INTERVIEW
Two different sides of the business
Since launching Adaptive DCS in 2023, the business has grown rapidly, earning back-to-back BikeBiz Awards as Newcomer of the Year in 2024 and Specialist Distributor of the Year in 2025. Looking back across these first three years, Thanks, those awards mean a lot, and we feel a reflection of what we have achieved in a relatively short space of time. Though, newcomer felt bittersweet given we have been around forever! Having a concept, an idea and then bringing it to life and putting it into reality was no easy feat; we believed in doing something different. When you start from nothing, growth always looks bigger to the outside. We are proud to have doubled our business year on year and feel we are now being recognised; it’s a great feeling! To start, we really set out to do what we know best: bringing brands to market, and we did what all salespeople do: we knocked on the doors of the biggest, best brands, presented our vision, until we got the opportunity to prove our concept. What we learned quickly was that those brands and companies needed more support, and we evolved the model very quickly to add additional services in areas we knew we could add value. Over the last few years, that list has grown, and we now manage warehousing, logistics, import/export, sales, marketing, customer service, warranty and service, white label sourcing and bike build/preparation for some really exciting brands and companies that operate in B2B, B2C, D2C and fleet provider spaces. It’s still evolving too, and we launched our 4PL service, adding an extra level of supply chain control, all managed in-house by us. Some important milestones for us have been about infrastructure, equipment and people, you get to a point quite quickly where you realise you can’t do it all, and if you want to
36 | October 2026
offer more and do it better, then it needs investment in the right places at the right times, this really for us came at the start of year two and these key moves really defined some important milestones for us and allowed us to push forward; from securing global brands, to securing a unit, to employing really great people that believe in the vision, and running marketing leading WMS software, all big moments and ones we achieved. The real standout moments, though, are the ones other people and other companies see; the biggest being invited to showcase our company at the prestigious Corebike Show and being side by side with the best in the UK market. That felt like a big moment!
Your portfolio covers a variety of commercial structures. What factors dictate how you structure individual brand There’s no set rule for us, and that’s because what we’ve learnt through our process of evaluating the distribution model is that no single rule or approach suits everyone. We’ve learnt by listening to our clients’ requirements and objectives and understanding their skill set and strengths that our most valuable asset is that we can be flexible; we can merge into their team, work together and support in the areas they need it most. Some clients take a couple of services from us, some take a handful, but what we tend to find once we start with someone is we end up doing much more over time. We become important to them, and they become important to us. Brands are fundamentally looking for the best
representation for their brand in the market; they typically evaluate that based on what sales are being achieved. There are some great, established routes to market here, with the biggest and best sales team in the UK, which is difficult for us
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