Inside Works Components - Born in the West Midlands

Inside Works Components

Born in the West Midlands

WORDS & PHOTOS: Matt Wragg

Works Components exists because of two bikes and one rider: the Iron Horse Sunday, the Intense Socom and Sam Hill. They were bikes on the edge of a sea change. Many common themes in the design of modern downhill bikes can be traced back to them. They marked a shift in direction for what a downhill bike should be in terms of layout, geometry and weight. But while they got many things right, the genealogy of their predecessors is evident in their 66 degree headangles. Just five years later it is an unthinkable number, at least if you expect anybody half-knowledgeable to buy your frame. Amongst the generation of bikes that came before them it was nothing out of the ordinary though.


At the time Sam Hill was dominating the world cup, putting in runs that people are still talking about now. More than with any other rider, people looked at Sam Hill's bike and started asking questions like, "Why is his bike so much slacker than the one I bought?" His wilder, slacker geometry was clearly working at the highest level and people started looking for ways to adapt their bikes.

Rick Hughes, at the time a 24 year old mechanical engineering student in the West Midlands in the UK, was one of those riders who noticed. He also noticed that people were looking for ways to convert their bikes to look and ride like the ones they were seeing at the World Cups. Alongside his studies he was already importing and selling a few parts from Taiwan, but seeing the potential for angle-adjust headsets he started looking into making some himself.


In the 1960s the West Midlands was one of the UK engineering heartlands, with huge car makers like Rover and Jaguar calling the region home. In fact, Rover was so important to Birmingham that the entire industrial landscape to the north of the city grew to meet the demands of the carmaker. When the company folded in the late 90s the companies that sprung up to support it remained, or at least the strong ones did. Rick explains, "I've always said that, locally, anything you need to get done can get done around here. If we need a surface finishing place, there's one down the road, there are five anodisers in the local area, other machine shops... They are in abundance round here, you don't have to travel far."


His first products were angle-adjust headsets for the Intense Socom and Iron Horse Sunday. Unlike some of his competitors, Rick kept things much simpler. He offered two products, one for the Socom, one for the Sunday. The headsets were specifically for each frame, with a set headtube lengths and degree of offset. While this limited their compatibility, the simpler design meant the headsets could be much more robust than other systems, with larger, more durable bearings to give them a greater lifespan. Pretty soon racers were approaching him to help sort out their race bikes, quietly dropping in his headsets to slacken out their headangles. He's pretty guarded about it, refusing to say for sure, but Rick mentions that Danny Hart may have been using one of his products for his 2011 World Champs run in Champery. It wasn't just in the UK either, his first big customer was in the States and today Germany and France are two of his biggest markets for them.

Fairly soon his demand was outstripping the machine shops capacity and it was decision time. Double or quits. At just 24 he took the giant leap of buying him first machine, rented a three-room industrial unit in Cannock, and things went from there. "There's a British tradition of men in sheds manufacturing things," explains Rick. "I think we are more open to that than some countries, with things like the self-employment law they make it a lot easier to do here. There's a lot of small unit trade here, which helps. I've had a lot of luck getting machines, and they've worked well with minimal breakdowns. It's been as easy as it could be to get started from scratch." He invested the money he had made from the headsets and bought his first machine. From there he has kept investing in the company, today he owns three machines, has taken his father on to help him run them and is looking at expanding into a larger unit before too long.


Today Works were the first UK company to produce a narrow/wide chainring. British riders have embraced 1 x drivetrains for trail bikes, maybe more enthusiastically than any other country, so how comes a company as small as Works were the first to cater to that need? Rick feels it's precisely because of their size that they could, "I think the reason we are the first to make them is because we're so small here, we can react very quickly to the way things are going. If I feel there is a product that other people aren't making, I can get something made and prototyped within a few days and have people riding them and testing them straight away. Bigger companies take a lot longer, especially if they are making them overseas. It's a case of making a prototype, testing it, then sending it to be made in large batches. Getting them back can take months that way, where we can do something in a few days."


While his small size helps him be flexible and grab opportunities large companies may not be able to, at the same time he is struggling with difficulties because of it. "It's very difficult to make new things while keeping the machine running and orders being serviced. In the near future, something I would like to start on is a pedal. It's an idea I've had on the go for nearly a year now, but I've never had the time, it's hard to get time off on the machine with running parts for production. We work on a basis of literally manufacturing to sell, we never carry. We have a good relationship with the anodiser, I can drop an item on Monday and it'll be back with me before the weekend. It's weekly drops to the anodiser, and by working that way we can keep things sensible."


His plans for the future stick with that theme of being sensible. Despite what you may read in some places, demand for angle-adjust headsets is still strong, and his narrow-wide chainrings are selling as quickly as he can make them. There are a few fitments for the chainrings to add, and he's eyeing a 40t cassette conevertor, but new machines and premises are looming on the horizon, possibly one or two more people to help eventually. At the moment, much of the work for the headsets is outsourced to local companies, but new machines would need a new building too. All big things for a little company. If he gets time, there's the pedal to think about too...

www.workscomponents.co.uk