Dale17

@Makeevansgreatagain: Mike Rice was one of the nicest people I knew during my 13 years with the company. He always had time for me and helped me out with some special deals along the way. As Daver27 said, he was one of the people that made Evans great, and really did care about the brand. It only really started to go down hill when the investors came in and Mike started to wind down his involvement in the company. I'm guessing you are a bit butt hurt because Mike hasn't employed you at Bafles.

@gooral: And that's the real tragedy. The head office was full of great, knowledgeable staff who wanted Evans to survive. Now it'll be SD staff who don't understand the industry and will focus on profits, making it Evans Cycles in name only.

BTW, one of the RIDE IT managers now works for Sportive Breaks heading up their UK sportives. I think you'll find a few of the old staff there as well.....

RIDE IT has gone, along with the 29 staff who ran them. It was never a profit making thing for Evans, purely for marketing ( The fact you enjoyed them proves it worked) Unfortunately lower rider numbers and yearly increases in costs meant the amount it was costing the company became too much to run in the usual format. So we rethought the offering, lost some staff and came up with a figure they begrudging accepted. That was March last year. As soon as Covid hit they basically used it as the excuse they needed to wrap it up. Not that we'd have lasted too much longer by the look of it either. What hasn't been widely reported is that they intend to close the Gatwick HQ and move everything up to Shirebrook, it might have already happened. So that's basically the whole company except the store staff unemployed or perhaps offered a move to Derbyshire. Evans Cycles no longer exists, it's now just another stall in the SportsDirect stable.