No riding this weekend. I wish I’d gone, but I didn’t. I did however buy the latest Mountain Bike Action. I know it has loads of adverts, but I reckon there aren’t many others who offer the same format of magazine and I really appreciate the race orientated nature of a lot of the articles.
On top of photos from the US trade shows, this month includes a privateers account of a season racing an S-Works Epic, an inside look at Filip Meirhaeghe’s race bike, a review of the Anniversary Edition Stumpjumper FSR (so a few Specialized’s then) and the new Foes 7″ Trail bike amongst others. There’s more on the website.
Oh yeah and Paola Pezzo will be mounting her comeback campaign aboard an S-Works, she’s on the Specialized Squad for 2004. See the full listings here. I bet Gary Fisher is a bit gutted.
Karrimor’s shop in Manchester closed this weekend and we had a lot of customers carrying bags full of bargain buys. The full story on what happened is shown below and is from Bikebiz:
Karrimor sold within 24 hours of going into receivership
The Lancashire outdoor pursuits equipment supplier, spawned from a bicycle shop, has had a troubled recent past and has now been sold to Lonsdale Sports, the boxing suppliers retailer. Seven of Karrimor’s retail outlets are part of the acquisition. Corporate rescue and recovery firm Begbies Traynor had been working with Karrimor two weeks before it went into receivership and was able to secure a sale quickly. Pentland, owner of the Berghaus and Brasher brands, was one of the potential buyers of Karrimor.
Karrimor is based in Clayton-le-Moors, Lancashire. The company has 250 employees; 60 based at its HQ and the remaining staff located at its retail outlets dotted around the UK.
The seven retail outlets which are part of the Lonsdale acquisition are based in Clayton-le-Moors, Manchester, Cambridge, Brighton, Nottingham, London St Pauls, and London Wardour Street.
Begbies Traynor is seeking a buyer or buyers for the remaining 20 shops.
Karrimor was founded in 1946 by Charles and Mary Parsons. They hand-sewed cotton-duck pannier bags from the upstairs of their Lancashire cycle shop.
In March 2003, Karrimor acquired some of the YHA Adventure Shops, the retail group that went into administration in March. 15 of the 16 YHA Adventure Shops had store-in-store bicycle outlets called The Bike Chain.
A trip to Leeds resulted in some of Pitman’s tunes being played in the shop today. To quote Robert King: ‘The kids on the streets have a new kind of music hero to look up to. Fed up with ya ‘bling, bling’ So-Solid Crew the time has come for MC Pitman! Coalville’s answer to Mike Skinner’s ‘The Streets’. Kids are already racing down to hardwear shops to get hard hats to emulater ‘MC Pitman’.
Police forces up and down the country have welcomed this unlikely Pop artist to. A spokeman for the Police force said “Before, the kidz would carry guns when they was into So-Solid Crew and now with MC Pitman the most dangerous thing there most likely to carry is a torch!”‘ Check it out.
On a closing note the Singletrack Archive is now updated with Issue 13’s contents.
R O T H A R . C O M 
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