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Andrew Ritchie left university in 1968 with a degree in Engineering. He first applied this hard-won knowledge in the nascent field of computing but soon realised he preferred the idea of being self-employed and before long, found himself working as a landscape gardener in London. While plying his green trade out of the back of an ancient Morris 1000 van in 1975, a chance meeting with a backer of the fledgling Bickerton folding bicycle changed the direction of his career again. Looking at the Bickerton's design, he thought he could do better and came up with a fresh approach to the challenge of designing a folding bike.

The theory looked sufficiently promising that Andrew managed to obtain backing from friends to fund the production of prototypes and in due course prototypes 1, 2 and 3 emerged from the cramped confines of Andrew's bedroom overlooking the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, London - Brompton Bicycle was born.

Prototype 3, c. 1977

From the outset, the prototypes bore a strong similarity to the final design. Prototype 1 had larger 18-inch wheels and the handlebars were very different, folding downwards on either side, but the rear wheel folded under the bike just like every Brompton produced since. By the time a second prototype had appeared, all the Brompton features were in place; it was a complex design but the following year, with Prototype 3 (featuring 16-inch wheels and a simpler, lighter folding mechanism), Andrew reckoned he had cracked the problems.

Like all prototypes, the first Bromptons were fairly crude. The brazed steel frames and other components were quite heavy (the first machines weighed almost 15kg), and specialised plastic components were, of necessity, hewn by hand from the solid. But the concept worked: the Brompton folded neatly and conveniently into a tiny package which was safe and clean to manoeuvre, as the chain and sprockets were on the inside of the package, shielded between the wheels. Although a good deal heavier than a Bickerton, it was in most other respects a remarkable step forward in folding bike design.

Rather than hinge back on itself in the centre of the frame, like most â€˜traditionalâ€™ folders, Andrew had come up with a novel concept that resulted in a compact folded machine. The rear of the frame was hinged near the chainwheel, allowing the rear wheel to fold forward under the main frame tube, while the front wheel - pivoting towards the front of the frame and the headset - swung gently back to nestle against the folded rear wheel. With the handlebars folding down against the wheels, and a collapsible seat pillar, the final package was hardly longer or taller than its 16-inch wheels, and well under 300mm across. Locked together by the lowered seat post, the package could be carried around or rolled on its small casters.

The design brought several incidental advantages. With the rear of the frame free to pivot, adding a rubber block to work against the main frame provided suspension at the rear: a useful extra on a small-wheeled bike, reducing shock loads into the frame and giving the feel of a â€œbig bikeâ€. Another advantage of the rear pivot was a generous 1.02m wheelbase, which compared favourably with much larger machines and ensured a decent ride and good handling. The only (minor) disadvantage of the design was the need for a chain tensioner to keep the chain taut when both folded and unfolded.

Andrew's plan at this stage was merely to interest an established company in taking up the idea under licence and he therefore began canvassing industry in search of a licensee. There was plenty of interest in the concept but there were more reasons for turning the idea down; despite the worldwide success of the Bickerton, companies such as Raleigh were not convinced that a market existed, or could be created, for such an unusual machine, and the search ended in failure. No one could have dreamt that twenty years later Brompton would be the largest bicycle builder in the UK and Raleigh little more than an importer of kits!

Pre-production model, 1981

The alternative, for Andrew to start manufacturing the bikes himself, required money; however, the search for venture capital also failed and, after five years, Brompton Bicycle's future did not look promising. Again, it was Andrew's friends who kept the idea afloat: 30 agreed to buy a bicycle in advance, and Andrew undertook to make them.

Although the budget was ridiculously low, some rudimentary tooling was eventually in place and the bikes duly appeared in 1981 from rented premises in the offices of an engineering design company near Kew Gardens.

Then others emerged wanting to buy this revolutionary design and Andrew, encouraged by the demand created through word-of-mouth alone, decided to start low-volume production, albeit with a bare minimum of tooling. Brompton Bicycle was in business.

Production model, 1982

The early Bromptons were essentially the same as the bikes produced today, but with a sharp curve in the main frame that gave the tube a strange dog-leg appearance. This feature had come about for the simple reason that standard pipe-bending tools could not produce the gentle radius desired. Change would only come with expensive retooling, which necessitated capital investment.

Weight reduction was another priority for the young company: at 14.1kg, the early Brompton was just too heavy for some people, although unlike other folding bikes it could be wheeled around on its little casters, not just carried. Lighter components were introduced and, in marked contrast to most folding bikes, the Brompton gradually became leaner, but real progress again depended on further capital investment. A key element in the weight-reduction strategy was the material used in the wheels: switching from steel to aluminium rims would bring considerable savings, and also improve wet-weather braking, but no 16-inch alloy rims were then available and Brompton lacked the buying power to arrange their production.

The company was soon breaking even but, without further investment, it was going to be difficult to develop it further, so Andrew and his board went in search of venture capital. With nearly 500 bicycles made and sold, hopes were high that the necessary investment could be found this time around; but once again potential investors failed to see what consumers could and in the end Brompton's pilot production ended in February 1983.

However, the company was solvent and Andrew remained convinced, having sold every bike that had been built, that the product had a future. Most important of all, the handmade bikes had been selling for almost £200 a premium of £20 over the Bickerton and twice the price of traditional folders like the Dawes Kingpin and the Raleigh Stowaway; clearly a market existed for a high quality, compact folding bike. Moreover, reviews had generally been very good, the bike praised for its looks, its firm responsive ride, and its sturdiness.

While he earned a living in other ways (as he had at different times before in the company's history) through general engineering design work, selling plants, and even working as a courier with the faithful Morris 1000 van, Andrew continued looking for a way to get the product back into production on a better footing.

Once again, a serendipitous encounter turned the company's fortunes around. Julian Vereker was an entrepreneur who had successfully turned his audio equipment company, Naim Audio, into one of the most highly-regarded manufacturers in the market.

On the back of that successful (UK manufacturing) venture, Julian had gone on to buy and establish companies in other fields, including yacht manufacture. While berthing one of his yachts in the French port of Cherbourg in 1982, he was surprised to find a woman taking an interest in two rather basic folding bikes on the deck. A friend of Andrew's, she persuaded Julian to contact Brompton if he was interested in seeing a superior design; Julian did just that, bought two bikes for himself, and proceeded to alter the design of his yachts to accommodate two or four Bromptons as standard.

When he was told in 1984 that the Brompton was no longer available, Julian's disappointment was noticed by Andrew and, once other options had fallen through, he approached Julian in September 1985. Within weeks, Julian had joined the company, lending the business some serious commercial acumen. A visit to venture capitalists 3i finally saw the company receive a funding offer but the terms, according to Julian, amounted to "financial theft" and he and Andrew cycled away.

The Arches, Brentford

Eventually, towards the end of 1986, with Julian guaranteeing the overdraft, a bank agreed to offer a one-for-one finance deal, the rest of the cash coming from family, friends, and Brompton owners. For Andrew, this marked the end of a five year search for capital and allowed him to resume working full time on the project, putting together the necessary tooling to put the bike into volume production. Before manufacture of the new Brompton (unofficially called the Mark 2) began, it was completely re-engineered, a process that absorbed a considerable amount of time and money. The weight remained a key concern and, by using aluminium for the handlebars and other components, and with some careful attention to detail elsewhere, was cut to about 11.3kg.

The work bore fruit almost immediately at the Cyclex exhibition in April 1987. With production still some months away, and using modified bicycles from the original pilot production run, the Brompton won the coveted Best Product award against an international field.

Although one judge refused to accept that the top prize should go to a machine which "you fold up and chuck in a car boot", that Luddite attitude (reflected elsewhere in the cycling establishment) fortunately did not carry the day, the Brompton winning on the strength of its genuinely innovative concept and design, in a market dominated by mountain bikes and other comparatively stale machines. Neil Murray, one of the judges, said: "The point is that [the Brompton] is a machine that will sell to non-cyclists and thus expand the market". There's nothing like a Brompton, so the Brompton won.

Cyclex 1987 was a turning point. Dealers, wary of impractical, sometimes even dangerous, folding bikes were forced to take another look and many enquired about stocking the machine, with a few placing firm orders for a bike that was yet to go into production. By November 1987 the company had moved into a railway arch in Brentford, West London, and by the following March a trickle of bikes had begun to emerge from the tiny factory, the volumes gradually increasing to sixty a month; Brompton Bicycle was in full-time production.

Almost immediately, there was a waiting list, and with favourable publicity in the cycling and boating press, the battle was on to satisfy demand and iron out the few criticisms that had come to light, while developing the product further: Sturmey Archer 3- and 5-speed hubs offered some choice to the consumer, and the rather heavy rear rack that had featured on all the early models was replaced by a neat bolt-on design, available as an option, which came with a neatly-concealed dynamo lighting set. Luggage on the rear rack was in any event an inconvenience when 'parking' the Brompton, so a quick-release carrier block was developed for the front of the bike which enabled a variety of accessories to be carried securely on the mainframe without upsetting the handling of the bike. Another accessory that proved popular was the company's folding left-hand pedal which, while fairly expensive, left a projection of less than an inch when folded and so brought the total width of the machine down to 10 inches. For taller owners, an extended seat pillar was introduced.

Mark 2 Brompton

By late 1988, production had increased to 90 per month, and bikes were being retailed through a network of 40 UK dealers with prices starting at a reasonable £235, still significantly more than the Bickerton which nevertheless began to wilt against the sophisticated new competition. Overseas sales were making an impact too, with small numbers of machines finding their way to Germany, Holland, Austria, France and Belgium.

The result was a backlog of orders that proved impossible to satisfy and inevitably prices rose, the basic model retailing for no less than £336 by early 1990, against £269 for the Bickerton Classic, £230 for the Bickerton Californian (effectively the first Dahon folding bike), and just £199 for the new Strida. Most road testers adored the Brompton and the accolades continued to convince more than enough potential customers that it was worth paying extra for a superior product.

The early 1990s were years of steady expansion for Brompton, as production picked up and the bikes were steadily improved. The company's global reputation rose and in 1992 a Taiwanese company, Euro-Tai, approached Brompton with an offer to build bikes under licence and to sell them to the Pacific Rim. The deal promised a steady stream of royalty payments to fund new developments, while opening up new markets in a cost-effective way (and without the environmental impact of exporting from London).

Unfortunately, quality control problems at Neobike (the joint venture company) played havoc with the sophisticated design, and sales never reached the levels that had been predicted; moreover, the Taiwanese partners viewed the bikes less as a finely-engineered product than as a commodity to be pushed. The focus for the joint venture gradually changed to the production of a cheaper base model, but royalty payments remained unreliable and Neobike was found to be selling into markets that were supposed to receive British-made bikes. Neobike eventually scaled back its plans for the Brompton, began manufacturing a Dahon clone, and the venture was abandoned.

The Taiwanese venture did enable the company to develop secondary sources for some components, and it has switched to Taiwanese components in a number of areas where the quality has been superior. Overall, however, the joint venture was a set back, and the company learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of ceding control over critical aspects of its operations. Moreover, Neobike did not return all the tooling and technical drawings on loan as part of the joint venture, with the result that various Neobike-related companies have since produced inferior Brompton-clones, which we continue to challenge through tedious, but necessary, legal channels, with considerable success.

Throughout the 1990s, sales continued to exceed expectations and with them came a need for larger premises. Having first expanded into a neighbouring railway arch, the company moved into significantly larger premises in Chiswick Park in late 1993.

With room to expand and several new staff, production gradually increased, reaching 100 machines a week within a year. Soon the waiting list had been absorbed, and the factory was in a position to actively generate new business, which was not long in coming.

Queen's Award for Export Achievement

In April 1995 the company won the Queen's Award for Export in recognition of increased sales in Germany, Holland, Scandinavia and elsewhere. It was the engineering equivalent of sending tulips to Amsterdam, but the overseas markets continued to grow - in late 1996, the Brompton was declared Bike of the Year by the German ADFC and sales exploded. By the end of the year, with 60% of output going for export, there was a waiting list once again, and by July 1997 the backlog had passed 6 months. The bike that had failed to find backers a decade before was being rationed and by 1998, Brompton again had to move, this time to its current premises, again in Brentford. With 30 employees, production soon exceeded 200 Bromptons a week.

In March 2000, the Brompton "Mark 3" was launched.

It featured improvements in areas criticised on the Mark 2, notably the brakes, now upgraded to dual-pivot callipers. Brompton was also finally in a position to make its own tyres, and Andrew decided to put tread and a dynamo contact strip on the fastest tyre then available to the 16" wheel market: the Primo, which was effectively a racing tyre.

The current factory, assembly section

Together with numerous lighter (yet stronger) components, the new tyres and brakes transformed the bike. The Brompton was faster and more reliable than ever, and the new prices reflected this: £441 for the basic 3-speed L3, rising to £613 for the rear-rack and dynamo-equipped T5.

The revamped bike met with universal acclaim and rising sales but, just as financial and operational security appeared to have been achieved, the company suddenly faced bankruptcy.

Although most of the complex components on the Brompton were made in-house, the company had relied from the outset on a British company for the highly reliable hub gears fitted to every model. In September 2000, the unthinkable happened and Sturmey Archer, based in Nottingham for the best part of a century, was forced into bankruptcy. Having made no allowances for such an eventuality, the company was left with the very serious problem of what to fit on its bikes.

Fortunately, the company was now large enough to attract new suppliers and the best option came in the form of a 3-speed hub produced by SRAM in Germany. Andrew secured as many Sturmey hubs as he could, buying vital time for the Brompton to be reengineered around the SRAM, with production moving seamlessly over to the new hub in March 2001.

However, SRAM's 5-speed hub proved impractical and the loss of Sturmey's 5-speed hub left a gap in the Brompton range. The solution took a year to engineer: taking advantage of the chain tensioner - fitted to every bike to enable folding - Andrew and the team produced a neat 2-speed derailleur. Fitting the new derailleur to the SRAM 3-speed gave six evenly-spaced gears; although the gear range was a little smaller than that on the old 5-speed, it was both a stronger and more efficient design. The first 6-speed was despatched from the factory in April 2002, orders having been placed even before it went into production.

Sturmey Archer was to rise again under Taiwanese ownership and Brompton, wary of again being over-reliant on one supplier for such a critical part, now takes hubs from both Sturmey and SRAM.

Some re-engineering and re-tooling in 2003 allowed the company to extend the wheel-base by a few centimetres, further increasing the stability of the ride without compromising the size of the folded package, but this otherwise significant improvement was overshadowed by the raft of developments unveiled in early 2005, when Brompton announced the biggest upgrade in its eventful history, described by Andrew as "a technical and marketing advance far greater than anything we've done since the Brompton was first introduced 17 years ago."

No product can stand still. Criticisms of the bikes' weight had persisted: 11.5kg for the lightest L3 model and 12.5kg for the better-equipped T6 struck some as too much. By 2005, the model range had also become a little staid: the Brompton's engineering-led approach had done little to widen the appeal of the bikes beyond their traditional customer-base; a new generation had to be attracted to the concept.

T6/M6R

A wealth of new options was unveiled, requiring new terminology across the range. The classic handlebar design was given a name (the M Type) to distinguish it from two new handlebar options - a low, straight bar (S Type) and a square design offering high and low riding positions (P Type). The old 'L' (lightweight) and 'T' (touring) labels would henceforth appear at the end of the model name, and the 'T' was replaced by the letter 'R' (rear rack); hence, old models like the T6 became an M6R and the L3 became an M3L.

S2L-X, M2L-X, P6R-X

With the range of gear options extended to include a single speed and a 2-speed (using a new gear-free Brompton rear hub, with or without the derailleur), the model range had become quite complex. The introduction of new lightweight materials, principally titanium frame parts, added to the complexity, but was perhaps the most significant development of all. Having tried the UK and Europe, cost considerations ultimately ensured that the titanium frame parts would be sourced from China and Russia, with rigorous controls ensuring that Brompton's trademark quality was maintained.

The lightweight options (denoted by the suffix X) inevitably added to the cost but ensured that bikes like the S2L-X (weighing 9.65kg) were among the lightest folding bikes on the market; the single-speed, mudguard-less S1E-X weighed in at just under 9kg.

The last five years have seen some fundamental changes to the Brompton range, but in truth much of the process of improving the Brompton takes place in a never-ending process of small incremental steps; this process of continuous, behind-the-scenes improvement ensures that the Brompton continues to evolve year-on-year.

From the Mark 1 of the 1980s to today's superlight models, the Brompton has come a long way. However, despite hundreds of detailed design changes over more than two decades, the elegant folding principles laid down by the young Andrew Ritchie in his bedroom workshop have remained essentially unchanged.

Brompton's order book has remained (over) full throughout this decade and demand has continued to rise exponentially. Although demand like this might tempt some companies to make a drastic dash for growth, such radical plans would threaten the fundamental nature of the company and our faith in quality control above everything else. So, while Brompton Bicycle is aiming to keep growing (indeed, we've taken on almost 20 employees over the past 12 months), we will never chase sales at the risk of compromising on quality. That's the only way we can expect to still be here in 20 years' time.

With thanks to AtoB magazine for permission to use extracts from "The Brompton Story"

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