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ENIGMA


At present there is a 120-day lead time for custom frames


35-year trade veteran Jim Walker


Where dreams are made…


Seven years on from founding the breakaway


steel and titanium frame building workshop, Jim Walker is growing yet another cycling business into something rather unique in the market. Mark Sutton asks Walker about UK


manufacturing ‘coming full circle’, retaining highly skilled artisan framebuilders and much more…


BY DEFINITION, the word Enigma is ‘a person or thing that is difficult to understand’, which from an outsider’s point of view in a way perfectly describes the small, yet fast growing, Hailsham frame manufacturer. The more questions we asked of 35-year trade veteran Jim Walker, the man who sold the self-titled distribution business some seven years ago, the more astonishing it seems that such a business can exist, let alone thrive, in the UK. “It’s something I had in my mind to start a


UK-made bicycle firm all those years ago. I’ve always wanted to contribute to the British industry. With labour rates having increased in the Far-East and the fact that workers out east are more aspirational than ever before, it almost seems like manufacturing could come full circle. I feel that now is a good time to produce here. The comparative manufacturing costs are certainly becoming better value, though it’s not without its challenges.” As we all know, the high-end road market is


really performing at present, allowing specialists in the area to run with some bold ideas and actually make some money from a trade in which, during the past few years, many would have been happy to simply survive.


BIKEBIZ.COM BIKEBIZ JANUARY 35


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