IT'S COMING HOME RENTHAL
Steve looks happy; all the Renthal employees we spoke to on our visit had a valued interest in the process they were carrying out. Since entering the cycle market Renthal has refined their range into the market-leading products by using intensive product testing.
and an old washing mangle while Henry sourced the tube – the same tube that he had used many years earlier, as nobody wanted it as it couldn’t be welded and was very expensive. The first product they decided to produce was trials handlebars, high and wide, which was the fashion of the time. They were called Renthal and sold as ‘A super-strong handlebar which is very light and more resilient, three-times springier than steel’; an important consideration when the suspension was so poor.
Something fantastic
Renthal needed customers and went to Jim Sandiford at Bury and Johnny Burns of MotoXMotors of Oldham, telling them about these fantastic handlebars and could they pay 50 per cent in advance! Both said they were either on to something fantastic or were going to lose money. They both took the risk. To give the bars credibility, Mick Andrews, Malcolm Rathmell and Martin Lampkin, were approached to use the handlebars; all agreed to try them. They liked them, so they were then advertised as super-strong handlebars ‘as used by’, and soon they were selling in limited quantities. Supply and demand are always important and, such was the demand, production moved to the greenhouse at Henry’s home. This was all in 1969; it was only going to be a hobby business. By 1975, it was time to take it to another level. Having long run out of the original material, and spending much time trying to source a suitable modern equivalent, the company were now employing two people in the basement of an old mill in Macclesfield, so Andrew and Henry decided that maybe Renthal was a ‘proper job’ after all. With their two employees, they both became full-time and shortened the business name to Renthal, having been in the intervening years called ‘Renthal Enterprises’.
Expansion and export
Renthal’s facility is made of three different building; the assembly building is the middle stage as parts manufactured across the yard are assembled and packaged before heading to the warehouse. 74
Now they were full-time new decisions had to be made. Henry had learned at business studies that brand names were more difficult because it was more expensive in the beginning than being a sub-contractor, but ultimately you had control of your destiny. They already had the brand name Renthal, so a decision was made to only make products under their brand name, a OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2018 • TRIAL MAGAZINE