Will Butler-Adams, the boss of Brompton Bikes, is doing his best to help key NHS staff get to work without having to ride on crowded public transport.
The 46-year-old engineer has offered 200 bikes to NHS key workers in the capital through an existing hire scheme, free of charge for 30 days, with a nominal £1 fee.
‘People still need to get to work and we don’t want them on a packed Tube, train or bus,’ he says.
Powered pedals: Will Butler-Adams on a Brompton electric bicycle. The 46-year-old engineer has offered 200 bikes to NHS key workers in the capital through an existing hire scheme
‘We have seen real demand from key workers at Barts Hospital, where we first offered 60 bikes, then 100, then 200.
‘We don’t have enough bikes at the moment to roll it out much further, but we would like to and we are trying to be innovative.
‘Why not a campaign to Brush off your Brommie?,’ he says, referring affectionately to his company’s fold-up bikes.
‘If you have one in the shed you don’t use, get it out and use it yourself or let someone else use it, being careful to clean it and obey social distancing rules, of course.
‘As well as dealing with the immediate crisis, we need to think about the aftermath. There may be a resurgence of coronavirus or a second wave after we come out of lockdown.
‘At that point, you do not want people packed on public transport again. Bikes are part of the answer, part of the fightback. Riding a bike is a great way to move about whilst effectively self-isolating.’
Brompton was founded in 1975 by inventor Andrew Ritchie, though it took many years to get off the ground as the mainstream bicycle makers ridiculed his idea for a fold-up cycle.
‘He set it up in his flat on Brompton Road in London,’ says Butler-Adams. ‘The big bike manufacturers laughed at him.’
Butler-Adams, a father of three girls, has been at the company for 18 years and is working with industry body the Bicycle Association to come up with ways to help Britain beat coronavirus.
The business has grown into a company with a world-renowned brand, selling in 47 countries, with 450 staff and a turnover of £50million.
The bikes cost from around £750, rising to electric ones at around £3,000. Bike shops are exempt from the lockdown so Brompton’s stores in London’s Covent Garden and Westfield were open at the time of writing.
The firm is also in a better position than many to survive the pandemic because it has no debt. ‘It has been a deliberate policy that we have no debts,’ says Butler-Adams.
‘This is because in the longer term we are there to change society, to make cities better places to live. We have to be the tortoise, not the hare.’
The virus has hit sales dramatically. He says that in China, at the height of the epidemic, Brompton did not sell a single bike for two months.
Two weeks ago trading started again and the business there is, he hopes, slowly coming back to life.
‘We are getting properly knocked on the head. Our sales are down 40 maybe 50 per cent. But we are in a position where we are an old school prudent business so we are wellplaced.
‘For the last five years we have been collecting our savings for a rainy day and it is a rainy day.
‘We are looking at a loan facility in case this takes longer than we think to come right. It’s hurting but we are still trading.’
Keeping up production, he says, is ‘a really fast moving challenge’. He goes on: ‘What you thought you are doing two days ago is not what you are doing today.
‘At the minute, the places we sell bikes are being locked down at a rate of knots.’ He expects the economic legacy to last for at least three years.
‘There is real risk and fear out there but the risk is that the medium and long-term danger is overlooked,’ says Butler-Adams.
‘If people lose their jobs and firms go under, that comes with a lot of challenges, both mental and physical, that also endanger life and health.
‘If we over-react we will kick off another crisis in mental health, a five-year 1930s-style depression. We extremify everything because of social media,’ he says, coining a new, and apt word.
‘We need to look beyond this [coronavirus] to the longer term. How we live has to change.
‘If we are going to live in cities, then they need to be the most gorgeous places with the cleanest air, not over-crowded and polluted. The lessons from this current peril are ones we need to listen to and not ignore.’
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