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TECH NEWS: RBA TOURS THE RIDLEY FACTORY
Phil Booth
August 2, 2008
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Road Bike Action was invited to visit the Ridley factory in Tessenderlo, Belgium to see how Ridley builds their race winning bikes. Ridley’s modern glass and metal factory stands is stark contrast to the red brick farmhouses that makeup the surrounding landscape. Like the factory, Ridley stands apart from many Belgian bike companies with their modern graphics and aggressive pursuit of technological advancements. Ridley Bicycles was founded in 1990. In just 18 years Ridley has become the leading bicycle manufacturer in Belgium. Ridley has built their business by embracing new technologies, such as carbon fiber, while still maintaining a hands-on-approach to producing its bicycles.
Another aspect that has contributed to Ridley’s growth is its support of local teams and riders in Belgium, including Tom Boonen when he won the Belgian U23 championship in 2001. While they support many local teams they are best known internationally for their sponsorship of the Silence-Lotto Protour team. Aside from road teams, Ridley also sponsors many cyclocross teams. Our visit happened to align with that of American cyclocross racer Jonathan Page who will be racing on a Ridley again in 2009.
After touring the sales, marketing and design departments we reached the heart of the factory-–the production floor. While many of the frames are constructed overseas, the painting, finish work and assembly of frames and bicycles are primarily done in the Belgian factory. Despite the logistics of such a large operation we were surprised to discover the amount of hands-on-work that takes place at the factory.
One aspect of the Ridley’s that came as a surprise is that all the graphics are painted on the frame as opposed to vinyl cut graphics with a finish clear coat to seal them to the frame. To meet the demands of production Ridley has created an in house design department to produce the graphic templates, as well a team of people to apply the templates to the frame before masking them for paint. The process of applying the graphic templates and masking the frame must be repeated for every color.
Like the application of the graphic templates, all painting is done by hand. This includes mixing of the paint as well as final clear coat. This is a complex and costly process, especially with the strict environmental standards to which Ridley adheres. Once the frame leaves the paint area it moves into finishing where all the frames are closely inspected for any blemishes or flaws in the paint or graphic scheme. At this point the frame also receives a thorough cleaning.
After finishing, the frame is either sent directly to the shipping department for delivery to a customer or to assembly to be built into a complete bicycle. In the assembly area one of Ridley’s in-house mechanics completely builds the bicycle with the pre-selected parts for each model. Each bicycle is assembled and then partially disassembled and packaged for shipping.
Due to Ridley’s wide range of bicycles and the small geographic expanse of Belgium, the Ridley Factory contains a showroom containing all current models. The showroom is open on weekends to allow the public to come and view models that their local shop may not carry. While bikes in the showroom are available for viewing and the occasional parking lot test, the showroom does not sell directly to the public. This service helps the smaller local shops reduce their inventory stock, while also allowing potential customers to view the bicycles up close.
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