From: aero.spike@mail.com   
      
   “The assumption was Wiggle Chain Reaction wasn’t going anywhere”:   
   Ex-employee talks “shock” at retail giant’s demise, plus THAT Visma Giro   
   helmet discussed on the road.cc Podcast   
      
   In episode 72 of the road.cc Podcast, we go behind the scenes at Wiggle CRC   
   to find out what really went on at the beleaguered retailer over the last   
   few gloomy months, while Jamie and Ryan dissect pro cycling’s latest   
   controversy: ugly time trial helmets   
      
   by RYAN MALLON.  FRI, MAR 08, 2024 18:59   
      
   While the two topics discussed on a bumper episode 72 of the road.cc   
   Podcast are both high on the cycling world’s list of talking points this   
   week, they notably sit at opposite ends of the seriousness spectrum (unless   
   you take your time trial helmet debates very seriously, of course).   
      
   In part one, George and Ryan are joined by a former Wiggle Chain Reaction   
   Cycles employee, one of the 450-odd staff members laid off as part of the   
   online retailer’s demise and recent rumoured purchase by Mike Ashley’s   
   Frasers Group, who discussed what life was like behind the scenes at the   
   beleaguered brand as Wiggle CRC lurched from crisis to crisis in recent   
   months following the collapse of its parent company.   
      
   The ex-employee also chats about the contrast between Wiggle’s grand   
   expansion plans and the struggling state of the bike industry, the “shock”   
   of the company’s collapse (amid hopes that it could continue on), the   
   abrupt, “hard and fast goodbye” dished out to its staff, and the future for   
   Wiggle’s house brands such as Vitus and dhb.   
      
   After a rough few months (and years) for the bike industry, and one giant   
   retailer in particular, last weekend we were greeted with the not very   
   surprising and rather inevitable news that Wiggle Chain Reaction Cycles –   
   or at least its brand and intellectual property – had been purchased by   
   Frasers Group, the retail empire founded by Mike Ashley and now run by his   
   son-in-law Michael Murray, in a deal believed to be worth less than £10m.   
      
   The news, which adds Wiggle CRC to Frasers’ growing list of purchases in   
   recent years of struggling cycling brands such as Evans and ProBikeKit,   
   brings an apparent end to the months of gloom and uncertainty surrounding   
   the company, which followed the collapse of Wiggle CRC’s parent company   
   Signa Sports United into insolvency.   
      
   Unfortunately, the purchase – like many of those engineered by Frasers in   
   the past – also means that Wiggle Chain Reaction’s remaining staff, all 450   
   of them, have lost their jobs.   
      
   And it was in those unfortunate circumstances that we sat down with one of   
   those staff members laid off over the past few weeks, to discuss the   
   circumstances behind the recent sale, and its effect on Wiggle CRC’s staff,   
   as well as the turmoil surrounding the company, and the bike industry in   
   general, in recent months.   
      
   “Everyone was convinced, this is it, we are one of the biggest bike   
   retailers about. We’re about to go massive in America, then it was like   
   ‘Oh, this might not be plain sailing, this is not good’. But I don’t   
   think   
   anyone thought this was going to close the company,” the ex-employee, who   
   worked for one of Wiggle CRC’s house brands, tells us of his response to   
   the revelation that SSU’s funding commitment of £150m had been withdrawn   
   from its own parent company last autumn, plunging Wiggle CRC into crisis   
   and administration.   
      
   However, the employee – who wished to remain anonymous – also believes that   
   it was a combination of that abrupt funding withdrawal and the broader,   
   more long-term external factors affecting the entire bike industry that   
   ultimately facilitated the company’s collapse.   
      
   He argues that continued internal ambition within Wiggle, such as the   
   desire to ‘break’ America, contrasted with those external industry   
   pressures and the effects of the pandemic bubble bursting, long before the   
   “shock” of SSU’s combustion – but that there was an insistent belief   
   that   
   the brand could weather those industry storms thanks to its “agility”.   
      
   “Suddenly the bubble burst, and you’ve got a train you’ve geared up to   
   full   
   speed, and you’re driving it flat out, then suddenly someone tells you   
   you’ve run out of track,” he says.   
      
   “It was chaos, and you saw everyone hitting that. And I think the £150m   
   combined with that – even with the £150m, there’s no guarantee we would   
   have survived. Maybe it got too big.”   
      
   In a wide-ranging chat, he also discusses the abruptness and “detached”   
   nature of the company’s descent leading to Frasers’ purchase – which saw   
   staff laid off without warning and US-based employees turning up to work to   
   find the office locked – despite the assumption among many staff that the   
   company could survive as a going concern amid the multiple waves of job   
   cuts carried out by the administrators.   
      
   “You’ve got a camaraderie-based company, and then things change,” he says   
   of the “brutally handled” and “random” job cuts.   
      
   “And goodbye is hard and fast. One day, before the end, friends got an   
   email, telling them there was a meeting. They got up, halfway through work,   
   went to the meeting and it was like ‘I’m sorry, this is the end of the   
   road, goodbye’.   
      
   “And since we were in administration, all the contracts for minimum notice   
   were gone. So they went from ‘I have to get this report in by one   
   o’clock’   
   to ‘sorry’. And fifteen minutes later they’re sitting in a car in the   
   carpark going ‘what has just happened?’”   
      
   The ex-staff member even tells us that they were constantly being assured   
   that the initial redundancies were a “good thing” for the company and its   
   remaining staff, and would help facilitate a quick sale.   
      
   “Everybody believed this was going to work,” he says. “We were too   
   successful, we make too much money, we were too good at this. It’s not like   
   there was another competitor in the same market in the UK. You might be one   
   of the unlucky ones who got cut, but the assumption was: Wiggle Chain   
   Reaction wasn’t going anywhere.”   
      
   He also claimed that staff were told that the company was likely to be sold   
   to a private equity firm, and that management even told staff “Don’t worry,   
   Mike Ashley is not buying us”.   
      
   “Even when we closed, there was no talk about Frasers Group, about Mike   
   Ashley,” he says. “We found out through media outlets, which is wild.”   
      
   Frasers’ purchase, the ex-employee says, also means that Wiggle CRC’s   
   in-house brands, such as the manufacturer of our bike of the year, Vitus,   
   are now “gone”.   
      
   “Right until the very end, there was the assumption someone was going to   
   buy us. Because you can run a brand with ten people. And the idea that   
   someone would surely love Vitus, NukeProof, dhb, one of these, surely   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)