Brompton CEO Q&A: 'People see us as a little, quirky, odd bike'

Will Butler-Adams is the CEO of British folding bike brand Brompton, having joined the company in 2002. He is an engineer by trade, and formerly worked in the chemical industry. 

What was your first bike? 

A Raleigh Grifter. It was unbelievably cool. It had foam velcro and massively cool bits. I was just the coolest dude ever. My sister and I got bits of cardboard and, you know how you can make your bicycle sound like a motorbike? We did that. I would have been six, seven or eight, something like that. 

Did you ever watch professional cycling when you were growing up? 

I have never, no disrespect to professional cyclists, even to this day, had any interest in professional cycling. It has just not featured in my life. I'm super interested in the freedom and the fun. I go cycling, occasionally I put on lycra, very occasionally, and pedal 100 miles a day from one part of the world to another and make myself feel a bit queasy. But mostly it's just about living. It's about having my bike and hopping on it, feeling the rain, smelling, hearing, just experiencing life in the open. 

So you've never been sucked in by the lure of the Olympics or the Tour de France? 

I think it's incredible. I'm sort of enamoured by it. But it's too elitist for me. For me, it's too extreme, I mean, it's so hardcore. I have loads of friends who go off and do hardcore cycling every weekend for an hour and half, two hours. That's not me. Then they're spending the week in a taxi, or on the tube, which I think is completely bonkers. 

How did you end up working for Brompton? 

I was running a chemical plant in Middlesborough for Dupont and thought I was going to go to MBA school. I happened to be visiting London, and by some incredible quirk of fate, I bumped into and sat next door on the bus to the chairman of Brompton, who was the friend of Andrew Richard, the inventor. I just got chatting. He asked me what I did, I said I was an engineer, and he said, "I've got this friend of mine making these bikes, he really needs some help." He didn't even know what type of engineer I was. 

I went back to Middlesborough, and then I schlepped it all the way back to London for some random meeting with some random guy who I didn't know, making a bike I'd never seen. I thought it'd be fun. I'd do it for a couple of years and that would be that, but I got addicted. I've now been at it for 22 years. 

What would you say is the proudest moment of your career? 

I think there are two, and they're relatively recent. We had a great celebration when we sold 50,000 bikes in a year, and that was just before Covid. Our landlords let us take an enormous empty warehouse, and we threw an absolutely epic party. I was so proud of everybody. 

The other one is, just before the end of 2022, we made our millionth bike. We had been quite a modest company. People see us as a little, quirky, odd bike, bit of a niche. But quietly, we've just been making bikes and hoping people enjoy them and use them. When you make a million bikes, you can lift your head up and talk a little louder, because that's real. 

Are there other cycling companies that you admire? 

Funnily enough, I tend to admire businesses that are not in my sector, because I want to nick from them. I have to say, Elon Musk is an interesting character, in particular his SpaceX programme. I have no interest in going outside planet Earth. I think we need to look after what we've got. I'm not keen on flying off to Mars. But it's just the ambition, the audacity of someone to say, "We're going to send a rocket to space. We're going to compete against NASA. We're going to turn it around in six years and we're going to get half the funding. We're going to send this thing out to space, it's going to come back, do a 180 and land on a pinhead." 

You just think he must be insane. It's not possible. And he does it. That is incredibly admirable. Again, look at somebody like [James] Dyson, who was absolutely ridiculed, laughed at, turned down, but had furious determination. These are engineers, and that's what we need to change the world. We don't need bankers, we don't need lawyers. We need engineers to take dreams, ideas, technology, and create real solutions in the world. 

What can we expect from Brompton in 2024?

We've got some insanely cool things happening this year, I mean, off-the-freaking-chart cool. Things we've been working on for five years. But we have to keep our powder dry for that one. 

We are still investing quite heavily, but [given the downturn in the industry] you've got to spend less. You've got to be careful. You've got to cut some projects you thought you were going to do and put them on hold. You can't ignore the fact the top line isn't there. Business is about being agile. It's about responding to what's happening on the horizon and being careful, caring for your suppliers and your staff. You can't just put your head in the sand and plough on regardless.