Raleigh Goes Global
From the very beginning, the overseas market was important to the Raleigh Cycle Company. Although many people felt Bowden was eccentric for developing foreign exports, Raleigh was less affected by the ups and downs of the cycle industry in the early twentieth century compared to many of its rivals because it was not entirely dependent on sales at home.
Shortly after the company was founded, Bowden approached a recently formed import-export business in Birmingham to organise Raleigh sales in Europe. Its owners, Baker and Strasse, were extremely well connected and well-travelled throughout Europe. They helped to establish the Raleigh bicycle in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere on the continent. The company had less success in the United States, primarily due to a crippling duty rate imposed on imported bicycles, and it was not until the 1930s that Raleigh cycles were successfully sold in America.
By 1910 exports were being made across Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as in Australia and the West Indies. Even after the Second World War, Raleigh Industries were still exporting to every corner of the world.
Raleigh's success was largely dependent on local agents and dealers such as Mr G H Jetha. Mr Jetha (seated on the left) founded his company in 1925 in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika Territory (now Tanzania), distributing Raleigh bicycles. Mr Martin (second from the right) was based in Nairobi, Kenya at the Raleigh Industries of East Africa offices.
The allure of owning a Raleigh cycle meant that dealers and agents were established right across the world. The archive contains many photographs of overseas outlets including Elisabethville in the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo); Wellington, New Zealand; São Paulo in Brazil; Istanbul, Turkey and Damascus, Syria.
Raleigh soon began to develop factories and assembly plants overseas, to avoid heavy importation duty and to utilise labour as was actively encouraged by national governments post Second World War. One of the earliest and largest factories established was the Sen-Raleigh factory in India.
The Sen-Raleigh factory opened on 21 June 1952 at Asansal near Calcutta (now Kolkata) in India, a partnership between Raleigh and their Indian distributors, S K Sen. The factory was one of the earliest and largest to be built overseas; it produced between 100,000 and 200,000 units per year. A special township was constructed near the factory to provide accommodation for the workers, together with recreational space and health services.
Raleigh also expanded extensively throughout the Far East, South and Central America and the Caribbean, and in Africa, where it was said that ‘every man would save up first for a wife, secondly for a Raleigh bicycle and thirdly for a sewing machine’. When Raleigh merged with Tube Investments (TI) in 1960 the brands of Phillips and Hercules came under the Raleigh umbrella. Phillips had enjoyed particular success in Africa as this advertising poster demonstrates, and they continued to be dominant as a Raleigh brand.
