The Brompton folding bike has become a familiar sight throughout the world, whether ridden across metropolitan areas or folded neatly in a commuter train.
Brompton, started in 1975, is now the UK’s largest bicycle manufacturer, producing over 36,000 bikes a year with over 80% of these exported.
The Company and bott share a commitment to UK manufacturing and high quality engineering. To this end both companies invest heavily in latest technologies.
For example, Brompton recently spent £250,000 to develop a unique thermo-graphic auto-brazing machine, to ensure the perfect weld, resulting in a high quality durable frame, key to creating a perfect ride. Similarly bott has also invested in the latest CNC Sheet Metal bending and punching facilities with automatic material and part handling to help guarantee repeatable accuracy, central to the aim of supplying highly functional quality products built to last. With this shared philosophy in cutting edge investment it’s no surprise that Brompton contacted bott to fit out their new flagship store in Covent Garden.
The new store named Brompton Junction is a Brompton-only concept store, the first of which opened in Kobe, Japan in March 2011. Brompton Junction stores can now be found in three other major cities: Amsterdam, Hamburg and Shanghai. These stores allow Brompton to showcase the full range of options available to customers.
The concept behind the Brompton Junction store is to offer a consistent customer experience irrespective of the city in which you live. Each Junction is designed to incorporate the five elements integral to the Brompton brand: ingenuity, compactness, London/Britain, personality and freedom. This is achieved through the store’s design, by offering a personalised service, holding plenty of stock and through having high calibre workshop facilities and well trained staff. The new Brompton Junction store workshop needed to reflect the companies branding and make best use of the space available. To this end Harry Fullick (Technical Support Manager, Brompton) contacted David Holder (Project Sales Engineer, bott), to discuss the options.
David Holder said, “It was a delight to hear about this exciting project, and as always, our first aim was to really understand the brief. To this end we surveyed the store site and spent time listening to Harry to develop a clear specification of the required solution. Once completed we used 3D software to create a visualisation of the workshop and sourced paints to match Brompton’s corporate colours”
Once Brompton, confirmed the order the bott Factory in Bude, Cornwall fabricated the products and organised delivery to the central London store. Conscious of the project’s tight deadlines and the challenge of central London deliveries, bott’s project team focused on good communication and planning throughout the contract fulfilment stage as these were key to getting the job done right first time.
Harry Fullick said, “We approached bott with a clear vision of what we wanted to achieve and a demanding time scale. David took the time to understand our aims and proposed a solution which will deliver for Brompton, and more importantly for our customers. The project had tight deadlines which could not move, The bott team delivered on time and kept us updated throughout the project. We’re really pleased with the end result and think we now have the smartest bicycle workshop in London!”
