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Most Popular News 1. When bicycle trade website BikeBiz reported last week that Wolverhampton-based Wiggle was seeking to acquire its Northern Ireland rival Chain Reaction Cycles , it precipitated a flurry of near-indistinguishable reports across specialist and general media channels. Coming together with Wiggle is a great way to continue that growth, as a global force in cycling and a leader in technology, e-commerce and innovation.
So what does the merger mean? Before we get to that, we need to consider the history of the two companies. Wiggle made an unlikely entry into cycling, beginning with a two-man team in December as Portsmouth-based software company Edge Technologies. Initially, the pair sold everything from sunglasses to vibrators and accessories from the bike shop that Dall had agreed to keep running for a period of five years from when he purchased the building.
Chain Reaction Cycles followed a much more conventional path. After seeing numerous mail-order advertisements in bicycle magazines, Chris suggested his parents also evolve beyond the physical borders of their shop.
The transition proved to be so successful that by the family was once again forced to move to a bigger premises — only this time, it was a dedicated warehouse. Growth for both companies was rapid, though less spectacular than the trajectory that distinguished the dot-com boom of the previous decade.
Watson could very well have been referring to arch-rival Wiggle which, in the previous year, had taken the decision to get its first injection of private equity. Dall was introduced to the concept of private equity by clothing retailer Tim Slade on the sidelines of a school football match.
In , Slade had selected ISIS Equity now Livingbridge, having changed its name in November for obvious reasons to invest into the Fat Face brand which he and business partner Jules Leaver co-founded seven years earlier. Additional funding in hand, Wiggle quickly began upscaling its operations and focused on expanding its geographical reach.
The company introduced multiple currencies and languages to its website in mid, resulting in an immediate sugar hit from countries such as Australia see video below and Japan whose bicycle markets had not yet embraced e-commerce in any meaningful way. Some were adjacent to cycling, such as Run and Swim, and others less so. At the midpoint of these milestones came the appointment of Cambridge University alumni Cobbold, who joined Wiggle as CEO and also became a stakeholder in parent Ensco Anecdotally, it had already become commonplace for some European distributors who had redundant or excess stock to dump their inventories onto either CRC or Wiggle.
One story circulating at the industry exhibition Eurobike told of a UK distributor that sold its unwanted stock of premium road bike frames to Chain Reaction Cycles. Stefan Barden, chief executive officer of Wiggle, said: "In the global online retailing market in which we operate, there is a compelling industrial logic for our two businesses to come together to become a stronger force.
Takeover bid for NI online bike retailer. Image source, Thinkstock. Chain Reaction Cycles sells to customers across the world from Northern Ireland. Related Topics.
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