Rapha founder: 'Cycling now is a bit dull ... there's all this doping stuff'
What inspired you to launch Rapha?
It was the classic case of a frustrated customer who is so foolish they think they can do it better. I travelled the world consulting, I’m a bike rider and love the sport, so I would visit shops and meet cyclists. I realised there were enough people like me who wanted better quality. Then it was endless nights at the kitchen table and every conversation was about this idea. A friend of mine gave me a book of photographs of old racing and I saw an aesthetic I liked. It was all about human beings and not technology.
What were the biggest challenges starting out?
It was very hard to get angel funding for something related to cycling, which was unfashionable back in 2004. I didn’t have clothing or e-commerce expertise, just marketing and finance skills. It took over 200 meetings to get £140,000. These days people raise £140,000 on Kickstarter in a couple of weeks or days.
The hard bit was getting the product we wanted. I had such high aspirations. Finding a factory that wanted to work with this enthusiastic but inexperienced entrepreneur was also really difficult. Then the factory I was using, in Nottingham, let me down with a week to go before launch. We switched to a facility in Hungary for the first batch of jerseys. We’ve now got 37 factories all around the world working with us.
The Rapha brand can polarise cyclists. Does the ire it attracts bother you?
It doesn’t upset me – it comes with the territory. Cycling is quite myopic and there is a traditional approach that resists people doing things differently. When brands are very confident, assertive and uncompromising, that comes with a price.
If you look at the price of all sorts of things, whether it’s your Spotify subscription or the shirt you bought in Selfridges, Rapha clothing is not actually that stupidly expensive. Price is just a helpful thing that lets people throw mud. What’s interesting is most other brands have raised their prices to sit just underneath us.
Mamils (middle-aged men in lycra) are a core demographic for Rapha. Do you consider yourself one?
I’m 100% a Mamil. I’m wearing lycra at the moment and I’m 51 years old. How brilliant that we’ve got lots of middle-aged men getting on bikes and doing something really quite difficult. It’s a great thing.
Walmart heirs Steuart and Tom Walton are now the majority owners of Rapha (Mottram retains a small ownership stake and is still CEO). Do you think the Walmart association could affect the brand?
I don’t have any concerns. It’s got nothing to do with Walmart, it’s their private fund. These guys are as passionate about the sport as I am and they totally buy into what we’ve achieved and our plan. That plan isn’t suddenly to go downmarket, or do other sports. They bought it because they believe in it. It’s early days, but so far everything I have seen has supported that view.
Most people don’t realise I was a minority shareholder from day one. It was never just mine, so the idea of it being somebody else’s and mine – that was always the case. I’m a partner with the new owners and have no plans to do anything else, ever. I’m here for the long haul.
Following Chris Froome’s failed drug test, how do you feel about the broken image of cycling?
Since we launched, cycling has been in a pretty bad way. So, on the one hand, I’m not worried, because we’ve thrived anyway. On the other hand, it’s a massive frustration. We know Chris quite well from working with him at Team Sky (Rapha was kit supplier to Team Sky for four years until 2016). He’s an incredibly honourable guy and he’s very driven, but has always been completely fair, polite and nice. He’s a man of integrity, I would have said. But in this weird world of bike racing you don’t know what to believe, and there’s such a culture of suspicion that has grown up around Team Sky in the past few years it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.
I would love for cycling to be an entertaining, big sport. At the moment, it’s a bit dull, it’s technical and there’s all this doping stuff.
You have spoken in the past about the challenges of raising your son, Oscar, who is severely autistic. How do you balance work and home life?
It’s very difficult. It’s easier for me because my wife made the bigger sacrifice when she gave up her career after Oscar was diagnosed 20 years ago. But even with one parent at home it’s still hugely demanding. We have a fantastic care team, but for 16 years we didn’t have any of that. It’s relentless and it’s a very difficult challenge. But it’s given me a focus I probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. It’s good to have that discipline forced on you – it stops you going too far off the rails.
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