Andrew Ritchie (Brompton)

After graduating in engineering from Trinity College,[9] Cambridge, in 1968,[2] Ritchie worked as a computer programmer for Elliott Automation which subsequently became part of Marconi. He then spent 5 years as a self-employed landscape gardener.[3] In the mid-1970s his father, a stockbroker, introduced him to Bill Ingram and the Bickerton bike, which in turn triggered his own ideas for a folding bicycle.[2][3] Ritchie persuaded 10 friends to invest £100 each so that he could build a prototype which was completed one year later.[3][6]

'[the first prototype] was ride-able and it worked, but it is something I'm deeply ashamed of as a piece of engineering.'

— Andrew Ritchie, 2005,[3]

Two more prototypes were built in the bedroom of his flat overlooking Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, London – hence the bike's name.[2][3]

After failing to license the design to Raleigh Bicycle Company he managed to sell 30 bicycles to order for £250 each in advance. Convinced that there had to be at least another 20 people willing to buy one, he produced 50 rather than just the 30. After 18 months, the bikes were delivered – and all 50 were sold.[3]

In the early 1980s, Ritchie raised £8,000 from shareholders, and made 500 bikes over 2 years.[3][6]

'It was jolly hard work, there was me and one employee, who was doing all the brazing. It was hopelessly inefficient, but it broke even. So I thought I ought to try to raise some venture capital and get the thing going properly. My timing couldn't have been worse. The bicycle business in Britain was in decline. I never came across as a natural entrepreneur, and they're pretty wary of the inventor setting himself up as an entrepreneur as well. So that came to nought.

— Andrew Ritchie, 2005,[3]

Ritchie received private funding of £40,000 from Julian Vereker, founder of Naim Audio and a yacht manufacturer, who had originally bought two Bromptons after a chance discussion about 'folding bicycles' whilst on one of his yachts in Cherbourg in 1982.[2][3][6] An additional £10,000 equity raised from friends, relatives and Brompton owners launched the company properly in 1986,[3] and he eventually secured £100,000 to set up a better-equipped factory under a Brentford railway arch in 1987. It had taken five years to secure the capital.[6]

Private backing allowed me to be a perfectionist. In a way, I'm glad we didn't get a licensing deal with Raleigh. I'm not sure that the business would have survived. The bike probably would have been dumbed down and cheapened.

— Andrew Ritchie, 2005,[3]

Volume production was difficult and demand outstripped the factory's capacity, so it expanded into a second railway arch in 1994 and again in 1998 into the Chiswick premises it occupied until moving to Greenford in 2016.[6]

Ritchie has recruited new management since the early 2000s, including Will Butler-Adams who became managing director and, with new investors, purchased half of Ritchie's 50% shareholding. [6]

"It has paid dividends, I'm not a model businessman. My strength is my eye for detail and an obsession with getting things right but I'm weak in other areas. I would have been happy with the 10%-a-year growth we were seeing but Will recognised that there was a much bigger market not being satisfied."'

— Andrew Ritchie, 2008,[6]

Ritchie acknowledges that Brompton has been his life.

• The Brits Who Designed the Modern World Artsnight - Series 4: 7, BBC Two