Orange Factory Racing Announces it Won't be Returning in 2024
Words: Orange Bikes
30 years of racing pedigree. A roster stacked with iconic names. Front-and-centre throughout downhill and enduro history.
Orange Mountain Bikes has racing in its DNA and Orange Factory Racing is the latest chapter in that story.
Way back in the late 80’s, our founders started Orange because they loved racing bikes. The rigid machines of the time weren’t quite right for their needs, so they made their own. Roll forward to 2023 and there’s been a whole load of evolution and innovation since those early bone-shakers, but the passion for riding bikes fast, against the clock hasn’t changed.
In 2020 we launched Orange Factory Racing - a formal name for what we’d spent 3 decades doing, supporting talent and going fast between the tapes at the top of mountain bike competition.
It was our way of bringing racing full in-house, under our own control and 100% on our terms. Run by Orange staff, partnering with brands that we trust and all to help our bikes and our riders go fast. It was run by the people that design and build the bikes with every hard-learned lesson going straight back to source to help Orange bikes evolve.
For year one we recruited Scotsman Joe Connell, Lachlan Blair and longstanding Orange rider Tom Wilson. The Orange Stage 6 Evo was the team’s flagship bike - showing the world that single pivot and British-made could cut it on the World Stage.
The team raced the full Enduro World Series, select Downhill World Cups and a few one-offs such as Trans Madeira and a whole heap of domestic British events.
Good times and good results followed, spreading the good word of Orange around the globe.
For 2021 the roster didn’t change but the tools of the trade developed.
A Factory team isn’t simply about racing. It’s also about R&D, testing prototypes and proving our bike designs are ready for the world - and the team’s greatest success for 2021 was the Orange Switch 7.
Our hard-charging, World-stage-ready superbike, the Switch 7 was made for the demands of Factory-level riders and tested, refined and developed by the team.
For 2023 the team wished a fond farewell to Joe and Lachlan, and welcomed Becky Cook and Christo Gallagher to the family.
The racing evolved from Enduro World Series to Enduro World Cup, but, our commitment to round-the-world racing continued. Full EDR, a whole load of British and a few other bits and bobs in between.
Becky scored the Switch 7’s first-ever race win in the Welsh hills early in the year, and went on to a season of solid results with wins at Tweed Love and the UK’s prestigious Southern Enduro Championships and also a 3rd place at German National Enduro in Winterberg.
Christo added more gold to the team trophy cabinet. First at the famously technical Dunkeld enduro and again at the British Downhill National at Glencoe, the South West Enduro Series Event at Minehead and Tweedlove Vallelujah race.
And let’s not forget Tom Wilson. Gold medal at Tweedlove, gold medal at the IXS DH Cup in Winterberg, gold medal at Gisburn PMBA Enduro. Rock solid.
But - all that good news comes with a bittersweet note.
Whilst we’re celebrating the successes of the team, we’re also drawing a line under this particular chapter of Orange’s history. Orange Factory Racing won’t return for 2024.
With so much uncertainty in the bike industry, challenges around the future of the Enduro World Cup Series and the sheer cost of running a competitive Factory-level team, we’re pressing pause.
We’ll return when the time is right. But for now, we’re ending on a high and will take a break to focus on our main goal of creating world-class bikes.
All that said, our passion for racing isn’t going anywhere and neither is Orange Bikes. We’ll continue to support a number of talented athletes around the World - look out for more news on that in the new year.
Orange Mountain Bikes would like to thank everyone that has supported Orange Factory Racing through its 3-year tenure. That includes our staff, our athletes, our partner brands, race organisers, media and our customers and fans.
The Orange Factory Racing Roster:
Riders:
Tom Wilson
Lachlan Blair
Joe Connell
Becky Cook
Christo Gallagher
Staff:
Kelvin Lawton
Alex Desmond
Dan Greenwood
Photography:
Kike Abelleira
You can learn more about Orange Mountain Bikes at https://www.orangebikes.co.uk
Photos thanks to Kike Abelleira, Andy Lloyd, John Chennels and Liam Money.
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And I bet there are plenty of other riders who feel the same.
As for the athletes, most of us never get to live their dream. For some, it will just have to become a hobby, but that's what it is for the majority of us.
Struggles of a particular retailer don’t always say much about an industry as a whole. I don’t know what went on at CRC/wiggle but I was fairly a regular shopper there even being in the US. And even during the bike boom a few years ago it seemed they were having some issues.
So say you go super busy all of a sudden, sell all of your inventory and are left with zero - you re-order from your supplier / manufacturer and get a lead time 3 x as long as usual, you pre-sell the lot and get back in touch with the manufacturer for even more stock, after all what is the point of a business that cant sell, what do the staff do etc?
This time though its not 3 x the usual lead time, its 10 x the usual time and its a yeat, you order as you have no choice and then once that's sold you do it again, demand is huge, shipping costs rocket, raw material costs rocket, factory prices rise, you of course raise prices to make more profit as any sane business would do.
Then, things slow a little, some orders can be cancelled some cant, you have to take inventory you don't need, then things slow even more and you need cash to pay for all of that stuff in the warehouse and the new staff you took on to deal with demand, so the discounting begins and everyone else does the same so discounts are bigger while its still hard to sell.
Add into the mix outside investors who got involved at the peak and are now not willing to keep putting money into companies now performing waaaaay less than expected - e.g. CRC / Wiggle. HLC USA, PON group etc.
The result - staff get laid off, stock gets sold off, cancel all non-essential business activity and try to steady the ship.
Yep, some greed but a lot of the issue was caused by the way the industry supply chain works.
Normality will resume as you say with a few less business trading.
Who would want to reduce a new flagship product / design when everyone is selling similar things for 30-50% off?
Sales reverting back to pre-covid with inventory 10 times the usual amount, additional staff, additional capacity and costs etc is the real problem.
Bikes sold at 40-50% discount are being sold for cost price now, liquidating to pay bills.
And this is great news for consumers. Excellent new and used deals abound for gen 5 slash models which are phenomenal bikes, Stumpjumpers are cheap, as I mentioned process models at buy one get one. Mind you they aren’t deeply discounted like some other brands, but if you wanted a 134 trail bike you could also pick up a process x dh for those bike park days at no added cost. Or link up with a friend or WAG and get a pair of new bikes at 50% off.
It does seem like the discounts are a bit larger this year but that's likely do to the abnormal spikes in supply and demand over the last few years, which should at some point stabilize.
As for Guerilla Gravity, I'd hardly call that a "huge" company. They were a small boutique brand that went out of business. Not unusual and not itself any real indicator of how the overall industry is doing.
Would you have preferred all of the people that wanted bikes during covid not to be able to buy them?
What you describe as greed is the literal purpose of a business, the greed aspect comes when it goes too far, where that line is drawn is difficult to say.
What do you do for work?
Taiwan is currently awash with inventory and down to 3 day weeks / reduced capacity due reduced trade and all of the unsold stock on the floor.
Virtually every brand is selling bikes at 30-50% off, literally cost price to get cash into the bank.
Large numbers of PO’s have been cancelled as a result of reduced demand causing issues up and down the chain and furthering cash flow pressure.
2024 will see more companies go under, the real big boys will weather it or bankrupt their smaller suppliers by not paying them - wasn’t it shimano that extended payment terms unilaterally?
sure, believe all of the gov. responses to a respritory virus that had a death rate of .1%, were just and logical....but understand you are the 1% at this point that are still sucking Justin's ween...
You spoke shit before moving back to the USA and speak just as much shit now, I can’t imagine you can even remember the stories and rubbish you have told on here over the past few years.
Brands discovered lead times went way up as everything that had been made had sold and been re-ordered by competitors, so placed orders with very long lead times. Demand has now dropped and those orders are still coming through, leading to overstocking.
It's not necessarily greed, it was probably a sensible option at the time to place the order or go bust with nothing to sell.
I never said not to re-order, my point was, big brands congested factories with their over the top orders and unrealistic expectations of Covid golden era to last forever and as a result are sitting on inventory which they can't sell.
Sad times still, I live in Halifax (UK) where these are made. If scrapping the team for a year increases the prospects of the company as a whole to survive, then tough decisions have to be made.
2x "Passion"
The Breakup Statement drinking game is taking a heavy toll on my health and productivity this year.
apparently...
maybe that didnt work out :-)
They are completely out of touch with reality!
The price hike for teams is ridiculous but the move to Discovery for race coverage will prove to be one of if not the biggest mistake the UCI has ever made!
It is rumored that Discovery is right on the verge of bankruptcy!
It’s like CrossFit: people think that doing a 360 sideways box jump is somehow getting you more into shape.
The state of the industry is entirely the industry's fault. Anyone could see from a mile away that all those sales gains were temporary.
On the bright side there are SO many more people on bikes now thanks to Covid. My local areas are booming and the sport has never been more popular but everyone bought their bike during Covid and now it will be component / accessory sales until people decide that they want a fresh rig in a few years.
Mountain Bike Market was worth US$ 6.26 Bn in 2022, where'd all that money go? YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELVES!
Surely the UCI has a strategic plan for the future of EDR , It wont be long until September '24 , So the teams and riders need to know what the long term future of the sport ?
Vc tem algum registro em site disso para passar? Não fazia ideia desse acontecimento
www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/opinion/inflation-disinflation-economists.html
Dammit, sucks to see another team shutting down, but the jokes have to be made.
"Who's there?
"Banana"!
...
"knock knock"
"Who's there?
"Banana"!
...
"knock knock"
"Who's there?
"Banana"!
..."knock knock"
"Who's there?
"Orange you glad I didn't say Banana?!"
But seriously, as the apparent only orange bike rider on Pinkbike We will miss you
I do think the situation was mishandled horribly by most governments though.