The Bicycle Academy announces closure and liquidation

The Bicycle Academy, the school that trained a generation of frame builders, has announced that it has gone into liquidation after ten years of trading.

“Ultimately, the combined impact of COVID, unplanned relocation of the workshop, Brexit, supply chain issues, commodities & energy prices, cost of living increases and inflation created a perfect storm. Having dedicated years of our lives to building The Bicycle Academy, we were determined to secure its future, however in the end we couldn’t make it add up,” announced Founder Andrew Denham, informing the Academy’s social media following.

It wasn’t all business, with Denham fondly looking back to the Academy’s part in both the ‘Hack Bike Derby’ and ‘Old Skool x New School’ projects. “Fun for the sake of fun. I think that life is too short not to do things like that,” he wrote.

The business has now closed its doors and staff are said to all be moving on. The Academy’s closure will be a bitter blow to numerous UK businesses who have sourced skilled staff from the pool of graduates, in particular at a time when small businesses face other pressures such as sourcing materials and covering overheads. Stanton Bikes was one such UK manufacturer to recently succumb to increasing headwinds.

Andrew concluded: “Fundamentally TBA was about people, from everyone who worked at TBA, the students that we taught, to the people that backed the crowdfunding campaign that got it all started, and everyone else who we met along the way. TBA wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. Tom, John and Jack (pictured above), the core team who fought until the last, your dedication has been beyond anything I could ever have hoped for. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Spoons Customs was among those leading tributes to the Academy this week.

Neil Frank Vinnicombe and Simon Robert Haskew, both of Begbies Traynor will handle the liquidation and creditors are required to make themselves known before December 30th.