Bowman Cycles liquidates as supply crisis prevents bike completion

BB Velo Limited, trading and better known as Bowman Cycles, has appointed a voluntary liquidator, filings made at Companies House show.

The British bike manufacturer had been candid with its struggles in the face of a global supply chain slump, telling Road.cc late last year that upon putting in a 12-1,400 frame order through 2020 delays hit and that by November 2021 half had still not been delivered. Compounding this, the finishing kit to complete the bicycles from drivetrain giant Shimano was sparse and the OEM supply gaps could not be filled via the local distributor, who likewise had sold through key lines.

As revealed yesterday by a fresh body of research, ports in the West, in particular those in the UK and USA, are in large part to blame for slow turnaround of containers, something which has led to spiralling costs and delays.

Founder and Managing Director Neil Webb told the road cycling site late last year: “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.”

Today the Bowman Cycles website has been pulled down, with the homepage “currently unavailable.”

In related news, SRAM’s CEO has spoken on their ability to supply the market, revealing that the firm has never has so much product ready to go in its entire history. The main problem, revealed Ken Lousberg, is getting the goods shipped to customers around the globe.