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news
Bowman Cycles websiteBowman Cycles liquidates after "absolute clusterf**k" of supply chain issues
Bowman Cycles has liquidated following continued struggles with supply chain issues during the Covid pandemic.
BB Velo Limted, the trading name of Bowman Cycles, has appointed a voluntary liquidator, as per filings made at Companies House spotted by Cyclingindustrynews.
The Bowman Cycles website is no longer accessible and displays homepage "currently unavailable".
In November, Bowman founder and managing director Neil Webb told road.cc of his brand's supply chain woes, but stressed he was trying to "work out how to refinance" the business.
"All that has made life very difficult this year and there isn’t an end in sight to the manufacturing issues coming out of Asia [where many of their components are produced].
"For instance, we placed an order with Shimano in December last year that will only start arriving in August 2022. Usually, we’d have bought some stock from Madison [Shimano’s UK distributor] to see us through, but there’s absolutely nothing around."
Bowman launched a new frame just before the pandemic arrived, further complicating the manufacturer's predicament.
"We’d put in orders for 12-1400 frames over the course of 2020 but didn’t see the first of those arrive until May this year. There are still 600 frames from that order which haven’t been shipped.
"Then you throw in all the extra shipping costs, extra costs of materials. Everything is more expensive, delayed, or simply doesn’t turn up. It’s just an absolute clusterf**k for want of a better word, to run a manufacturing business at the moment, the delays go all the way up the supply chain."
Webb added that suppliers and distributors appeared to be prioritising their larger clients, meaning "the big players are taking all the space".
"All the smaller businesses like us that I know are experiencing this same problem in some way, shape or form and these constant delays have taken huge amounts of man power to manage."
In response to our readers' claims of unfulfilled orders, incorrect builds and a lack of communication, Webb apologised and was keen to point out any existing orders customers have with the company should be fulfilled.
"I’m aware we haven’t been able to get in touch with people for five or six weeks, which I understand is really sh*t," he continued.
"In hindsight we should maybe have told people ‘yes, we’ve got your email but we can’t tell you an answer’, but we thought the problems we’re experiencing would have been sorted out quicker than they have been."
At the time, Webb set Bowman Cycles a 10 to 14 day deadline to restructure or find more assistance, something which now seems not to have materialised.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and has spent the past four years writing stories and features, as well as (hopefully) keeping you entertained on the live blog. Having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for the Non-League Paper, Dan joined road.cc in 2020. Come the weekend you'll find him labouring up a hill, probably with a mouth full of jelly babies, or making a bonk-induced trip to a south of England petrol station... in search of more jelly babies.
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I thought UK is the only country in the world that hates cyclists.
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Just go away you stupid little prick
- john_smith 14 min 3 sec ago
And I found the journey took me twice as long as by train and three times as long as by car, thanks to all the traffic lights, etc. I decided I'd...
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I understand your cynicism, but it clearly it does come up because there are prosecutions (albeit fewer than I'm sure we would like) for close...
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Close the road permanently, turn it into a cycle only lane, save the trees. Job done.
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Except Bikeinn are not allowed to ship Garmin to uk!!! so really great offer unless you are in UK!
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Come now. You can do much better than that. 3 out of 10 for trolling.
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Heartbreaking news, so young so much to live for. My heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and team mates.
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Looking forward to not queueing/filtering round bedminster bridges.
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53 comments
Brexit is causing problems in Shimano's East Asian Factories now?
Brexit has caused the cost of shipping from East Asia to quadruple?
No the the first. Entirely possible to the second.
Shipping costs have rocketed globally.
How has Brexit caused that?
As has been posted earlier :
"Costs of a container are increased from 3000$ to 22,000$ in 18 months. Availability of the physical containers to ship products is poor."
In what way can that be linked to brexit ?
Errrm. Surely the cost of shipments getting in/out of customs is part of the cost of shipping. Inflated costs for lorry driver wages. Thats before we even start with opportunity costs of customs clearance delays etc...
It's not the cost of customs clearance proceedures, which doesn't vary much, but a shortage of shipping containers in the far East. So as stated above, the cost of a container has gone up from $5000 to $22000, so a small business cannot afford to absorb this cost. A lot of small firms who import stuff from the far East have stopped trading, because their profits have vanished
The cost of the container far outweighs the in/out of customs.
Driver costs were mainly as a result of covid where new drivers were not able to be approved and existing drivers left for other industries.
It's far too easy just to blame it all on brexit.
I very specifically wasn't blaming it all on Brexit. However this article says its a contributing factor. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57810729
What about Brexit?
There are HGV driver shortages across Europe, but in the UK Brexit has made things worse.
To be fair the online searches for this topic seem to split along party lines but given how much of Brexit was based on lies and on the Tories current track record I'm going to assume the other side is generally more accurate.
I guess no one is particularly surprised by this? I hope every customer recovers their money.
Unless they paid by credit card it's unlikely.
Yet another Brexit benefit.
Not a Brexit supporter but how is Brexit anything to do with it?
Global supply chain has been disrupted for quite a while. Shipping costs are up and the ever given did cause a few problems.
Lack of freedom of movement, mountains of more paperwork and shocking customs delays. Just in time engineering has been massively affected.
JIT is a global problem. The cycle industry would have been pretty much experiencing the same issues even if in Europe.
When was the last time you bought any cycle stuff?
Are Ribble having issues due to brexit or due to the far east ?
You realise that shipping is a big problem in terms of slots and cost.
the costs of shipping a container from China to Europe in the past year have tripled. National lockdowns, shortages of workers and social distancing have created a massive slowdown in manufacturing of goods and their distribution chain, and yeah as the article says the bigger companies are jumping the queue ahead of the smaller ones.
Costs of a container are increased from 3000$ to 22,000$ in 18 months. Availability of the physical containers to ship products is poor. Covid directly reducing factory operational times are difficult. Brexit adding importation duties and reducing attractiveness of GB as a place to due business all are factors in this and other companies demise. Any company going to the wall is full of heartache for the workforce and customers. Sad.
I'd like to think a decent mathematician/engineer could model the whole shipping container network (and global supply chain) as a network of nodes and links with all the dependencies and feedback effects. I get the sense that it evolved during a time of relatively gradual change in an upwards direction, and the shock of a few step changes and momentary reversal of direction has caused the whole feedback loop to jam up horribly - to put it in technical terms.
You dont need to be good at maths. We in GB make very little products , so import MOST products. They have to be shipped here in containers. at 3000$ shipping fee they were shipped back to Asia. Now at a return cost of 22,000$ they are not returned and sit in 'container mountains'. 1500$ worth of steel to make a new one in China.
F**k-all to do with Brexit or have you been living on the moon for the last 22 months?
Brexit has added a layer onto supply problems on top of Covid.
Plenty of components are available from European suppliers but are too expensive to order now because of import costs.
I can't as my freedom of movement has been destroyed.
How often did you pop to Germany to buy a new cycle part?
When was the last time you bought any cycle parts ?
Perhaps they'd been winging it for a while and it was time to show them the DOOR!
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