59 AM UTC
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If you live in the three-country economic union known as Benelux – and ride a bike – odds are good that it’s a Ridley. The Belgium-based bike maker owns a 45-percent share of the road and ’cross market in its homeland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, according to the company’s international sales manager David Alvarez.
Market penetration isn’t quite that high in the U.S., but backed by the success of ProTour stars such as Cadel Evans and Robbie McEwen, and the powerful Ridley-sponsored Fidea cyclocross team (world champ Erwin Vervecken, Belgian national champ Bart Wellens, World Cup opener winner Zdenek Stybar and others), the company is slowly gaining ground across the pond. Ridley also sponsors American Jonathan Page’s Sunweb-Pro Job team.
During the downtime between the cyclocross World Cup opener in Kalmthout, and round No. 2 in Tabor, Czech Republic, VeloNews stopped by company headquarters to take a look around. Ridley’s main offices lie on the outskirts of the town of Tessenderlo, in a large industrial park along the busy E313 highway. Its neighbors in the heavily industrialized area include Dow Chemicals, Panasonic and bike clothing maker Bio Racer.
Inside the non-descript metal-sided building is a bustling 45-person operation whose main task is receiving frames built at its overseas manufacturing facility, checking them for defects and then running them through a multi-staged assembly process that includes paint, logo application and parts build-up. The team completes about 85 bikes a day.
Ridley’s design center is also based in Tessenderlo. They split time between coming up with new frame designs, creating graphics and paint schemes for stock bikes, and working on a steady stream of custom paint jobs for pro and amateur clubs. The day of our visit, there was a rack of freshly custom painted frames for the New York City-based Gotham Cyclists squad. The design fee is waived if you order 10 bikes or more.
Alvarez says that about 22,000 frames will pass through the facility this year, and typically they have 4000-6000 in inventory. Indeed, the space is starting to get so cramped the firm is looking for a new assembly facility and developing plans to move next year.
Most of the frames at Tessenderlo are earmarked for European distribution (about 70 percent of Ridley’s total), while approximately 30 percent are painted and assembled in Asia. Italy is the company’s second largest customer base, with the U.S. third.
In one corner of a storage room was a stack of old Unibet.com team frames. Before the Belgian squad made its disastrous jump to the ProTour, Ridley was its bike sponsor. But when competitor Canyon waved a stack of cash in team officials’ faces, Unibet tried to squirm out of its contract with Ridley. The team ended up riding Canyon bikes during its aborted ProTour stay, but Ridley recouped most of its investment, filing a successful arbitration suit against the team. Now the old Unibet frames are waiting to have the name removed so they can be sold to other customers.
The company doesn’t use decals on any of its bikes, instead applying stencil transfers that are then painted over. That means no peeling stickers. Before that happens, all the non-carbon frames are powder coated twice then baked in the powder coat oven. The carbon frames are coated with a solvent-free liquid-based paint.
In the main parts assembly room was a brand new Fidea team bike that will eventually end up in the quiver of young ’cross pro Jempy Drucker. Drucker and the rest of the Fidea squad – save world champion Vervecken who is too tall for the bike – are all riding the new carbon X-Night frames, which are 200 grams lighter than the previous edition, have an integrated seatmast, and a fully replaceable combination drop-out/derailleur hanger that before was only available on their top-of-the-line road bike, the Noah. Each bike is fully assembled by one person; it takes about an hour per bike.
Here’s a look at some of the visual highlights from our trip to Ridley. For more information on the company and to see their entire line of road, cyclocross and mountain bikes, check www.ridley-bikes.com.
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FILED UNDER: Bikes and Tech