WALKING
THROUGH
HISTORY
It isn’t every day that you get chance to walk around the factory of a UK manufacturer, let alone one that has been serving the cycling industry for more than 100 years. But Brooks occupies a fairly unique position and for a couple of days in June the industry had the chance to wander its factory as did – for possibly the first time ever – members of the public.
If there was any fear that the public would be indifferent to the opportunity to step through the gates into Brooks’ Smethwick HQ, they were proved to be unfounded. Many hundreds of consumers grasped the opportunity to join the tour on a sunny Saturday.
There’s a lot you can say about brands taking the opportunity to connect with customers and therefore invigorate the entire cycle retail eco-system, and it’s perhaps telling that Brooks isn’t the only cycle-specific manufacturer to be doing just that in the summer of 2025. With screens increasingly a touch point for everything from retail to filing tax returns and staying up to date with your child’s progress at school, there’s something almost thrilling about having chance to see something created before your eyes, with years of skill and expertise channelled into them. And when you have a factory that delivers on probably what most of our expectations of what a factory is, then why wouldn’t you?
So, what of Brooks’ factory itself? Accessed behind wooden gates, through a cobbled yard and up a few stone steps, it’s split into three sections: For metal working, leather working and finally where the two are joined together.
Inside the factory, there’s a strong whiff of leather alongside the sound of chugging wire forming machines. There’s a fair bit of hammer tapping, riveting, leather buffing and skillful manhandling in general. If your leather Brooks saddle looks like its rivets have been bashed by a hammer, then that’s because they have (to help them settle, CIN is told).
“INSIDE THE FACTORY, THERE’S A STRONG WHIFF OF LEATHER ALONGSIDE THE SOUND OF CHUGGING WIRE FORMING MACHINES”
Leather is bathed to become softer, then formed into shape and trimmed. Trademarks are stamped and spot welding is performed to join metal on metal. Leather is polished using a ‘boning’ tool that once would have been made from a whale bone. “If it’s nice and shiny, we are happy.” While many staff are of many years with the factory, new employees are trained in-house – you can usually tell if they are going to master a process after a week, we’re told. Most are trained scross the different production processes.
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At 100-plus years old, Brooks has endured through just about all the market conditions you can imagine and no doubt owner Selle Royal – which has form in honouring manufacturing traditions – is due no little credit for that, at least since it bought the firm in 2002. There’s more about the Brooks business on the official site.
Brooks is distributed to the UK trade through Extra UK.
