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Atherton Bikes has today launched direct to consumer sales through a new website.
The company said it has spent just over three years testing and developing both product performance and the supporting technology that perfectly fits its bikes to a rider and now, it is ready to offer online purchasing to customers across the globe.
Atherton Bikes will be offering two models, a World Cup winning Downhill bike with 200mm of travel and a newly refined version of the 29” 150mm Enduro bike. Further product releases are scheduled for spring.
“It’s so awesome to be taking the next big step for our start-up company,” said Gee Atherton. “It hasn’t been an easy time to set up a new bike company with shortages of components across the entire industry; we will always be grateful to those early adaptors who believed in us right from the start and ordered their bikes unseen and un-reviewed.
“It’s been a whirlwind three years that has seen some big milestones, including our first three World Cup wins, and the wildly successful crowd-funding raise that has allowed us to recruit some awesome young design and engineering talent, move our manufacturing in house and quadruple our production capacity.”
Atherton Bikes are manufactured in Machynlleth, Wales using additive manufacturing (3D printing in titanium). This cutting-edge technology is widely used in Formula One and the aerospace industry but it is still relatively unknown in mountain-biking. All the company’s frames are individually hand-crafted to finish.
Atherton Bikes CEO Dan Brown said: “Unlike the majority of high-end brands we don’t rely on carbon moulds or Far East production. Every one of our bikes is individually tailored in CAD to produce titanium lugs which are bonded to carbon fibre tubes with aerospace grade adhesive.
“Not only are our bikes very strong but we can react quickly, with vast potential for variations in size, geometry and the incorporation of new learnings in a continuous process of improvement.”
The new website will host a customer fit calculator that suggests one of an extended range of standard sizes (22 for the enduro bike, 12 for the downhill). The additive manufacturing technology also eliminates the limitations of a three-year product cycle, said the company. This means that learnings from the racetrack or the company’s continuous testing at Dyfi Bike Park can be immediately incorporated into its production bikes.
To coincide with the new website launch, the product team has introduced a series of refinements to the Enduro bike. The new version 150 will have port to port cable routing, downtube protection, a steeper seat angle for more efficient pedalling and a longer seat-post insertion for more dropper post options across the range of sizes.
“It had always been our dream to set up a bike company with the Atherton name on it,” said Dan Atherton. “We started using Formula 1 technology and aerospace engineering to make mountain bikes in Wales which was exciting for us and our desire to do things differently.”
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World Champion Rachel Atherton said: “Every bike is made to order and built to last so there is no waste. We all love it when we see our bikes out on the trails, we’re definitely still in start-up mode but I hope this next phase of our company’s development will give many more people the chance to try our bikes.”
Costs start from £3,999 for a frame only option or £6,700 for a full build.
